by deliberation and is able to convince others of these conclusions. These great personalities, who have taken refuge in God leaving aside all material considerations, must be understood as authentic spiritual masters, for they are realized souls who have seen the truth. By accepting the authentic spiritual master as his life, soul, and adorable divinity, the disciple must learn from him the process of pure devotional service. The Supreme Person, Krishna, the Soul of all souls, is inclined to give himself to his pure devotees. Therefore, the disciple must learn from the spiritual master to serve the Lord without duplicity and in such a faithful and favorable manner, that the Supreme Lord, satisfied, will offer himself to the faithful disciple.
A sincere disciple must learn to dissociate soul of all that is material and to cultivate positively union with one's spiritual master and other faithful devotees of the Lord. He is to be merciful to those in a lower position, cultivate friendship with those on an equal level, and obediently serve those in a higher spiritual position. Thus, he must learn to properly manage all living things. To serve the spiritual master, the disciple must learn cleanliness, purity, austerity, tolerance, silence, the study of Vedic knowledge [of the Vedas, the original holy scriptures], simplicity, celibacy, no -violence and equanimity, in the face of material dualities such as heat and cold, happiness and distress, success and failure.
One must practice meditation knowing and constantly seeing oneself as one eternal spiritual soul, and seeing the Lord as the absolute controller of everything. To increase one's meditation, one must live in an isolated place and give up a false attachment to one's household paraphernalia. Abandoning the decorations of the temporary material body, one must dress with scraps of cloth found in rejected places, or with the bark of trees. In this way, one must learn to be content in all material situations.
One must have the firm conviction to succeed in life by following the holy scriptures which describe the glories of the Supreme Person. At the same time, we must avoid blaspheming other scriptures and religions. One must rigidly control one's mind, speech and bodily activities, always speak the truth and put one's mind and senses under full control.
It is necessary to hear, glorify and meditate on the wonderful transcendent activities of the Lord. Specifically, one has to be absorbed in the appearance, activities, qualities and sacred names of the Supreme Person. Thus inspired, one should perform all of his daily activities as an offering to the Lord. One must perform sacrifice, charity and penance exclusively for the satisfaction of the Lord. Likewise, one should only sing hymns which glorify the Supreme Person. All of his religious activities are to be performed as an offering to the Lord. Whatever one finds pleasing should be offered immediately to the Supreme Lord, and even his wife, his children, his house and his air of life, should be offered to Krishna, God, the Supreme Person.