There is nothing more important than knowing how to act properly. Without the guidance of enlightened spiritual authorities we are stuck with following the dictates of our senses and the dictates of others who are also catering to the dictates of their senses. When the blind lead the blind, where do they end up? In the ditch. This is why the following Vedic injunction has been given great emphasis:
mahajano yena gatah sa panthah
"One must follow the pathway of the great enlightened spiritual masters."
If you are lost in the wilderness, how will you get out? If you meet a person who knows the way out and you follow him back to civilization, you are easily saved from eventual death in the wilderness. Otherwise you may wander for days and weeks to no avail and eventually die a miserable lonely death. The same thing holds true for someone who is lost in the wilderness known as the cycle of birth and death. This is why we are meant to follow in the footsteps of great authorities such as Brahma, Shiva, Narada, Manu, the Kumaras, Kapila, Prahlada, Bhisma, Sukadeva Gosvami, Yamaraja, Janaka, and Bali Maharaja.
If we simply speculate trying to come up with our own means of spiritual enlightenment, we will remain in illusion. This is a fact because only the enlightened can enlighten the illusioned. The illusioned cannot enlighten anyone because he does not possess the necessary enlightenment to do so. Krishna explains that those who take the path of mental speculation only achieve spiritual perfection after many births and deaths. And what is that perfection they achieve? They surrender to Krishna. The same holds true for all other paths of spiritual perfection. Each one of the paths reaches its perfectional stage when the follower of that path surrenders to Krishna. So if surrender to Krishna is the perfection of all self-realization paths why not short cut the self-realization process to attain full enlightenment in one lifetime by surrendering to Krishna right now? This is called real intelligence.
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