14 / Devotional Qualifications
Some scholars recommend that knowledge and renunciation are important factors for elevating oneself to devotional service. But actually that is not a fact. Actually, the cultivation of knowledge or renunciation, which are favorable for achieving a footing in Kışna consciousness, may be accepted in the beginning, but ultimately they may also come to be rejected, for devotional service is dependent on nothing other than the sentiment or desire for such service. It requires nothing more than sincerity.
It is the opinion of expert devotees that mental speculation and the artificial austerities of  yoga  practice may be favorable for becoming liberated from material contamination, but they will also make one's heart harder and harder. They will not help at all in the progress of devotional service. These processes are, therefore, not favorable for entering into the transcendental loving service of the Lord. Actually Kṛṣṇa consciousness—devotional service itself—is the only way of advancing in devotional life. Devotional service is absolute; it is both the cause and the effect. The Supreme Personality of Godhead is the cause and effect of all that be, and to approach Him, the absolute, the process of devotional service—which is also absolute—has to be adopted.
This is confirmed in the  Bhagavad-gītā  by the Lord Himself: “One can understand Me only through devotional service.” In beginning His teaching of the  Gītā , the Lord said to Arjuna, “Because you are My devotee I shall teach these secrets to you.” Vedic knowledge means ultimately to understand the Supreme Lord, and the process of entering into His kingdom is devotional service. That is accepted
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