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King Citraketu Meets the Lord
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master, his devotional service becomes more and more pleasing. Then the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is within the core of everyone's heart, speaks to the devotee ( dadāmi buddhi-yogam tam yena mām upayānti te ). Citraketu Mahārāja was first instructed by his  gurus , Aṅgirā and Nārada, and now, having followed their instructions, he has come to the stage of seeing the Supreme Lord face to face. Therefore the Lord is now instructing him in the essence of knowledge.
The essence of knowledge is that there are two kinds of  vastu , or substances, One is real, and the other, being illusory or temporary, is sometimes called nonfactual. One must consider these two kinds of existence. The real  tattva , or truth, consists of Brahman, Paramātmā, and Bhagavān. As stated in  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  (1.2.11):
vadanti tat tattva-vidas tattvam yaj jñānam advayam brahmeti paramātmeti bhagavān iti śabdyate
“Learned transcendentalists who know the Absolute Truth call this non-dual substance Brahman, Paramātmā or Bhagavān.” The Absolute Truth exists eternally in three features. Therefore, Brahman, Paramātmā and Bhagavān combined are the substance.
The categories of emanations from the nonsubstance are two—activities and forbidden activities ( karma  and  vikarma ).  Karma  refers to the pious life or material activities performed during the day and the mental activities of dreams at night. These are more or less desired activities.  Vikarma , however, refers to illusory activities, which are something like the will-o'-the-wisp. These are activities that have no meaning. For example, modern scientists imagine that life can be produced from chemical combinations, and they are very busy trying to prove this in laboratories throughout the world, although no one in history has been able to produce the substance of life from material combinations. Such activities are called  vikarma .
All material activities are actually illusory, and progress in illusion is simply a waste of time. These illusory activities are called  akārya , and one must learn of them from the instructions of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. As stated in  Bhagavad-gītā  (4.17):