- dvaipāyana-sakhas tv evaṁ
- maitreyo bhagavāṁs tathā
- prāhedaṁ viduraṁ prīta
- ānvīkṣikyāṁ pracoditaḥ
- (SB 3.25.4)
So this is the process of getting knowledge: to approach the proper person, guru, and submissively hear from him about transcendental knowledge. Tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā (BG 4.34). Don't try to receive spiritual knowledge, or transcendental knowledge, very cheaply. Although it is very easy, there is no difficulty, but the process must be known. Just like any machine—we have got experience—just like sometimes our typewriter machine or this Dictaphone does not work. So if we go to the proper person who knows the work, he immediately tightens one screw or changes something; it works. The process we must know. So if I go to a pān-wala for repairing my machine, that will be not good. He does not know the process. He may know to . . . how to make pān, bīḍī; but doesn't matter, he does not know how to repair a machine.
Therefore the śāstric injunction is, Vedic injunction, that tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum eva abhigacchet (MU 1.2.12). If you want to know transcendental knowledge, tad-vijñāna . . . tad-vijñā . . . it is also vijñāna. Actually, human life is meant for understanding tad-vijñāna. Tad-vijñāna means transcendental knowledge, not material knowledge, bodily. Bodily . . . even a medical practitioner, he does not know, he has no knowledge of the spirit soul. He simply studies the mechanical arrangement of the body. The body's a big machine made by nature. It is called yantra. Actually it is a machine.