Srila Prabhupada and other Vaishnava acaryas before him put great emphasis on the study of the Srimad Bhagavatam as an essential part of our spiritual practice. Even if one doesn’t have time to study any other book, it’s said that one can attain perfection just by studying Srimad Bhagavatam. Srila Vyasadeva himself argues (on SB 1.1.2): śrīmad-bhāgavate mahā-muni-kṛte kiṁ vā parair īśvaraḥ, This beautiful Bhāgavatam is sufficient in itself for God realization. What is the need of any other scripture? The words “kiṁ vā parair” mean, literally, “What is the need for any other scripture?” This comes directly from the person who compiled the Vedas and understood their meaning better than anyone else.
In his Tattva-Sandarbha, Srila Jiva Goswami makes a long analysis of the process by which we can obtain perfect knowledge. Nowadays of course it’s easy since we have the books from Srila Prabhupada, but it used to be harder.
The soul is originally not part of the material world. There is another reality, which is spiritual and transcendental, and the soul is originally part of this eternal spiritual reality. The original identity of the soul is an eternal servant of Krsna.
Somehow, due to free will, this pure soul at some point leaves this original position and comes to the material world, where he tries to enjoy the material nature and become an imitation ruler. The original ruler of everything is Krsna, but in this material world, we have some space to become smaller rulers, taking charge of a small family, a business, or even a city or country.
However, while in this material world or original, perfect spiritual nature is covered, we assume a temporary, illusory material identity with is formed by the false ego, the intelligence, the mind, and finally the senses and the gross body. At this point, we become affected by four material defects.
The first defect is to commit mistakes. None of us can say that we never make mistakes, to err is human. This applies not just to us, but all conditioned souls. Even great demigods such as Indra and Brahma commit mistakes.
The second defect is to be illusioned. Illusion means to accept something that is not. This is called māyā. We accept the body as our self and work so hard to maintain it. We become conditioned by the idea of belonging to a certain country or a certain group, being part of a certain family, and so on. This all happens under the influence of illusion since all these identifications are temporary and connected with the body.
The third defect is that we have the propensity to cheat others to get what we want. Many false gurus come from India to the West to teach some adulterated philosophy. They attract the public and then use people to fulfill their interests. Politicians and others also do this all the time, and this can happen on a smaller scale even inside families. Cheating and manipulation are unfortunately very common in this world. Therefore, even if a person is sincere in finding the truth, there is no guarantee that he will find it, due to all these cheaters on the way.
Finally, there is the fourth defect, the fact that our senses are imperfect. This includes also our material intelligence. In this way, not only the tools we use to get knowledge (our eyes, ears, and so on) are imperfect, but the tools we use to process this information (our intelligence) are also flawed. In this way, get get some limited information using our eyes and ears and use our limited intelligence to process it, and in this way try to understand reality. However, our understanding of reality will be always incomplete and incorrect.
This affects not only regular people but also philosophers, scientists, and even great demigods such as Indra and Brahma. When Krsna appeared in Vrindavana, 5000 years ago Brahma mistook Him for a regular boy and decided to test Him by stealing his friends and calves. One year later, when he returned to see the result of his prank, he saw that Krsna had just expanded himself into many forms, assuming the forms of all his friends and calves, and was in this way still paying in the same way as before. To the surprise of Brahma, each one of these expansions was shown to be a Vishnu expansion, complete with His own universe, including His own Brahma, Shiva, and other demigods and living entities. Brahma thought he was the only Brahma and that there was only one Lord Vishnu, but he saw that not only there were many forms of Vishnu, but also multiple universes and multiple Lord Brahmas and that they were all subordinate to Krsna!
Considering that we have all these defects, what is the hope for us to get perfect knowledge?
Since all conditioned souls living inside this material universe have these four defects, it’s not possible for anyone to produce perfect knowledge. Perfect knowledge needs to be imported from outside. Only Krsna Himself, or his pure devotees coming from the spiritual world can transmit this pure, perfect knowledge.
This brings us to the Vedas. The Vedas are considered perfect knowledge, originally transmitted directly from Krsna to Lord Brahma. In the Bhagavad-Gita (15.15), Krsna says that “By all the Vedas, I am to be known. Indeed, I am the compiler of Vedānta, and I am the knower of the Vedas.
