Adi-lila, Chapter 7 77
PURPORT

A person who cannot keep his faith in the words of his spiritual master but acts
independently never receives the authority to chant the holy name of the Lord. It
is said in the Vedas:

yasya deve para bhaktir yatha deve tatha gurau
tasyaite kathita hy arthah prakasante mahatmanah
“Only unto those great souls who have implicit faith in both the Lord and the spiri-
tual master are all the imports of Vedic knowledge automatically revealed.”’ This
Vedic injunction is very important, and Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu supported it by
His personal behavior. Believing in the words of His spiritual master, He introduced
the sankirtana movement, just as the present Krsna consciousness movement was
started with belief in the words of our spiritual master. He wanted to preach, we
believed in his words and tried somehow or other to fulfill them, and now this
movement has become successful all over the world. Therefore faith in the words of
the spiritual master and in the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the secret of
success. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu never disobeyed the orders of His spiritual master
and stopped propagating the safkirtana movement. Sri Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati
Gosvami, at the time of his passing away, ordered all his disciples to work
conjointly to preach the mission of Caitanya Mahaprabhu all over the world. Later,
however, some self-interested, foolish disciples disobeyed his orders. Each one of
them wanted to become head of the mission, and they fought in the courts, neglect-
ing the order of the spiritual master, and the entire mission was defeated. We are not
proud of this; however, the truth must be explained. We believed in the words of
our spiritual master and started in a humble way—in a helpless way—but due to the
spiritual force of the order of the supreme authority, this movement has become
successful.

It is to be understood that when Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu chanted and danced,
He did so by the influence of the pleasure potency of the spiritual world. Sri
Caitanya Mahaprabhu never considered the holy name of the Lord to be a material
vibration, nor does any pure devotee mistake the chanting of the Hare Krsna mantra
to be a material musical manifestation. Lord Caitanya never tried to be the
master of the holy name; rather He taught us how to be servants of the holy
name. If one chants the holy name of the Lord just to make a show, not know-
ing the secret of success, he may increase his bile secretion, but he will never
attain perfection in chanting the holy name. Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu presented
himself in this way: “l am a great fool and do not have knowledge of right and
wrong. In order to understand the real meaning of Vedanta-sutra, | never followed
the explanation of the Sankara-sampradaya or Mayavadi sannyasis. |’m very much
afraid of the illogical arguments of the Mayavadi philosophers. Therefore | think |
have no authority regarding their explanations of Vedanta-sutra. | firmly believe
that simply chanting the holy name of the Lord can remove all misconceptions of
the material world. | believe that simply by chanting the holy name of the Lord one
can attain the shelter of the lotus feet of the Lord. In this age of quarrel and
