510 Sri Caitanya-caritamrta
SYNONYMS

sei aparddhe—by that offense; tara—his; ndhika—there is not; nistdra—deliverance;
ghora—terrible; narakete—in a hellish condition; pade—falls down; ki baliba—what
will | say; Gra—more.

TRANSLATION

For that offense, he cannot be liberated. Rather, he will fall into a terrible

hellish condition. What more should | say?
PURPORT

In the Bhakti-sandarbha Siva Gosvami has stated that those who are actually
very serious about devotional service do not differentiate between the form of the
Lord made of clay, metal, stone or wood and the original form of the Lord. In the
material world a person and his photograph, picture or statue are different. But the
statue of Lord Krsna and Krsna Himself, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, are
not different, because the Lord is absolute. What we call stone, wood and metal
are energies of the Supreme Lord, and energies are never separate from the energetic.
As we have several times explained, no one can separate the sunshine energy from
the energetic sun. Therefore material energy may appear separate from the Lord,
but transcendentally it is nondifferent from the Lord.

The Lord can appear anywhere and everywhere because His diverse energies are
distributed everywhere like sunshine. We should therefore understand whatever we
see to be the energy of the Supreme Lord and should not differentiate between
the Lord and His arcad form made from clay, metal, wood or paint. Even if one has
not developed this consciousness, one should accept it theoretically from the in-
structions of the spiritual master and should worship the arcd-marti, or form of
the Lord in the temple, as nondifferent from the Lord.

The Padma Purana specifically mentions that anyone who thinks the form of the
Lord in the temple to be made of wood, stone or metal is certainly in a hellish
condition. Impersonalists are against the worship of the Lord’s form in the temple,
and there is even a group of people who pass as Hindus but condemn such worship.
Their so-called acceptance of the Vedas has no meaning, for all the dcdryas, even
the impersonalist Sankaracarya, have recommended the worship of the transcen-
dental form of the Lord. Impersonalists like Sankaracarya recommend the worship
of five forms, known as paficopdsand, which include Lord Visnu. Vaisnavas, how-
ever, worship the forms of Lord Visnu in His varied manifestations, such as Radha-
Krsna, Laksmi-Narayana, Sita-Rama and Rukmini-Krsna. Mayavadis admit that
worship of the Lord’s form is required in the beginning, but they think that in the
end everything is impersonal. Therefore, since they are ultimately against worship
of the Lord’s form, Lord Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu has described them as offenders.

Srimad-Bhdgavatam has condemned those who think the body to be the self as
bhauma ijya-dhih. Bhauma means earth, and ijya-dhih means worshiper. There are
two kinds of bhauma ijya-dhif: those who worship the land of their birth, such as
nationalists, who make many sacrifices for the motherland, and those who condemn
