Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Maharaja Prabhupada
Letter to his London disciples, July, 1969:
"Therefore having a bona fide spiritual master and serving him and pleasing him and getting his mercy is essential. Otherwise there can be no advancement in Krishna consciousness. And unless the spiritual master is a pure devotee of Krishna then he has no potency to give you Krishna. He is simply a cheating rascal.
So in fact above all the rules and regulations and offenses I have mentioned the most important thing, the essential thing, which is required if you want to come to the stage of purely chanting the Hare Krishna mantra is you must have a bona fide spiritual master who is a pure devotee of Krishna. Without having a bona fide spiritual master you can chant Hare Krishna forever but you will not be able to advance because Krishna does not reveal Himself in this way. He only reveals Himself to those devotees who surrender to and serve and please His pure devotees."
Comments
NirMama; Yes! This is one that seperates the Dasyas from the Santa-rasas ! But it's simple; if you were the boss of a huge expanding voluntary organization, but with few perspective employees, anyone who stepped up to the plate and did the job would get your full attention and mercy , unless they really seriously screwed up. This is our current position. It is a great mercy and a serious responsibility.
Some critics have recently said that this is a spoken remembrance, not an actual letter, and tht some minor changes have been noted across e-sites. I would like to see some further hard evidence, one way or another, to make me suspect the source. I accept this spoken testimony, as well as well-known written letters, myself. howver, some lettters are tamperred with or were not presented in the light of which they were written originally.