Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrī Caitanya Caritāmrita Antya 20.28

premera svabhāva — yāhāń premera sambandha

sei māne, — 'krishne mora nāhi prema-gandha'

SYNONYMS

premera svabhāva — the nature of love of Godhead; yāhāń — where; premera sambandha — a relationship of love of Godhead; sei māne — he recognizes; krishne — unto Lord Krishna; mora — my; nāhi — there is not; prema-gandha — even a scent of love of Godhead.

TRANSLATION

Wherever there is a relationship of love of Godhead, its natural symptom is that the devotee does not think himself a devotee. Instead, he always thinks that he has not even a drop of love for Krishna.

PURPORT

Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Thākura comments that persons who are actually very poor because they possess not even a drop of love of Godhead or pure devotional service falsely advertise themselves as great devotees, although they cannot at any time relish the transcendental bliss of devotional service. A class of so-called devotees known as prākrita-sahajiyās sometimes display devotional symptoms to exhibit their good fortune. They are pretending, however, because these devotional features are only external. The prākrita-sahajiyās exhibit these symptoms to advertise their so-called advancement in love of Krishna, but instead of praising the prākrita-sahajiyās for their symptoms of transcendental ecstasy, pure devotees do not like to associate with them. It is not advisable to equate the prākrita-sahajiyās with pure devotees. When one is actually advanced in ecstatic love of Krishna, he does not try to advertise himself. Instead, he endeavors more and more to render service to the Lord.

The prākrita-sahajiyās sometimes criticize pure devotees by calling them philosophers, learned scholars, knowers of the truth, or minute observers, but not devotees. On the other hand, they depict themselves as the most advanced, transcendentally blissful devotees, deeply absorbed in devotional service and mad to taste transcendental mellows. They also describe themselves as the most advanced devotees in spontaneous love, as knowers of transcendental mellows, as the topmost devotees in conjugal love of Krishna, and so on. Not actually knowing the transcendental nature of love of God, they accept their material emotions to be indicative of advancement. In this way they pollute the process of devotional service. To try to become writers of Vaishnava literature, they introduce their material conceptions of life into pure devotional service. Because of their material conceptions, they advertise themselves as knowers of transcendental mellows, but they do not understand the transcendental nature of devotional service.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness