BENGALURU: Avery central principle in Vedic culture - if you want to have knowledge about something, you need to have certain qualifications to access that knowledge. Prabhupada gave an example - if you go to a bank and ask a cashier - how much money do you have today? The cashier may immediately call the security guard. If the regional manager of the bank had asked him, he will open the ledger and immediately tell him.
Srila Prabhupada said - do not try to see God, act in such a way that God will want to see you. Srimad Bhagavatam enables you to understand the ultimate truth which will be presented to you depending on your ability to understand and grasp it.
Prabhupada was once talking to a philosophy student. He asked her - Do you believe in a creator? She said - I believe, but in an impersonal creator, a creator who has no attributes. Prabhupada’s replied “the moment you say he is a creator that is an attribute. Then how do you say he has no attributes?” People sometimes make these kinds of statements without sufficiently thinking about all these things.
Prabhupada gives a very interesting analogy. If you buy some medicine, you follow the instruction on the bottle will say recommended dosage or under the directions of a physician. In the same way, Prabhupada says in the Bhagavad-gita, there are directions which state how to receive this knowledge and when people don’t follow that direction there will be misunderstanding.
During Einstein’s time there was a concept known as static universe because gravity pulls everything. Einstein introduced what is known as cosmological constants and he said because of these cosmological constants, the gravity is not imploding. In 1923 when Einstein was still alive, there was another scientist who found that Einstein’s cosmological constants were wrong. Later on Einstein admitted that this is the greatest blunder of his life. Even a great scientist made a mistake in his own field and he accepts that. So what to speak of small human beings, our intelligence is limited; our sensory abilities are limited.
In Krishna consciousness, the principle which Srila Prabhupada teaches is that we take the knowledge from the parampara given by the acharyas. We will not change it, every word of the scripture is very important for us, we just hold on to that.
Srimad Bhagavatam explains about the Absolute Truth, Sri Krishna. If you want to understand Krishna, the qualification is to become completely pure by heart. It is also said there is a very potent process to purify our heart and that is chanting the holy names of Krishna, hearing about Him, associating with His devotees. If we adopt them, our heart will be cleansed and we will acquire the necessary qualification to be able to access the highest aspect of Absolute Truth.