SB 1.1 - Relishing the fruit of Bhāgavatam

The Bhāgavatam offers only the ripe fruit of the tree of Vedic literature. The ripened fruit of a tree is the last stage in the development of the tree and requires many years of effort to obtain. But the tasty, ripened fruit of the tree of the Vedas is directly available in this age in the form of Bhāgavatam. Jīva Gosvāmī asks the learned souls, expert in the mellows of love for the Supreme Lord, to relish in their hearts the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is the sweet fruit of the desire tree of the Vedas, a tree that has come to this earth from Vaikuṇṭha.

This fruit should be drunk, for it is the essence of taste, devoid of skin, seed and other objectionable parts. One should drink it until one develops the eight symptoms of sāttvika-bhāva up to the final one, pralaya or fainting. Though one will not be able to drink the nectar when one has fainted, when the fainting wears off, one awakens to consciousness, and begins drinking until one faints again. One cannot give up drinking and thus the word muhur (continuously) is used. Or though one has drunk it, by again drinking it, one develops more relish for it. This refers only to the devotees, for they develop rati, which becomes the sthāyi-bhāva.