“But If the Disciple is In Ignorance …”

Prabhupada is speaking on the qualifications of a spiritual master and a disciple:

Suppose you accept the wrong person as a spiritual master and he guides you wrongly.  Then your whole life is spoiled.  So one has to accept a spiritual master whose guidance will make one’s life perfect.  That is the relationship between spiritual master and disciple.  It is not a formality.  It is a great responsibility, both for the disciple and the spiritual master.  … Yes? 

Student:  But if the disciple is in ignorance before …

Prabhupada:  Yes.  (Prabhupada acknowledges a serious question.  It is for answering questions like this – from “disciples in ignorance” – that he has left retirement in India and come to America.)

Student:  … how does he know which master to choose? – Because he doesn’t have the knowledge to make a wise decision. 

Prabhupada:  Yes.  So, the first thing is that one should be searching after a spiritual master, just as you search after some school, you must at least have some preliminary knowledge of what a school is.  You can’t search for a school and go to a cloth shop.  If you are so ignorant that you do not know what is a school and what is a cloth shop, then it is very difficult for you.  You must know, at least, what a school is.  So that knowledge is like this:

tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum evābhigacchet
samit-pāṇiḥ śrotriyaṁ brahma-niṣṭham

According to this verse, the spiritual master is required for a person who is inquisitive about transcendental knowledge.  There is another verse in the Srimad-Bhagavatam:  “One should search after a spiritual master, and if one is inquisitive about transcendental subject matters.”  Unless one is at least conversant with preliminary knowledge of transcendental matters, how can he inquire from the spiritual master?

His questioner seems satisfied.  The lecture is not a prepared speech on a specific subject, though grave and thorough in scholarship, it ranges over several philosophical points.  Yet he never pauses, groping for words.  He knows exactly what he wants to say, and it is only a question of how much his audience can take.