Prabhupāda: One who knows Kṛṣṇa, he is guru. Otherwise a rascal. That's all.
Reporter (4): What is the test of a true guru?
Prabhupāda: He will describe about Kṛṣṇa. He will ask you to become devotee of Kṛṣṇa. His business is to propagate Kṛṣṇa. That is the symptom of guru.
Devotee: Śrīla Prabhupāda, if we don't know what Kṛṣṇa is and we still get a bona fide spiritual master, then how do we call that? Our good fortune?
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is stated in Caitanya . . . ei rūpe brahmāṇḍa bhramite kona bhāgyavān jīva. Kona, some fortunate person; not all.
- ei rūpe brahmāṇḍa bhramite kona bhāgyavān jīva
- guru-kṛṣṇa-kṛpāya pāya bhakti-latā-bīja
- (CC Madhya 19.151)
(aside) You find out this in Teachings of Lord Caitanya. Find out "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī."
Satsvarūpa: What chapter is it?
Prabhupāda: See the Contents.
Satsvarūpa: "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī." Then the next chapter is Sanātana Gosvāmī.
Prabhupāda: What is that? There is no page mark, "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī"?
Satsvarūpa: Yes, there is one chapter. I am looking through the chapter, from page twenty-one to thirty-nine.
Prabhupāda: That is "Teachings to Rūpa . . ."
Satsvarūpa: It's called "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī."
Prabhupāda: So you can go on reading it, where it is stated that, "In this way, wandering, the living entity by the mercy of Kṛṣṇa, fortunate . . ." It is on the beginning of the . . . why don't you read the chapter?
Satsvarūpa: (reading) "Within this brahmāṇḍa, or universe, there are innumerable living entities . . ."
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Satsvarūpa: ". . . and according to their own fruitive activities they are transmigrating from one species of life to another and from one planet to another. In this way their engagement in material existence is being continued since time immemorial. The living entities are atomic parts and parcels of the supreme spirit. There is, however, a measurement for the length and breadth of the atomic spiritual spark. It is said in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Tenth Canto, Eighty-seventh Chapter, thirty-sixth verse, that if you divide the top of a hair into one hundred parts and again if you divide one part of that into another one hundred parts, such 1/10,000th part of the tip of a hair is the length and breadth of the individual soul.
This is also confirmed in the Vedas in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad. This atomic magnitude of the individual living entity is again described in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, Eleventh Canto, Sixteenth Chapter, eleventh verse (SB 11.16.11), as follows." This is a speech given by one of the four Kumāras known as Sunanda on the occasion of performing a great sacrifice. He said, " 'O supreme truth, if the living entities were not infinitesimal living sparks of the supreme spirit, then each minute spark would have been all-pervading, and there would be no necessity of its being controlled.' "
Prabhupāda: That is very . . . otherwise . . . if the living entity is equal to the Supreme Being, then . . . suppose you are a living entity. You could speak everything of what is going on in others' mind or body. You cannot say what I am thinking. I cannot say what you are thinking. Therefore I or you are not all-pervading. We are limited. And that is living entity. This is a very nice example. Go on.
Satsvarūpa: "But if the constitution of the living entity is accepted as being the minute part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, then automatically he becomes a controlled living entity under a supreme energy or power. This is his constitutional position. Therefore if he remains as he is created in that natural position, he can attain . . ."
Prabhupāda: Yes. We are created as being controlled. So instead of aspiring to become controller, if we remain controlled, that is our natural position. But some rascals, they are trying to become controller, "I am . . . by meditation I have become God." But if you are a God, then how you have become dog? This is going on. The cheating, the so-called svāmīs. Do they not say, "I am God"? Do they not say: "I am God. You are God. Everyone God"?
Reporter (2): No, some . . . some might say that, but . . .
Prabhupāda: But some of them; I am talking, the some of them. Some of them are not all foolish. Some of them are foolish. So these foolish persons, they say that, "I am God. You are God. Everyone is God." That is foolishness. We are not God. We are part and parcel of God, qualitatively one. But we are not the Supreme Being. We are living being, but not Supreme Being.