Devotee: How do you develop knowledge?
Prabhupāda: Seriousness, if you become serious then you will develop. Develop seriously. If you are fickle then how you can develop seriously? Therefore the injunction is
yasya prasādād bhagavat–prasādo
(Śrī Śrī Gurvaṣṭaka)
We should be very serious to abide by the orders of the Spiritual Master then you are serious. If you think the spiritual master is a man like me, why should I follow the instructions so strictly, then you are not serious. And what is the use of your... This is seriousness and we are singing daily yasya prasādād bhagavat prasādo, what is the meaning of this?
Devotee: By the mercy of the Spiritual master one receives the mercy of Kṛṣṇa.
Prabhupāda: So if you don't follow the spiritual master then how can you get His mercy? Mercy is always there but if you don't take it? Then what spiritual master or the father will do? You have to take it. That is civilization, therefore Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura says that the order of my spiritual master is my life. I do not know whether I get liberation or not that is not my business. My business is to carry out the order of my spiritual master, Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura. If one is serious on this point then he is liberated.
First of all we have to approach a spiritual master, who is actually spiritual master and then if he carries the order of the spiritual master then everything... The same example first of all you find out a right physician and you put yourself under his treatment, follow his instruction and the disease is cured. But if you go to your false physician or if you are false, then you become implicated.
(Srila Prabhupada Conversation, Honolulu, June 14, 1975)
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