Receiving Enlightenment

How confidential knowledge of the Personality of Godhead's real nature is revealed to a devotee was explained to Brahma in answer to his fourth question-"How may I be instructed to discharge the duty entrusted to me?" Lord Krsna told Brahma: "A person who is searching after the Supreme Absolute Truth, the Personality of Godhead, has to search it out up to this, certainly in all circumstances, and in all space and time, and both directly and indirectly."

Not one pure devotee has received enlightenment in Krsna consciousness independently. Rather, every great spiritual master has been instructed and benedicted by a previous spiritual master. Not only did Lord Brahma, the first and greatest of all living entities, receive instructions from Lord Sri Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but even the Lord Himself, the supreme spiritual master, became a disciple of a spiritual master, Sandipani Muni, and again when the Lord appeared as Caitanya Mahaprabhu He also accepted a spiritual master.

Because spiritual life is undoubtedly difficult, it is necessary to receive knowledge about God from both the scriptures and a spiritual master whose life teaches by example what the scriptures teach. In the following verse from Srimad-Bhagavatam, the word "bhagavata" has a dual meaning: the scripture and the personality who exemplifies the scripture, the book Bhagavata and the devotee bhagavata. "By regularly hearing Srimad-Bhagavatam and rendering service unto the pure devotee [who is also known as bhagavata], all that is troublesome to the heart is practically destroyed, and loving service unto the glorious Lord, who is praised with transcendental songs, is established as an irrevocable fact."

But although anyone can relish Srimad-Bhagavatam, not everyone will, for many people derive pleasure from reading sensuous mental speculations that only waste time, thus increasing their illusion, lamentation and fear. Those who are spiritually advanced, however, and are actually disgusted with material life, are a captive audience for Srimad-Bhagavatam. The Bhagavatam likens such rare souls to swans that enjoy pleasant ponds of water, scenic and natural, whereas it compares materialists to crows that prefer to enjoy the garbage of refuse heaps.

The impetus for Srimad-Bhagavatam's being promulgated to the English-speaking world began in the nineteenth century with Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, the grand-spiritual master of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. As a spiritual pioneer, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura first wrote books especially in English to try to interest Westerners in bhagavata-dharma. In one small volume entitled "The Bhagavata: Its Philosophy, Its Ethics and Its Theology," he writes as follows: "The Bhagavata [Srimad-Bhagavatam] is pre-eminently the book of India. Once enter into it, and you are transplanted, as it were, into the spiritual world where gross matter has no existence. The true follower of the Bhagavata is a spiritual man who has already cut his temporary connection with phenomenal nature and has made himself an inhabitant of that region where God eternally exists and loves. This mighty work is founded on inspiration and its superstructure upon reflection. . .We are therefore obliged to study it deeply through the assistance of such great commentators as Sridhara Svami and the divine Caitanya and His contemporary followers."