Srila Prabhupada wrote in his book Renunciation Through Wisdom:
An extreme longing for Lord Krsna is the only means for attaining Him. Thus intense, unflinching devotional service is another symptom of a mahatma. These mahatmas execute all nine limbs of devotional service, beginning with hearing, chanting, and remembering the name, form, qualities, pastimes, and paraphernalia of Lord Krsna. Such devotional service is transcendental to any mundane consideration of time, place, or circumstance. Mahatmas are always eager to render loving devotional service to the Lord. They tirelessly dedicate their lives, energy, words, intelligence, body, society—everything—in the service of the Lord.
The great endeavor the mahatma undertakes to execute devotional service is more intense than the ordinary man's voluntary acceptance of excessive pains and troubles to maintain his family and home. The struggle for maintaining family and relatives is illusion, or mäyä. Hence it is truly distressing. By contrast, the difficulties one accepts in serving the Supreme Lord are transcendental, and therefore they are a source of sublime bliss. Moreover, a person who serves the Supreme Lord automatically serves his family. But the opposite is not true: serving the family is not equivalent to serving the Lord. All mahatmas agree on this point. Not only does the person who serves the Supreme Lord serve his relatives, but he also serves the entire world of moving and nonmoving living beings. Thus service to Lord Krsna is the prime cause of world peace and harmony.
The mahatmas are always ready to render such service to the Lord with great determination. In this regard His Divine Grace Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura once made this comment in a lecture:
The neophyte Vaisnava devotees' ringing the bell even once during worship of the Deity of the Supreme Lord is a million times more valuable, spiritually and otherwise, than the charitable fruitive workers building many hospitals, feeding thousands of the poor, or building homes, or even the empirical philosophers' Vedic studies, meditation, austerities, and penances.
The mahatmas have shown the perfect path of charity: devotional service to the Lord. If anyone ignores this path and instead builds hospitals, his effort to help humanity is a mere pretense. Humanity can never reap any permanent advantage from such activities. Indeed, the number of patients only increases along with the number of hospitals. And as for feeding the poor, this will never eradicate poverty, but encourage it. Frankly speaking, we are not against opening hospitals or feeding the poor, or any other such humanitarian service. But what we have learned from our beloved spiritual master is that when devotional service to the Lord is neglected, every other activity is illusory and futile. Without genuine devotional service, even opening hospitals and feeding the poor in the name of Lord Krsna is futile. Spiritual groups that do not strictly follow in Lord Caitanya's line cannot comprehend this because they do not wish to abide by the instructions of the mahätmäs. They do not follow Lord Caitanya's injunction to be "more humble than a blade of grass." If they were that humble, they would give up their pride in being the doer of good deeds, the wisest person, the most devoted, and so on.
Those who strive to emulate the mahätmäs never fall prey to passivity and regression. Their eagerness and determination to serve the Lord steadily increase. Such followers observe spiritual occasions like Janmastami and Ekadasi for the pleasure of the Lord, in the way that the previous acaryas and mahatmas have recommended. This is devotional service proper. Because the mahatmas are more humble than a blade of grass, they worship Lord Krsna and everything in relation to Him. Atheists, however, exhibit a different mentality altogether: they want to flaunt their abilities and charitable disposition. They may pretend to serve Lord Krsna, but their aim is "to sit on the Lord's head" once they attain perfection. In other words, they want to usurp His position. Therefore they do not really serve Lord Krsna, nor is He their real object of worship. The mahatmas never associate with these demoniac people. They are fixed in their resolve to serve the Lord, and thus they always remain connected to Him through devotional service.
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