Therefore here it is said, tapasaiva, tapasā eva. Eva means certainly. You have to. Now, executing this tapasya, penances, are you loser? You are not loser. Now, anyone who will come from outside, they will see in our society, our members, boys and girls. They say, "bright-faced." Do they not? They see distinction. One priest in plain cloth... I was going from Los Angeles to Hawaii. One priest, he came to me in the plane. So he asked my permission, "Can I talk with you?" "Yes, why not?" So his first question was that "I see your disciples very bright-faced. How it has been done?" He's sincere. So where is the loss? By undergoing, by denying all these things, sinful activities, we are not loser. We can live very simple life. We can sit down on the floor, we can lie down on the floor. We don't require much furniture, neither large amount of gorgeous dress. So tapasya required. If we want advancement in spiritual life, we must accept some sort of tapasya. In the Kali-yuga we cannot accept such severe type of tapasya as in the cold, we go underneath, under water, sometimes drowning or sometimes up to this, and then meditate or chant Hare Kṛṣṇa. That is not possible. The minimum. So tapasya must be there.
So we should note it by this verse that some sort of tapasya must be done if we are serious about God realization. That is wanted. And then the first realization is jyoti, brahma-jyotir. Generally, the Māyāvādī transcendentalists, they think that this realization of brahma-jyotir is all in all. The yogis, they think that realization of sarva-guhāvāsam, sarva-bhūta-guhāvāsam... Īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe arjuna tiṣṭhati (BG 18.61).