Text 141
The Most Confidential Knowledge
165
satataṁ kīrtayanto māṁ yatantaś ca dṛḍha-vratāḥ namasyantaś ca māṁ bhaktyā niṭva-vuktā upāsaṭe
satatam —always;  kīrtayantaḥ —chanting;  mām —Me;  yatantaḥ   ca —fully endeavoring also;  dṛḍha-vratāḥ —with determination;  namasyantaḥ   ca —offering obeisances;  mām —unto Me;  bhaktyā —in devotion;  nitya-yuktāḥ —perpetually engaged;  upāsate —worship.
TRANSLATION
Always chanting Myglories, endeavoring with great determination, bowing down before Me, these great souls perpetually worship Me with devotion.
PURPORT
The  mahātmā  cannot be manufactured by rubber-stamping an ordinary man. His symptoms are described here: a  mahātmā  is always engaged in chanting the glories of the Supreme Lord Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead. He has no other business. He is always engaged in the glorification of the Lord. In other words, he is not an impersonalist. When the question of glorification is there, one has to glorify the Supreme Lord, praising His holy name, His eternal form, His transcendental qualities and His uncommon pastimes. One has to glorify all these things; therefore a  mahātmā  is attached to the Supreme Personality of Godhead.
One who is attached to the impersonal feature of the Supreme Lord, the  brahmajyoti , is not described as  mahātmā  in the  Bhagavad-gītā . He is described in a different way in the next verse. The  mahātmā  is always engaged in different activities of devotional service, as described in the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam , hearing and chanting about Viṣṇu, not a demigod or human being. That is devotion:  śravaṇam kīrtanam viṣṇoḥ, smaraṇam , and remembering Him. Such a  mahātmā  has firm determination to achieve at the ultimate end the association of the Supreme Lord in any one of the five transcendental  rasas . To achieve that success, he engages all activities—mental, bodily and vocal, everything—in the service of the Supreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. That is called full Kṛṣṇa consciousness.
In devotional service there are certain activities which are called determined, such as fasting on certain days, like the eleventh day of the moon,