True religion across all traditions teaches love of God through surrender to a pure spiritual master and pursuit of divine knowledge.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Lecture to College Students — October 21, 1968, Seattle 681021LE-SEATTLE [45:28 Minutes] Prabhupāda: [kīrtana] [prema-dhvanī] Thank you very much. [devotees offer obeisances] [14:43] [Introduction by Tamāla Kṛṣṇa] Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Thank you all very much for coming today to hear our spiritual master speak and join us in this saṅkīrtana festival. What we're doing here is searching and seeking after the Supreme Absolute Truth. We are searching after Kṛṣṇa, or God.
In this last hundred years or so in this country there's been an increased awareness, consciousness, growing in the people—a need for expanded consciousness. People have been searching for some kind of spiritual realization. And to answer that kind of need there have been many men, so-called holy men, or svāmīs, who have come, from mainly India. This began with Vivekananda and is coming through this last hundred years, more and more men trying to answer the need of American people especially, for some kind of spiritual growth, spiritual realization. These men, unfortunately, are cheating the public. They are presenting the teachings that everything—all people, all objects, everything—is God, and that to enjoy, enjoy in this world, this is the world to enjoy—to increase your consciousness so that you can enjoy more; that we are all God, that all things are God.
This is nonsense. No revealed scriptures ever stated this. All scriptures are in agreement with one single thing: there's a supreme lovable person, the Lord, and it is the business of all entities to develop a love for Him. That is our connection with God.
We are part and parcel of the Lord. We are connected to Him but we are not Him. It is our ability. Our consciousness can be brought to the point where I can develop love of God. This is what our spiritual master is teaching: that God is great and He is mighty.
He is teaching this, and there is no difference in any scripture. They all teach this. We are in complete agreement with the Lord Jesus and the Bible. The Bible, too, states that the Lord is great, God is great, He is mighty. The differences in Kṛṣṇa consciousness, in the Bhagavad-gītā and the Vedic scriptures which we study in our courses at our temple, is that the Bhagavad-gītā is like this: If there is a young boy who is in the sixth grade and he wants to find out about birds, he'll open a dictionary, a pocket dictionary, and he'll read about birds, and the definition will state that it's an entity which flies through the air. There might be a picture there of a bird.
Whereas a person who's studying for a graduate course and doing a thesis, perhaps, on the different kinds of birds, he needs something more for finding out about birds than just that they fly through the air. He opens an international dictionary. He opens an encyclopedia, finds out all the varieties of birds, where they fly to, where they nest. He gets all the details about birds. Similarly, for those who are interested in finding out all the details about how God is great, how He is mighty—that is, "What does He look like?" "What does He do?" "Who is He?"—you go to the Vedic scriptures.
This is not to say that the Bible is nonsense. The Bible is the Absolute Truth. It is Absolute Truth that Lord Jesus taught. But look at the people to whom he taught. They crucified him for teaching about God.