SB 2.4.21
yad-anghry-abhidhyana-samadhi-dhautaya
dhiyanupasyanti hi tattvam atmanah
vadanti caitat kavayo yatha-rucam
sa me mukundo bhagavan prasidatam
Translation by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:
It is the Personality of Godhead Sri Krsna who gives liberation. By thinking of His lotus feet at every second, following in the footsteps of authorities, the devotee in trance can see the Absolute Truth. The learned mental speculators, however, think of Him according to their whims. May the Lord be pleased with me.
Purport by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada:
The mystic yogis, after a strenuous effort to control the senses, may be situated in a trance of yoga just to have a vision of the Supersoul within everyone, but the pure devotee, simply by remembering the Lord’s lotus feet at every second, at once becomes established in real trance because by such realization his mind and intelligence are completely cleansed of the diseases of material enjoyment. The pure devotee thinks himself fallen into the ocean of birth and death and incessantly prays to the Lord to lift him up. He only aspires to become a speck of transcendental dust at the lotus feet of the Lord. The pure devotee, by the grace of the Lord, absolutely loses all attraction for material enjoyment, and to keep free from contamination he always thinks of the lotus feet of the Lord. King Kulasekhara, a great devotee of the Lord, prayed:
krsna tvadiya-pada-pankaja-pañjarantam
adyaiva me visatu manasa-raja-hamsah
prana-prayana-samaye kapha-vata-pittaih
kanthavarodhana-vidhau smaranam kutas te
“My Lord Krsna, I pray that the swan of my mind may immediately sink down to the stems of the lotus feet of Your Lordship and be locked in their network; otherwise, at the time of my final breath, when my throat is choked up with cough, how will it be possible to think of You?”
There is an intimate relationship between the swan and the lotus stem. So the comparison is very appropriate: without becoming a swan, or paramahamsa, one cannot enter into the network of the lotus feet of the Lord. As stated in the Brahma-samhita, the mental speculators, even by dint of learned scholarship, cannot even dream of the Absolute Truth by speculating over it for eternity. The Lord reserves the right of not being exposed to such mental speculators. And because they cannot enter into the network stem of the lotus feet of the Lord, all mental speculators differ in conclusions, and at the end they make a useless compromise by saying “as many conclusions, as many ways,” according to one’s own inclination (yatha-rucam). But the Lord is not like a shopkeeper trying to please all sorts of customers in the mental-speculator exchange. The Lord is what He is, the Absolute Personality of Godhead, and He demands absolute surrender unto Him only. The pure devotee, however, by following the ways of previous acaryas, or authorities, can see the Supreme Lord through the transparent medium of a bona fide spiritual master (anupasyanti). The pure devotee never tries to see the Lord by mental speculation, but by following in the footsteps of the acaryas (mahajano yena gatah sa panthah). Therefore there is no difference of conclusions amongst the Vaisnava acaryas regarding the Lord and the devotees. Lord Caitanya asserts that the living entity (jiva) is eternally the servitor of the Lord and that he is simultaneously one with and different from the Lord. This tattva of Lord Caitanya’s is shared by all four sampradayas of the Vaisnava school (all accepting eternal servitude to the Lord even after salvation), and there is no authorized Vaisnava acarya who may think of the Lord and himself as one.
This humbleness of the pure devotee, who is one-hundred-percent engaged in His service, puts the devotee of the Lord in a trance by which to realize everything, because to the sincere devotee of the Lord, the Lord reveals Himself, as stated in the Bhagavad-gita (10.10). The Lord, being the Lord of intelligence in everyone (even in the nondevotee), favors His devotee with proper intelligence so that automatically the pure devotee is enlightened with the factual truth about the Lord and His different energies. The Lord is revealed not by one’s speculative power or by one’s verbal jugglery over the Absolute Truth; rather, He reveals Himself to a devotee when He is fully satisfied by the devotee’s service attitude. Sukadeva Gosvami is not a mental speculator or compromiser of the theory of “as many ways, as many conclusions”; rather, he prays to the Lord only, invoking His transcendental pleasure. That is the way of knowing the Lord.