Perfect knowledge comes immediately when received from a perfect source; intellectual understanding must ground genuine devotion.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
] Prabhupāda: ...qualities, why should you surrender? [indistinct] So before surrendering, one has to study the person where he is going to surrender. Then he surrenders. That is real surrender.
And blindly surrender, that will not stay. So our first business is to surrender to God; therefore we must know what is God. Then you must surrender. And the emotion is good.
That means you are advanced. If you understand that "God is giving us everything," so that emotion is very good. If one from the very beginning becomes emotional, "Oh, God is so kind. God is so great that He is giving us everything, our necessities.
I must serve Him," this emotion is very good. But for ordinary man, this emotion does not come. He wants to study what is God. Then when he fully understands, "Oh, God is so great," then that emotion is very nice.
That is genuine emotion. Otherwise emotion is sentiment. That will not stay. That will not endure.
It is temporary. Carol Cameron: Would the intellect be helpful in knowing God? Prabhupāda: Yes. Unless you have got the necessary intellect, then you are no better than the animals. The animals have no intellect to understand God, but the human being has got that intellect. That is the distinction between animal and human being.
But the human being has a special intellect developed than the animals, that he can understand what he is, what is God, what is this cosmic manifestation, and what is the aim of life, how we should conduct. These things are prerogatives for the human being. The animals have no such prerogative. So if we do not utilize these special intellectual activities, then we remain animal.