Srila Gurudeva: Once, when Prabhupada was in old age, he was in Radha-kunda during Vraja-mandala parikrama. He wanted to enter into the spiritual, transcendental world. This was one or two years before he left this world. He said that, “I have come to give transcendental things from Vraja. I have come to give that rasa-mayi-bhakti, raganuga-bhakti. But my whole life was destroyed cutting the jungles of mayavada, sahajiya, sakhi-beki, and all other things. Don’t think that this is our only duty. I am saying this for the senior Vaisnavas. They should listen.
“If you are only going to discuss all these things and not transcendental bhakti, what is bhakti, bhakti-rasa and all these things, what Caitanya Mahaprabhu came to give, anarpita-carim cirat karunayavatirnah kalau, then you will be a nirvisesa-vadi. Try to know all these things. You should note down all these things. We should not only spend our time cutting these nonsense arguments and discussing about vaidhi-bhakti.” He gave one sloka:
jnane prayasam udapasya namanta eva
jivanti san-mukharitam bhavadiya-vartam
sthane sthitaḥ sruti-gatam tanu-van-manobhir ye prayaso ’jita jito ’py asi tais tri-lokyam
-Srimad-Bhagavatam 10.14.3
[Those who, even while remaining situated in their established social positions, throw away the process of speculative knowledge and with their body, words and mind offer all respects to descriptions of Your personality and activities, dedicating their lives to these narrations that are vibrated by You personally and by Your pure devotees, certainly conquer Your Lordship, although You are otherwise unconquerable by anyone within the three worlds.]
You should even give up aisvarya-mayi-bhakti, the understanding that, “Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead.” You should try to forget this. “He has six opulences,” you should try to forget it. This is for juniors, for vaidhi-bhakti. Those who want to enter into Vraja-bhakti, rasa-mayi-bhakti, jnane prayasam, give up all this knowledge of opulence. Krsna-tattva, jiva-tattva, maya-tattva, they should forget all these things and they should forget that Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Then who is Krsna? He is only the son of Yasoda, the son of Nanda Baba. He is the friend of Sridama and Subala Sakha, and He is only the beloved of the gopis, this only.
If you will always think that Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, having so much opulence, then your bhakti will be so weak and feeble and you cannot enter into vraja-bhakti. Like Yasoda Maiya, twice she saw the visvarupa, the universal form in Krsna’s mouth. But she gave it no importance. She thought that any ghost had come in Krsna. Any maya had come, so she called all the brahmanas and with black cows, they mixed their cow dung and urine and gave Krsna bath with that. Srimati Yasoda chastised Krsna and bound His waist to the grinding mortar and Krsna was weeping.
No idea that Krsna is Bhagavan, Isvara, Paramatma, God, nothing. Only the son of Yasoda, the beloved of the gopis. The very ignorant child of Yasoda. This is the identification of Vraja Krsna.
[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on December 7th, 1998, Malaysia, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 25]