Reporter (4): How does one recognize the true guru?
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.