View source for There are many swamis and gurus and religious people throughout the world. How does one know which is the true guru?

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{{compiler|MadhuGopaldas|Rishab}}
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[[Category:Questions asked to Srila Prabhupada]]
[[Category:Questions asked to SP... 1974]]
[[Category:Questions On... Spiritual Master - Guru]]
[[Category:Questions On... Personalities From Other Religions or Spiritual Paths]]
[[Category:Questions On... Authority and Authenticity]]
[[Category:Questions From... Journalists, Reporters, Writers]]
[[Category:Religious People]]
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<div id="Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" class="section" sec_index="5" parent="compilation" text="Conversations and Morning Walks"><h2>Conversations and Morning Walks</h2>
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<div id="1974_Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" class="sub_section" sec_index="7" parent="Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" text="1974 Conversations and Morning Walks"><h3>1974 Conversations and Morning Walks</h3>
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<div id="ReportersInterviewJune291974Melbourne_0" class="quote" parent="1974_Conversations_and_Morning_Walks" book="Con" index="132" link="Reporters Interview -- June 29, 1974, Melbourne" link_text="Reporters Interview -- June 29, 1974, Melbourne">
<div class="heading">One who knows Kṛṣṇa, he is guru. Otherwise a rascal. That's all.
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<span class="link">[[Vanisource:Reporters Interview -- June 29, 1974, Melbourne|Reporters Interview -- June 29, 1974, Melbourne]]: </span><div class="text"><p style="display: inline;">Guest (4): Your Divine Grace, there are many swamis and gurus and religious people throughout the world. How does one know which is the true guru?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: One who knows Kṛṣṇa, he is guru. Otherwise a rascal. That's all.</p>
<p>Guest (4): What is the test of a true guru?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes. That is stated in Caitanya... Ei rūpe brahmāṇḍa bhramite kona bhāgyavān jīva. Kona, some fortunate person, not all.</p>
:ei rūpe brahmāṇḍa bhramite kona bhāgyavān jīva
:guru-kṛṣṇa-prasāde pāya bhakti-latā-bīja
:([[Vanisource:CC Madhya 19.151|CC Madhya 19.151]])
<p>You find out this in Teachings of Lord Caitanya. Find out the "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī."</p>
<p>Satsvarūpa: What chapter is it?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: See the contents.</p>
<p>Satsvarūpa: "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī." Then the next chapter is Sanātana Gosvāmī.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: What is that? There is no pagemark? "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī"?</p>
<p>Satsvarūpa: Yes, there is one chapter. I am looking through the chapter, from the page twenty-one to thirty-nine.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: That is "Teachings to Rūpa..."</p>
<p>Satsvarūpa: It's called "Teachings to Rūpa Gosvāmī."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Satsvarūpa: (reading) "Within this brahmāṇḍa or universe there are innumerable living entities..."</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes.</p>
<p>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, 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 sparks of the supreme spirit, then each minute spark would have been all-pervading and there would be no necessity of its being controlled.' "</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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..."</p>
<p>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 swamis. Do they not say, "I am God?" Do they not say? "I am God. You are God. Everyone God."</p>
<p>Guest (2): No, some... Some might say that, but...</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Guest (2): God is inside us.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: God is inside, outside, everywhere.</p>
<p>Guest (3): Who do you think Jesus Christ was?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Now, let us finish one. Jesus Christ himself said that he is son of God. That's all right. That's all right.</p>
<p>Guest (2): But if you take a drop of water and you merge it back into an ocean... This is an example that is often given by these masters, that if you take a drop of water and you put it into an ocean, that drop becomes one with that ocean.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: The drop of water becomes ocean?</p>
<p>Guest (2): No, but it becomes merged in that ocean.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: That's all right. Merging is different. But the ocean remains the ocean.</p>
<p>Guest (2): Yes.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: And you remain the drop. That's all. Because... Now, suppose your body, material body—earth, water, air, fire—now, when this body will be decomposed, so this form will not remain. Does it mean that your body has become the whole universal material elements?</p>
<p>Guest (2): No. But surely body is different from soul.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: That body is a drop in the bigger material elements. That does not mean your body has become the whole material elements. Similarly, a drop of ocean water is drop always. It does not become ocean. It appears that it is mixed up. But mixed up does not mean the drop will become as ocean. That is not the fact.</p>
<p>Guest (3): When they say the drop mixes with the ocean...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes.</p>
<p>Guest (3): ...it's like the human finite form merging with the infinite, and then it acquires the powers of infinite...</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Mixes means... Just like, the example is given: just like a green bird enters into a tree which is also green. So if... To my eyes it appears that the bird is mixed up, but actually that is not fact. Suppose an aeroplane, you see aeroplane is going on. Then, after some time you see there is no aeroplane. It is the same sky. It has mixed up. It has not mixed up. Your eyes are defective. It appears like mixed up. But it cannot mix up. The airplane is keeping its identity. The bird is keeping its identity.</p>
<p>Guest (2): Is the human soul then limited or unlimited?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Limited.</p>
<p>Guest (2): Limited?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes.</p>
<p>Guest (2): That it has boundaries and...?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes. Because you are limited, therefore you are under the control of material nature. That is being explained there. He is limited. If he keeps his limited existence, that is nice. But unnecessarily, if he wants to become unlimited, that is artificial. How it can be?</p>
<p>Guest (2): I seem to remember reading a chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā that said... I can't quite remember what chapter it was, but it said that... Kṛṣṇa was talking to Arjuna, and it said that Kṛṣṇa said to Arjuna, "When you realize Me or when you realize God, or Kṛṣṇa, you will see the whole of creation with inside..."</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Hm? "You?"</p>
<p>Guest (2): "You will see the whole of creation (sic:) withinside Me and withinside yourself." Is that a true translation?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Where it is? Cāru?</p>
<p>Devotee Cāru?: "You will see all beings in Me and Me in all beings."</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: So what is that? Does it mean all beings in Kṛṣṇa?</p>
<p>Guest (2): The translation that I read also said, "Withinside yourself."</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Kṛṣṇa, He, as Paramātmā, is everyone's heart. Īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe 'rjuna tiṣṭhati ([[Vanisource:BG 18.61 (1972)|BG 18.61]]). But that does not mean everyone is Kṛṣṇa. You are in this room. That does not mean you are room.</p>
<p>Guest (2): So we are in God, and God is in us?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Yes. Without God we have no existence.</p>
<p>Satsvarūpa: "A true yogi observes Me in all beings and also sees every being in Me. Indeed, the self-realized man sees Me everywhere." That's different.</p>
<p>Guest (4): Your Divine Grace, do you think that every human being will become liberated?</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Aiye.</p>
<p>Guest (2): Thank you very much for your time.</p>
<p>Prabhupāda: Hare Kṛṣṇa. (end)</p>
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