Lecture at St. Pascal's Franciscan Seminary Melbourne - A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

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Father Greene: ...there is more to life than what we see and touch and hear, that there is a need for salvation, redemption, in one form or another. And that both these ideas, that we do not live on bread alone and that we need salvation, lead us to agree that there is something beyond this life which we can call at least in general, to use a technical word, the Transcendence. I think within this context we can talk and discuss and agree at least to some extent. I would now like to ask one of the Australian members of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement to introduce their leader to us in a more personal manner.
Madhudviṣa: [aside] Umāpati. Umāpati. Umāpati.
Umāpati: We would like to introduce His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, who is the founder of the Hare Kṛṣṇa movement and who has mercifully come and delivered us with the blazing torchlight of transcendental knowledge to deliver us from this disease of material existence. I think he is going to lecture from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. Thank you very much. [applause]
Father Greene and all other Fathers and Ladies and Gentlemen, I thank you very much for your kindly participating in this movement. So I will try to explain some of the verses from Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is considered to be the essence of Vedic literature. Vedic literature means the four Vedas = Sāma, Yajur, Ṛg, Atharva, then Upaniṣad, 108 Upaniṣads, then eighteen Purāṇas, Rāmāyaṇa, Mahābhārata. It is an immense treasure house of literature. So this Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam is one of the eighteen Purāṇas, and in this Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam there are eighteen thousand verses. So I am just trying to explain one or two verses.
Father Greene hinted the common platform of religion. Common platform is not very difficult to understand, because religion means to know God and abide by the orders of God. That is religion. In the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam it is stated that dharmaṁ tu sākṣāt bhagavat-praṇītam. The... Religious system cannot be manufactured by man. No. Man-made religion is not religion. Religion means God-made religion. That is religion. Dharmaṁ tu sākṣāt. Just like law. Law means the orders enunciated by the government. You cannot manufacture law at home. That is not law. Similarly, religion means the orders given by God. This is simple definition of religion.
So we must know God, and we must know what is His order, and we should abide by the orders. Then that is religion. So you take any type of religion, these three things are there = that we must try to know God, and what does He desires, and to fulfill it. Therefore in the Bhāgavatam it is said,
sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo
yato bhaktir adhokṣaje
ahaituky apratihatā
yayātmā suprasīdati
[SB 1.2.6]
It is said here that that is first-class religious system. It does not say Hinduism, Muslimism or Christianism. General definition = "That is first-class religion..." Sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo. Why it is said, para? Para means the supreme. Not ordinary thing; supreme. "The supreme religious system is that which teaches the follower how to love God." That is supreme. It does not matter you learn to love God through Christianism or Hinduism or Muslimism, any "ism," but the result should be how much you have advanced in the art of loving God. Sa vai puṁsāṁ paro dharmo yato bhaktir adhokṣaje [SB 1.2.6]. Bhakti, this word, Sanskrit word, is used, "devotion," bhakti. To render service to God, that is bhakti. We are rendering service to so many things. That is not bhakti. Bhakti means to render service to God. And adhokṣaje.
There are many terminology of understanding God, but here in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, God is mentioned as adhokṣaja. Adhokṣaja means beyond your sense perception. The another word is used, avāṅ mānasa-gocaraḥ, "beyond the expression of your mind, words." Avāṅ mānasa-gocaraḥ. And another meaning, literal meaning, adha = adha means subdued. Adhakṛta akṣaja-jñānam. Akṣa. Akṣa means eyes, or... In Sanskrit there are letters beginning from a, ā, i and, at last, kṣa. So beginning from a to kṣa, a-kṣa, means we understand by combination of words. So you can combine so many words, but still, it is beyond that expression. That is called adhokṣaja. So God is realized... Not by vocabulary we can understand what is the nature of God, or, in one word, that God is beyond our this material sense perception.

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Hare Krishna