man-mana-bhava mad-bhakto
mad-yaji mam namaskuru
mam evaisyasi satyam te
pratijane priyo ‘si me
-Srimad Bhagavad Gita 18.65
[Always think of Me, become My devotee, worship Me and offer your homage unto Me. Thus you will come to Me without fail. I promise you this because you are My very dear friend.]
Krsna is taking an oath. Man-mana-bhava, be like the gopis. This is the life and soul of bhakti, be like that. The gopis are the only example of this. No one else can be used as an example for man-mana-bhava.
A bhakta will be like that. But Arjuna told Krsna, “I cannot be like that.” So Krsna told him, “Mad-bhakto, you should be my devotee.” You should engage in sravanam, kirtanam, visnu smaranam, vaidhi-bhakti. Man-mana-bhava, this is ragatmika. But how will he be ragatmika? Only if he will follow raganuga-bhakti will he be ragatmika. Then when he will be matured he will first achieve svarupa-siddhi and then vastu-siddhi.
If anyone is not following that, then he should practice vaidhi-bhakti, sravanam, kirtanam, visnu-smaranam, pada sevanam. But Arjuna could not even do this. So what should he do? Mad-yaji. Yaji means, “You can do arcana in the kanistha-adhikara stage.” First is the highest, more than uttama adhikari. Then come to madhyama-adhikara and if you cannot do like this, then come to kanistha adhikara and worship and offer anything. Arjuna told Krsna, “I cannot even do this because you are telling me to fight. So what can I do?”
“Then you can do pranama.” If you are doing pranama from the core of your heart, then Krsna will take it and at once that person will quickly cross all these worldly things. He will not have to suffer any more birth and death and sorrows. If anyone is offering pranama like this, someone may even be doing lakhs and lakhs yajna sacrifices, but it is not equal to even one pranama like this. So we are making a temple here where anyone can do pranama to Krsna and then he will easily, knowingly or unknowingly be liberated from all these things, birth and death. So, you are doing a very good thing for all the local people. Anyhow, knowingly or unknowingly, they will come to Ananta Gaudiya Matha and they will do pranama to Ananta and then they will do pranama to Radha Krsna and Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on December 20th, 1998, Bali, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 24]