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The Glories of Devotional Service
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can imagine a personal form of the impersonal Absolute Truth for the time being, but as soon as one becomes liberated the worship stops. That is the theory put forward by the Māyāvāda philosophy. Actually the impersonalists do not merge into the existence of the Supreme Person but into His personal bodily luster, which is called  brahmajyoti . Although that  brahmajyoti  is not different from His personal body, that sort of oneness or merging into the bodily luster of the Personality of Godhead is not accepted by a pure devotee because the devotees engage in greater pleasure than the so-called pleasure of merging into His existence. The greatest pleasure is to serve the Lord. Devotees are always thinking about how to serve Him; they are always designing ways and means to serve the Supreme Lord, even in the midst of the greatest obstacles of material existence.
The Māyāvādīs accept the description of the pastimes of the Lord as stories, but actually they are not stories; they are historical facts. Pure devotees accept the narrations of the pastimes of the Lord not as stories but as Absolute Truth. The words  mama pauruṣāṇi  are significant. Devotees are very much attached to glorifying the activities of the Lord, whereas the Māyāvādīs cannot even think of these activities. According to them the Absolute Truth is impersonal. Without personal existence, how can there be activity? The impersonalists take the activities mentioned in the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam ,  Bhagavad-gītā , and other Vedic literatures as fictitious stories, and therefore they interpret them most mischievously. They have no idea of the Personality of Godhead. They unnecessarily poke their noses into the scripture and interpret it in a deceptive way in order to mislead the innocent public. The activities of Māyāvāda philosophy are very dangerous to the public, and therefore Lord Caitanya warned never to hear from any Māyāvādī about any scripture. They will spoil the entire process, and the person hearing them will never be able to come to the path of devotional service to attain the highest perfection, or will be able to do so only after a very long time.
It is clearly stated by Kapila Muni that  bhakti  activities or activities in devotional service are transcendental to  mukti . This is called  pañcama-puruṣārtha . Generally, people engage in the activities of religion, economic development and sense gratification, and ultimately they work with an idea that they are going to become one with the Supreme Lord ( mukti ). But  bhakti  is transcendental to all these activities. The  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam , therefore, begins by stating that all kinds of pretentious religiosity is completely eradicated from the  Bhāgavatam . Ritualistic activities for economic development and sense gratification, and, after frustration in