Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura connects verses 16 to 21 from the second chapter of the first canto of Srimad Bhagavatam with 14 stages of spiritual development, showing how these few verses of the Srimad Bhagavatam teach us, in a nutshell, how to achieve ultimate perfection. Naturally, just understanding this description will not make us pure devotees, but it can help us to become aware of the path ahead of us.

According to his explanation, verses 16 and 17 describe the first five stages:

“O twice-born sages, by serving those devotees who are completely freed from all vice, great service is done. By such service, one gains affinity for hearing the messages of Vāsudeva.
Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead, who is the Paramātmā [Supersoul] in everyone’s heart and the benefactor of the truthful devotee, cleanses desire for material enjoyment from the heart of the devotee who has developed the urge to hear His messages, which are in themselves virtuous when properly heard and chanted.”

1- Satam krpa: the mercy of devotees. By the causeless mercy of devotees, we get the opportunity to engage in the second stage. Causeless means there is no cause, devotees are compassionate to all and are willing to bestow their mercy on anyone who crosses their path.

2- Mahat-seva: service to devotees. By serving devotees the process of cleansing the heart starts.

3- Sraddha: faith. By serving devotees and associating with them we acquire some preliminary faith in the process of bhakti, and this allows us to develop our practice.

In the first chapter of the Srimad Bhagavatam, the sages ask six questions to Suta Goswami. These questions are not only asked for the sage’s own sake. They are concerned about the situation of people who will be living in the age of Kali, and they want to get from Suta Gaswami some knowledge that can help them find their way out of all the darkness and illusion of this age.

These six questions are asked in chapter one, and the answers are given in chapters two and three. These chapters are thus intimately connected.

The first question is asked in verse 1.1.9: What is the ultimate good for people?

One point that is very well discussed in Prabhupada’s books (and Vaishnava literature in general) are three categories of devotees. We all know the three categories and are very quick to use them to bash each other.

The first-class devotee is the one who develops love for Krsna. Because in this stage one loses interest in material activities, one becomes peaceful and thus can fully concentrate on chanting and developing his personal relationship with Krsna. However, many devotees on this platform decide to preach and help others, and these are actually the best of all.

The second-class devotees are devotees who become free from material association and learn to properly behave towards the Lord, other devotees, the innocent, and the envious. On this platform, one becomes gradually knowledgeable in the scriptures, and as a result, he can help others to advance in Krsna Consciousness. By doing that one increases his own realization and progress further.

These two classes of devotees are more or less fine on their own. They don’t need much help to progress further in spiritual life. Rather, they are the ones who help others.

For most of us, however, the most relevant is the third category, because that’s where most of us are.

The third-class devotees are still attached to material association and struggling with material desires. That’s us. For us, apart from the basic process of hearing and chanting, deity worship in the temple according to the rules and regulations is strongly recommended. If a devotee can go regularly to the temple and be involved in the services there he or she can gradually advance.

That’s quite simple to understand, but often extremely difficult to implement in practice.

The problem is that most temples are situated in big cities. That’s wonderful from the point of view of attracting new people, but it creates serious hardships for devotees trying to keep themselves engaged in the temple since living in big cities is very expensive. We have thus many devotees who live close to the temple but can’t attend most of the programs because they are too busy working to maintain themselves, devotees who live very far, and thus also come regularly, as well as families where the husband works very hard and rarely come, and only the wife has some free time to be engaged in the temple (or vice-versa). There is of course also the option of being a brahmacary or brahmacarini and just living in the temple, but this is not easy for most.

A second option is far away communities, where devotees try to follow the idea of simple living high-thinking. There are still a few of them around. The difficulty is that not everyone nowadays is capable of adjusting to a simple life, and remote places often lack good internet connectivity, which severely limits what one can do online. This combination of factors is also not suitable for many.

In order to be viable, communities also need schools for the children, which is traditionally a point of great difficulty in our movement. Without a school, communities become basically inviable, since couples need to move elsewhere to provide an education to their children.

