Within ten years Srila Swami Maharaj Prabhupad spread Krishna consciousness all over the world. Now some cover has come and it has covered many of the practitioners’ hearts. That cover is ego and attachment. Ego is the greatest cover and we cannot easily remove that cover, but it is necessary to remove it, and then we will see that Krishna is very near to me.
ahaṅkāra-nivṛttānāṁ keśavo nahi dūragaḥ
ahaṅkāra-yutānāṁ hi madhye parvata-rāśayaḥ
(Brahma-vaivarta-purāṇa: 3.9.9)
[“The Supreme Lord Keśava remains in the company of persons who are free from a mundane conception of life; but there appears to be a great mountain range between the self-asserting egotists and the Lord.”]
That is the main thing, and our practising life is following the nine kinds of bhakti, that is sravanam [hearing], kirtanam [chanting], visnoh smaranam [remembering], pada-sevanam [serving the Lord’s feet], archanam [worshipping], vandanam [praying], dasyam [servitude], sakhyam [friendship], atma-nivedanam [self-surrender].
Srila Gurudev speaking in Govardhan, March 1991