SB 1.2 - Seeing the Lord destroys all doubts

The knot in the heart is pierced, and all misgivings are cut to pieces. The chain of fruitive actions is terminated when one sees the self as master, and seeing the Lord in the mind. The destruction of ignorance is not the main result sought in bhakti. All doubts, such as thinking that the attainment is impossible, are destroyed. A devotee has already progressed to seeing Kṛṣṇa directly, and thus the state described now is beyond liberation. Attaining scientific knowledge of the Lord means seeing one’s own self simultaneously. The materialist does not believe in the spirit soul, and empiric philosophers believe in the impersonal feature of the whole spirit without individuality of the living beings. But the transcendentalists affirm that the soul is different from the Supersoul quantitatively. All these different speculations are cleared off as soon as Kṛṣṇa is realized in truth by bhakti-yoga. The relative truths hidden within the dense darkness of ignorance become clearly manifested by the mercy of Kṛṣṇa, who is residing in everyone’s heart.

Seeing the Lord destroys all doubts. By hearing about the Lord, all theories opposing devotional service are cut to pieces, and by our meditating on the Lord, all meditations opposing bhakti are devastated. When the Lord personally appears, the devotee’s disqualifications are shredded. By the Lord’s desire, even the slightest trace of these disqualifications no longer remains.

In Bhagavad-gītā the Lord says that He personally eradicates the ignorance of His devotee by giving him knowledge within the heart. The devotee thus comes to know everything about the absolute and the relative truths. The truth cannot be known by those who speculate by their own limited power. Perfect knowledge is called parampara, or deductive knowledge coming down from the authority to the submissive listener. The Lord reserves the right not to be exposed to a challenging person. The devotees being submissive are helped by the Supersoul within to understand transcendental knowledge. The knot called ahaṅkāra falsely obliges a living being to become identified with matter. As soon as this knot is loosened all doubts are cleared off and one sees the self and engages in the service of the Lord. As soon as he engages in the service of the Lord, he becomes free from the chain of karma, and his actions no longer create any reaction.

Having a sinless heart is not the sole cause of seeing Kṛṣṇa directly. Our pure heart must be filled with devotional longing to see the Lord. Seeing the Lord increases our eagerness to serve Him. That eagerness powerfully overrules our feeling of being disqualified for this service. The stage in which one sees the Supreme Lord is called liberation. Although the soul may still reside in the material world, he nevertheless sees his original spiritual form directly. This means that the soul’s misidentification with the external material body (anyathā-rūpam) has been destroyed. The words dṛṣṭa evātmanīśvare in this verse 21 refers to the 13th stage of bhakti: seeing the Lord directly.