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Krṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead
to address them on behalf of all the kings. When Krṣṇa began to speak, all became silent, being eager to hear and understand His welcoming words to the sages.
Lord Krṣṇa spoke thus: “All glories to the assembled sages and ascetics! Today we are all feeling that our lives have become successful. Today we have achieved the desired goal of life, because we are now seeing face to face all the exalted liberated sages and ascetics whom even the great demigods in the heavens desire to see. Persons who are neophytes in devotional service and who simply offer their respectful obeisances to the Deity in the temple but cannot realize that the Lord is situated in everyone’s heart, and those who simply worship different demigods for fulfillment of their own lusty desires, are unable to understand the importance of these sages. They cannot take advantage of receiving these sages by seeing them with their eyes, by touching their lotus feet, by inquiring about their welfare or by diligently worshiping them.”
Neophyte devotees or religionists cannot understand the importance of great  mahātmās . They go to the temple as a matter of formality and pay their respectful obeisances unto the Deity. When one is promoted to the next platform of trance consciousness, one can understand the importance of  mahātmās  and devotees, and in that stage the devotee tries to please them. Therefore, Lord Krṣṇa said that the neophyte cannot understand the importance of great sages, devotees or ascetics.
Krṣṇa continued, “One cannot purify himself by traveling to holy places of pilgrimage and taking bath there or by seeing the Deities in the temples. But if one happens to meet a great devotee, a  mahātmā  who is representative of the Personality of Godhead, one becomes immediately purified. In order to become purified, there is the injunction to worship the fire, the sun, the moon, the earth, the water, the air, the sky and the mind. By worshiping all the elements and their predominating deities, one can become free from the influence of envy, but all the sins of an envious person can be nullified immediately simply by serving a great soul. My dear revered sages and respectable kings, you can take it from Me that a person who accepts this material body made of three elements—mucus, bile and air—as his own self, who considers his family and relatives as his own, and who accepts material things as worshipable, or who visits holy places of pilgrimage just to take a bath there, but never associates with great personalities, sages and  mahātmās —such a person, even in the form of a human being, is nothing but an animal, like an ass.”
When the supreme authority, Lord Krṣṇa, was thus speaking with great gravity, all the sages and ascetics remained in dead silence. They became