This is not an exaggeration. Krsna is the one who originally transmitted the Vedic knowledge, and he also came as Vyasadeva to compile the Vedic knowledge when it was almost lost at the end of the past Dwapara-Yuga. Krsna also spoke the Bhagavad-Gita to Arjuna, starting a new line of disciplic succession for this important book, since the previous one had beem lost.
However, even when we study the Vedas, it’s not easy to find clear answers. The Rig, Yajur, and Sama Vedas deal mainly with auspicious rituals and fruitive activities that one can use to attain material prosperity and promotion to higher planets after death. l while a great part of the Atharva deals with material sciences, like medicine and psychology. Only a small portion of the verses speak directly about self-realization.
In fact, there are many philosophies based on the Vedas that are atheistic.
In His purport to SB 1.1.7, Srila Prabhupada explains that:
“Besides Vyāsadeva, there are other sages who are the authors of six different philosophical systems, namely Gautama, Kaṇāda, Kapila, Patañjali, Jaimini and Aṣṭāvakra. Theism is explained completely in the Vedānta-sūtra, whereas in other systems of philosophical speculations, practically no mention is given to the ultimate cause of all causes. One can sit on the vyāsāsana only after being conversant in all systems of philosophy so that one can present fully the theistic views of the Bhāgavatam in defiance of all other systems.”
The six philosophical systems that Srila Prabhupada mentions here are:
1- The Nyāya system, by Gautama Ṛṣi,
2- The Vaisesika system, by Kaṇāda Ṛṣi,
3- The philosophy of Sāṅkhya, by the atheistic Kapila,
4- The system of mystic yoga, by Patañjali,
5- The philosophy of Karma-mīmāṁsā, by Jaimini,
6- The philosophy of impersonalism, propounded by Aṣṭāvakra and later Sankaracarya.
Apart from these six, there is the philosophy of Brahma-mīmāṁsā, or Vedānta, propounded by Srila Vyasadeva, which brings the ultimate conclusion of the absolute truth. Sometimes the Vedanta philosophy is counted among the six systems, this depends on whether you count it together with the impersonalism of Aṣṭāvakra, or separately.
In this way, Vyasadeva appears at the end of Dwapara-yuga to restore the correct understanding of the Vedas, which at the time had been covered by these different atheistic philosophies.
From this, we can see that even when one has access to the knowledge of the Vedas, it’s not so easy to find the truth, since the knowledge from the Vedas can be easily misinterpreted.
That’s one of the reasons Vyasadeva compiled the Upanisads and later the Vedanta Sutra, making this spiritual knowledge more evident. However, the Puranas offer spiritual knowledge in a format that is easier to understand and thus they are recommended for the people of our age. In this way, the Puranas are the most direct path back to Godhead.
In his Tattva Sandarbha (13.1), Srila Jiva Goswami explains that the Puranas were originally spoken as a single scripture that contains one billion verses. This original Purana is still recited and studied on the celestial planets, where the demigods have access to many other Vedic texts that are not known on our planet. Understanding that it would be impossible for the people of day and age to study such an extensive text, Srila Vyasadeva compiled the 18 Puranas with selected passages from this original book.
Of the 18 Puranas, six of them contain instructions for people in the mode of ignorance, six for people in the mode of passion, and six for people in the mode of goodness. This explains why some of the Puranas prescribe fruitive activities or the worship of demigods such as Shiva and Surya. They just offer processes of worship that are appropriate according to the public they are destined to. Because they give instructions to different types of people, some passages may look contradictory (in one place it may be said to not worship demigods, and in another to worship Shiva or Surya, for example), but when one one understands the purpose of these different Puranas, everything becomes clear.
In this way, if we are interested in learning about Krsna, even the 400,000 verses of the Puranas are not necessary. Just by studying the 18,000 verses of the Srimad Bhagavatam, we have access to the cream of the cream, focussing only on the most relevant passages. The conclusion of Srila Jiva Goswami is thus that we can get everything by just studying the Srimad Bhagavatam.