There are a few options of communities that although relatively well-connected in terms of internet connection and services are still relatively affordable to live in, like Mayapur, for example. If one has the skills to find a moderately well-paid online job, one can live comfortably there and still find time to be involved in spiritual activities. However, not everyone can adapt to moving into a different country (dealing with visas, and other difficulties), and not everyone is capable of finding a relatively decent online job. This results in many split families, where the wife lives with the children in the community, but the husband has to stay away most of the year working to provide for them. Children growing up without fathers are also hardly viable.

In this way, most devotees just struggle in life, without being able to find a stable situation where they can peacefully develop their devotional service.

So, what is the solution?

In the short term, there is no solution, we will have to struggle. The long-term solution would be to gradually build new communities, finding places on the outskirts of the cities where there is a reliable internet connection and other basic amenities, but where land is still cheap, and it’s possible to get land for building a temple and making plots for devotees interested in building their houses, and some land can be reserved to build apartments that can be later sold or rented, as well as schools and other facilities.

Such projects are not easy to start, build, or maintain, but without something like that, we will have to continue having to choose the less bad of several problematic solutions.

For more austere devotees, simple-living, high-thinking projects centered in agriculture and far away from the cities are still best, of course, but these are also not very easy to implement.

Everything that is spoken in the Srimad Bhagavatam was spoken four to five thousand years ago in the forest of Naimisharanya, in a conversation between Suta Goswami and a group of great sages led by Saunaka Rishi. This happened already after the beginning of Kali-Yuga. These sages executed a great sacrifice for 1,000 years to try to counteract the negative influences of this age. They chose the forest of Naimisharanya for that because it’s mentioned in the scriptures that by performing sacrifices in this forest the strength of demoniac people is reduced.

That’s the symptom of saintly people, they are always concerned about the well-being of others. Srila Prabhupada comments about that in his purport to 1.1.4:

“The great sages are always anxious to do good to the people in general, and as such the sages headed by Śaunaka and others assembled at this holy place of Naimiṣāraṇya with a program of performing a great and continuous chain of sacrificial ceremonies. Forgetful men do not know the right path for peace and prosperity. However, the sages know it well, and therefore for the good of all men they are always anxious to perform acts which may bring about peace in the world. They are sincere friends to all living entities, and at the risk of great personal inconvenience they are always engaged in the service of the Lord for the good of all people.”

However, the sages were not only concerned about executing sacrifices. They were also concerned about their own spiritual development, and therefore they asked Suta Goswami to speak to them about the transcendental message of the Srimad Bhagavatam, so they could also develop pure love for Krsna.

After writing the Upanisads and the Vedanta Sutra, Srila Vyasadeva was instructed by his guru, Narada Muni, to compile another book that would directly speak about the glories of devotional service and the pastimes of Krsna, making the real meaning of the Vedanta Sutra easily available.

By the time He received this instruction, Vyasadeva had already compiled the original Bhagavata Purana, as part of the 18 original Puranas, but having received this instruction he had the inspiration to rewrite the book as the Srimad Bhagavatam we have access to today. In this process, he received the help of two other great sages: His son, Sukadeva Goswami, and the son of Romaharshana, Suta Goswami, who added their realizations to the book, making it even sweeter than originally. The Srimad Bhagavatam was originally taught by Srila Vyasadeva to Sukadeva Goswami, who added His own realization while describing it to Maharaja Pariksit. This narration was later expanded by Srila Suta Goswami, resulting in the final text. This, in turn, was commented on by different Vaishnava acaryas, culminating with Srila Prabhupada, who compiled all this knowledge accumulated over thousands of years in his purports, adding his own realization in the process. This Srimad Bhagavatam we have access to is thus the fruit of the combined effort of all these powerful personalities.

The Srimad Bhagavatam is the authorized commentary on the Vedanta Sutra and is thus the ultimate conclusion of the Vedas. The philosophy of the Srimad Bhagavatam was then explained by Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, who made the ultimate conclusion of the text even more clear.

