Adi-lila, Chapter 1 45
devotee, who is called asraya-vigraha, or the manifestation or form of the Lord of
whom one must take shelter.

If one poses himself as andcarya but does not have an attitude of servitorship'to
the Lord, he must be considered an offender, and this offensive attitude disqualifies
him from being an dcarya. The bona fide spiritual master always engages in unalloyed
devotional service to the Supreme Personality of Godhead. By this test he is known
to be adirect manifestation of the Lord and a genuine representative of Sri'Nityananda-
Prabhu. Such a spiritual master is known as dcaryadeva. Influenced by an envious
temperament and dissatisfied because of an attitude of sense gratification, mundaners
criticize a real Gcarya. \In fact, however, a bona fide adcarya is nondifferent from the
Personality of Godhead, and therefore to envy such an dcarya is to envy the Person-
ality of Godhead Himself. This will produce an effect subversive to transcendental
realization.

As mentioned previously, a disciple should always respect the spiritual master as
a manifestation of Sri Krsna, but at the same time one should always remember that
a spiritual master is never authorized to imitate the transcendental pastimes of the
Lord. False spiritual masters pose themselves as identical with Sri Krsna in every
respect to exploit the sentiments of their disciples, but such impersonalists can only
mislead their disciples, for their ultimate aim is to become one with the Lord. This
is against the principles of the devotional cult.

The real Vedic philosophy is acintya-bhedabheda-tattva, which establishes every-
thing to be simultaneously one with and different from the Personality of Godhead.
Srila Raghunatha dasa Gosvami confirms that this is the real position of a bona fide
spiritual master and says that one should always think of the spiritual master in
terms of his intimate relationship with Mukunda (Sri Krsna). Srila Jiva Gosvami, in
his Bhakti-sandarbha (213), has clearly defined that a pure devotee’s observation of
the spiritual master and Lord Siva as one with the Personality of Godhead exists in
terms of their being very dear to the Lord, not identical with Him in all respects.
Following in the footsteps of Srila Raghunatha dasa Gosvami and Srila Jiva Gosvami,
later dcaryas like Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura have confirmed the same
truths. In his prayers to the spiritual master, Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura
confirms that all the revealed scriptures accept the spiritual master to be identical
with the Personality of Godhead because he is a very dear and confidential servant
of the Lord. Gaudiya Vaispavas therefore worship Srila Gurudeva (the spiritual
master) in the light of his being the servitor of the Personality of Godhead. In all
the ancient literatures of devotional service and in the more recent songs of Srila
Narottama dasa Thakura, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and other unalloyed Vaisnavas,
the spiritual master is always considered either one of the confidential associates of
Srimati Radharani or a manifested representation of Srila Nityananda Prabhu.

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