The words of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur (from his essay Thakur Bhaktivinode), apply to Srila Prabhupada and ourselves today as much as when they were penned on paper. I have substituted Srila Prabhupada where Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati wrote Thakur Bhaktivinode.
The scriptures declare that it is only necessary for one to listen with an open mind to the Name of Krishna from the lips of a bonafide devotee.
In this Iron Age (Kali yuga) it is only the Name KRISHNA appearing on the lips of a PURE DEVOTEE who can lift the conditioned soul to the plane of the Absolute. As a matter of fact, even the scriptures also can only faintly express the Personality of Godhead. The mere study of the scriptures can convey no full knowledge of the Absolute as substantive entity. But the Name Krishna has power to put a person on the Absolute Plane and endow the words of the revealed scriptures with their living meaning.
Those who repeat the teachings of Srila Prabhupada from memory do not necessarily understand the meaning of the words they mechanically repeat. Those who can pass an examination regarding the contents of his writings are not necessarily also self-realised souls. They may not at all know the real meaning of the words they have learnt by the method of empiric study.
Srila Prabhupada did not want us to go to the clever mechanical reciters of the mundane sound for obtaining access to the transcendental Name of KRISHNA.
Such a person may be fully equipped with all the written arguments in explanation of the nature of the Divine Name. But if we listen to all these arguments from the DEAD source, the words will only increase our delusion.
The devotee is always right. The non-devotee in the shape of the empiric pedant is always and necessarily wrong.
The identical verses of the scriptures may be recited by the devotee and the non-devotee, may be apparently misquoted by the non-devotee, but the corresponding values of the two processes remain always categorically different.
The devotee is right even when he apparently misquotes. The non-devotee is wrong even when he quotes correctly the very words, chapter and verse of the scriptures.
What are the scriptures? They are nothing but the record by the pure devotee of the divine message appearing on the lips of the pure devotees.
