Introduction
5
led by Śaṅkarācārya. And there is another class of transcendentalist, called Vaiṣṇavas, like Rāmānujācārya, Madhvācārya, Viṣṇusvāmī. Both the Śaṅkara-sampradāya and the Vaiṣṇava-sampradāya have accepted Kṛṣṇa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Śaṅkarācārya is supposed to be an impersonalist who preached impersonalism, impersonal  Brahman , but it is a fact that he is a covered personalist. In his commentary on the  Bhagavad-gītā  he wrote: “Nārāyana, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, is beyond this cosmic manifestation.” And then again he confirms, “That Supreme Personality of Godhead, Nārāyana, is Kṛṣṇa. He has come as the Son of Devakī and Vasudeva.” He has particularly mentioned the names of His father and mother. So Kṛṣṇa is accepted as the Supreme Personality of Godhead by all transcendentalists. There is no doubt about it. Our source of knowledge in Kṛṣṇa Consciousness is directly from Kṛṣṇa,  Bhagavad-gītā . We have published  Bhagavad Gita As It Is , because we accept Kṛṣṇa as He is speaking without any interpretation. That is Vedic knowledge. Since the Vedic knowledge is pure, we accept it. Whatever Kṛṣṇa says, we accept. This is Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. That saves much time. If you accept the right authority or the source of knowledge, then you save much time. For example, there are two systems of knowledge in the material world, inductive and deductive. From deductive, you accept that man is mortal. Your father says man is mortal, your sister says man is mortal, everyone says man is mortal—but you do not experiment. You accept it as fact that man is mortal. If you want to research to find out whether man is mortal, you have to study each and every man, and you may come to think that there may be some man who is not dying, but you have not seen him yet. So in this way your researching will never be finished. This process is called in Sanskrit,  āroha , the ascending process. If you want to attain knowledge by any personal endeavor, by exercising your imperfect senses, you will never come to the right conclusions. That is not possible.
There is a statement in  Brahma-saṁhita : Just ride on the air-