Text 54]
Dhruva Mahārāja Leaves Home for the Forest
331
TRANSLATION
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya. This is the twelve-syllable mantra for worshiping Lord Kṛṣṇa. One should install the physical forms of the Lord, and with the chanting of the mantra one should offer flowers and fruits and other varieties of foodstuffs exactly according to the rules and regulations prescribed by authorities. But this should be done in consideration of place, time and attendant conveniences and inconveniences.
PURPORT
Oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya is known as the  Dvādaśākṣara-mantra . This  mantra  is chanted by Vaiṣṇava devotees, and it begins with  praṇava , or  oṁkāra . There is an injunction that those who are not  brāhmaṇas  cannot pronounce the  praṇava mantra . But Dhruva Mahārāja was born a  kṣatriya . He at once admitted before Nārada Muni that as a  kṣatriya  he was unable to accept his instruction of renunciation and mental equilibrium, which are the concern of a  brāhmaṇa . Still, although not a  brāhmaṇa  but a  kṣatriya , Dhruva was allowed, on the authority of Nārada, to pronounce the  praṇava oṁkāra . This is very significant. Especially in India, the caste  brāhmaṇas  object greatly when persons from other castes, who are not born in  brāhmaṇa  families, recite this  praṇava mantra . But here is tacit proof that if a person accepts the Vaiṣṇava  mantra  or Vaiṣṇava way of worshiping the Deity, he is allowed to chant the  praṇava mantra . In  Bhagavad-gītā  the Lord personally accepts that anyone, even one of a low species, can be elevated to the highest position and go back home, back to Godhead, simply if he worships properly.
The prescribed rules, as stated here by Nārada Muni, are that one should accept the  mantra  through a bona fide spiritual master and hear the  mantra  in the right ear. Not only should one chant or murmur the  mantra , but in front of him he must have the Deity or physical form of the Lord. Of course, when the Lord appears it is no longer a physical form. For example, when an iron rod is made red-hot in a fire, it is no longer iron; it is fire. Similarly, when we make a form of the Lord—whether of wood, or stone, or metal, or jewel, or paint, or even a form within the mind—it is a bona fide, spiritual, transcendental form of the Lord. One must not only receive the  mantra  from the bona fide spiritual master like Nārada Muni or his representative in the discipline succession, but one must chant the  mantra . And not only must one chant, but he should also offer whatever foodstuff is available in his part of the world, according to time and convenience.