Prabhupāda: Yes.
Revatīnandana: And then in the Eighteenth Chapter there are different qualities described, and the qualities in the mode of goodness are said to be leading to self-realization. So is there a distinction between that mode of goodness described in the Eighteenth Chapter and the Fourteenth Chapter?
Prabhupāda: No. Goodness is a chance. If you acquire... Just like if you become a graduate, there is chance of becoming a lawyer. But if you do not become a lawyer, you remain only graduate. That's all. But without becoming graduate they cannot enter to be a lawyer. Similarly, goodness is the qualification of a brāhmaṇa. A brāhmaṇa has a chance. When you are qualified, you are following the regulative principles, qualified, you have got the chance of being promoted to become a Vaiṣṇava. That is the advantage. But in this age... Again, the same thing. Even one is not a brāhmaṇa—he is in the category of caṇḍāla—still, if he chants this Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, he becomes elevated to the position more than a brāhmaṇa. Yes.
Revatīnandana: Is that called purified goodness?
Prabhupāda: Purified... Goodness is purified, but this material world is so made that you cannot have here absolute goodness. That is not possible. There is... Sometimes it is mixed with passion, mixed with ignorance, mixture. You see? Therefore the transcendental stage is called śuddha-sattva. Sattva-guṇa is goodness, and the platform where the other qualities cannot contaminate even the quality of goodness, that is the stage of devotion. That is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā:
- māṁ ca yo 'vyabhicāreṇa
- bhakti-yogena sevate
- sa guṇān samatītyaitān
- brahma-bhūyāya kalpate
- (BG 14.26)