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THE SCIENCE OF SELF-REALIZATION
Him all devotional obeisances, knowing Him as the son of Devakī and Vasudeva. According to the  Bhagavad-gītā , only by knowing the transcendental birth and activities of Kṛṣṇa can one attain liberation by acquiring a spiritual form like Kṛṣṇa's. There are five different kinds of liberation. One who merges into the spiritual auras of Kṛṣṇa, known as the impersonal Brahman effulgence, does not fully develop his spiritual body. But one who fully develops his spiritual existence becomes an associate of Nārāyaṇa or Kṛṣṇa in different spiritual abodes. One who enters into the abode of Nārāyaṇa develops a spiritual form exactly like Nārāyaṇa's (four-handed), and one who enters into the highest spiritual abode of Kṛṣṇa, known as Goloka Vṛndāvana, develops a spiritual form of two hands like Kṛṣṇa's. Śaṅkara, as an incarnation of Lord Śiva, knows all these spiritual existences, but he did not disclose them to his then Buddhist followers because it was impossible for them to know about the spiritual world. Lord Buddha preached that void is the ultimate goal, so how could his followers understand spiritual variegatedness? Therefore Śaṅkara said,  brahma satyam jagan mithyā , or, material variegatedness is false but spiritual variegatedness is fact. In the  Padma Purāṇa  Lord Śiva has admitted that he had to preach the philosophy of  māyā , or illusion, in the Kali-yuga as another edition of the "void" philosophy of Buddha. He had to do this by the order of the Lord for specific reasons. He disclosed his real mind, however, by recommending that people worship Kṛṣṇa, for no one can be saved simply by mental speculations composed of word jugglery and grammatical manuevers. Śaṅkara further instructs:
bhaja govindam bhaja govindam  
 bhaja govindam mūḍha-mate  
 samprāpte sannihite kāle  
 na hi na hi rakṣati ḍukṛñ-karaṇe
"You intellectual fools, just worship Govinda, just worship Govinda, just worship Govinda. Your grammatical knowledge and word jugglery will not save you at the time of death."
—6—
Of that terrifying river 
  Of the battlefield of Kurukṣetra 
  Over which the Pāṇḍavas victoriously crossed, 
  Bhīṣma and Droṇa were as the high banks,