The Vedanta Sutra was compiled by Vyasadeva as the conclusion of the Vedas. Vyasadeva compiled the most important parts of the original Vedas in the form of the Upanisads, short books that bring the ultimate conclusions of the Vedas. The Vedanta Sutra is a book that offers the ultimate conclusions of the Upanisads and clears many common misconceptions. The Vedanta Sutra brings thus the ultimate philosophical conclusions of the Vedas in an extremely compact form, being composed of about 555 sutras.

The Vedanta Sutra starts with the Sutra “athāto brahma-jijñāsā”, Now it’s time to enquire about Brahman.

This is an invitation to properly use our human form of life to try to understand Krsna, the absolute truth, and thus become free of the cycle of birth and death.

It continues with the Sutra “janmādy asya yataḥ”, which starts describing the Absolute Truth by stating that: From Him, everything emanates.

How can we understand this Brahman or the Supreme Absolute truth? This is explained in the third Sutra: “śāstra-yonitvāt”. He can be known through the sastras.

The Sastras offer different arguments and many of them appear to be contradictory. Somewhere it’s said that Vishnu is God, somewhere else that Shiva or another demigod is Supreme. How can we understand all these apparent contradictions?

Srila Prabhupada explains that the Vedas are like a desire tree that contains all types of knowledge. Because most people are interested only in the four materialistic religious principles of dharma, artha, kama, and moksa (mundane religiosity, economic development, material sense gratification, and impersonal liberation) the Vedas explain a lot about how to achieve these things in the karma-kanda sections. For people who are spiritually inclined, there are the jnana-kanda sections, that deal with spiritual knowledge, such as the Upanisads and the Vedanta Sutra, but the Srimad Bhagavatam brings the highest knowledge, directly describing the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Srimad Bhagavatam is considered thus the essence or the ripened fruit of all Vedic literature.

This knowledge is so attractive that it can attract everyone, even people who are already liberated. In SB 1.7.10 there is a very famous verse that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu once explained in 64 different ways:

Lord Indra is a very exalted devotee, who receives a very important post in the universe. He is like Krsna’s prime minister in universal affairs. Similarly, Lord Brahma is the creator of this universe and the head of our sampradaya. Understanding their exalted position, how can we understand that Indra tried to inundate Vrindavan and kill all the Vrajavasis, and Brahma kidnaped the cowherd boys and calves, depriving Krsna of His associates? How can such exalted personalities commit such serious offenses?

The answer is that this happens due to Krsna’s internal potency. This is the same divine potency that made the four Kumaras quarrel with Jaya and Vijaya and made Arjuna bewildered before the beginning of the battle of Kuruksetra. Although the actions of Brahma and Indra may sound like serious offenses, they actually did an important service.

Every day Krsna goes with the cowherd boys to tender the cows and at night He has His pastimes with the gopis. When Krsna is with the cowherd boys, the gopis are pained by the separation of Him, and similarly, when it is night the cowherd boys are pained for not being able to stay with Krsna. Similarly, Mother Yashoda stays with Krsna only in the morning and evening and she strongly misses Him the rest of the time. However, because of the service of Indra, trying to inundate Vrindavana, Krsna had an opportunity to stay simultaneously with everyone for seven days and enjoy the sweetest moments in the company of all His associates.

Similarly, all the elderly gopis had maternal affection for Krsna. Although they loved their own children, their feelings for Krsna were actually much stronger. Not only the elderly gopis but also all the cows of Vrindavana desired to have Krsna as their son. Although Krsna reciprocates this desire by taking their milk and butter, as well as reciprocating in other ways, He doesn’t have the opportunity of directly living in their houses and accepting their service. However, due to the actions of Brahma, Krsna was able to expand Himself and simultaneously become the child of all the mothers of Vrindavana for a whole year. Thanks to this wonderful service, Krsna had the opportunity to increase the affection of His devotees for Him.