Perfect knowledge comes only from a perfect person utterly free from illusion, mistakes, and imperfect perception.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Lecture — March 18, 1973, Calcutta 730318LE-CALCUTTA [18:20 Minutes] C-023 Lecture_730318LE-CALCUTTA Prabhupāda: ...he is speaking about knowledge, perfect knowledge. Knowledge received from common man or any person within this material world, infected with four kinds of defects, cannot be perfect. The so-called scientists, philosophers, mental speculators or dramatists or writers, as we experience, their talkings all are nonsense—this is our challenge—because the basic principle of their knowledge is ignorance, ajñāna. Big, big scientists, they simply theorize, and they try to support their theories with the words, “it may be,” “perhaps.” That is not perfect knowledge.
As soon as you say “it may be,” that means you have no perfect knowledge. As soon as you say “perhaps,” that means you have no perfect knowledge. So all these scientists and philosophers, they use these words: “it may be,” “perhaps.” Therefore we have to receive knowledge from a perfect person. A perfect person means who is not illusioned, who does not commit mistakes.
All of us, we commit mistakes, but a perfect person does not commit mistakes. This is the difference between perfect and imperfect. We are illusioned to accept something in place of something else. Just like the example is given by some philosophers to accept the rope by mistake as a snake.
This is called illusion. To vision water in the desert, this is due to our imperfection. So a person who is liberated, or not under the control of the material nature, he is not illusioned, neither he commits mistakes. Another defect is our senses are imperfect. We use our senses under certain conditions—just like we have our eyes, but we can see only when there is sunlight or electric light; otherwise our eyes are useless.
Therefore we haven’t got perfect eyes. But one who has got perfect eyes, he can see past, present and future. Imperfection of senses. And we, conditioned souls, although we admit that we have imperfect senses, we commit mistakes, we are illusioned—still we take the place of teachers.
That is cheating. That is cheating. If you know that you are imperfect, why should you take the place of a teacher? That is cheating: bhrama, pramāda, karaṇāpāṭava, vipralipsā [Cc. Adi 2.86]. So these defects are completely absent, conspicuous by absence: nirasta-kuhakaṁ. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam [1.1.1] it is said about the Absolute Truth as nirasta-kuhakaṁ. Kuha, kuha means illusion, imperfectness. So in the Absolute Truth there is no such imperfectness: nirasta-kuhakaṁ, dhāmnā svena sadā nirasta-kuhakaṁ.
Sadā. Sadā means once he was defective, now he has become nirasta-kuhakaṁ—no, not like that. The Absolute Truth is always sadā nirasta-kuhakaṁ. Dhāmnā svena satyaṁ paraṁ dhīmahi.