[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on July 8th, 1997, in Holland, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 21]
Srila Gurudeva: That gopi-prema is our goal. Anyone can have greed for this, no harm. But the thing is that you should not think that, “We are gopi.” You’ll have to practice from the very beginning. We should begin from sraddha. But from where will sraddha come? It is very rare in this world. Sraddha is of two kinds: laukiki, worldly, and paramarthiki, spiritual. Spiritual sraddha will come from doing anything related to Krsna and his pure devotees. Any action related to bhakti or related to the associates of Krsna. Like you went to he the Ganga, you saw, you took bath. In the Yamuna, you drank water, you took water on your head. You went to Vrndavana only to see what is there, but the dust came and touched you. Then luckily you met any pure Vaisnava, but you could not realize that he was a Vaisnava. But yet as a beggar, you gave something to them. Then he took it and gave it to any devotee. Like you gave milk to any devotee and he offered it to Krsna or he gave it to any pure devotee.
Then you and the cow from which the milk came and he who has nourished these cows, all will have some share of sraddha from that. The cows, the person who was maintaining the cow, and he who gave the milk to that devotee will all benefit. Like, there was a pure devotee and he saw that there was a mango tree and some mangoes were very ripened and very sweet. He took some, one, two fruits, and he offered them to the priest and the priest offered them to the Deity. After that, it was distributed to devotees or anyone. So those who have planted the tree, those who have given water to the tree, the tree itself, those who took the fruits to the deity, those who offered the fruits to the deity, and those who took prasadam, all will get some sraddha from that. In this way. First comes sraddha. Then he can have the association of any Vaisnava from whom he will hear something and then real sraddha will come.
This sraddha is also of two kinds. Real sraddha, meaning spiritual sraddha, is of two kinds. One, if you’ll develop greed for this goal that I mentioned, “How can I serve this Supreme Personality of Godhead Krsna like my son, like my friend, like my husband, like Rukmini, Satyabhama, and like the gopis in Vrndavana, like Yasoda and Nanda Baba, like a son?” This greed may come. This is one kind of real sraddha. The other kind is performing bhakti only because of fearing and obeying the orders of the sastra. So knowing all these things, this kind of sraddha will come. By this sraddha, we will enter into vaidhi-bhakti. If this sraddha is there but we are not nourishing it, not giving water on that by engaging in sravana and kirtana, then both of these kinds of sraddha may dry up. So, we should always try to associate with very bonafide and superior Vaisnavas than ourselves. Always hearing, always chanting, always remembering, always doing all these things.