Śrīla Rūpa Gosvāmī Prabhupāda warns us not to go near the banks of the Yamunā, if we at all want to remain enamoured of our family attachments and of our friends and of our different worldly attachments. Because by that bank of the Yamunā Lord Kṛṣṇa is there playing His flute so nicely. His heavenly blue tinged body with it's lotus garland. So Rūpa Gosvāmī Prabhupāda is warning us, "Don't go near the Yamunā because if you do, Kṛṣṇa will steal your heart."
So this today we are having a threefold transcendental event. Initiations to the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra, the mahā-mantra, and second initiations of the brāhmins into the brahminical status of life and to the renounced order of life, sannyāsa. These are the three different stages that we progress through in the International Society for Kṛṣṇa Consciousness. From brahmacārī and brahmacāriṇī and to gṛhastha life and then to the renounced order of life, sannyāsa.
So it's a question of renunciation. In the Hare Kṛṣṇa mantra initiation, it is simply required that one give up one's material miseries and engage oneself happily and joyfully in the execution of duties and service to our spiritual master, chanting, dancing and in other ways being happy, happily situated in transcendental life. There are four requirements. Four principles of morality without these principles of morality no man can be religious. These four principles must be followed otherwise a man cannot call himself a religious person.
He must not engage in any illicit sex, or gratification, nothing. No sex relationships outside of marriage and he must avoid intoxicants, including coffee, tea or cigarettes. And he must not eat meat, fish or eggs. And he must not gamble. If a man can successfully execute these regulative principles then he can become a religious person. And it is very easy because the principle of Kṛṣṇa consciousness is positive renunciation.
This is a very important point to understand, simply by chanting Hare Kṛṣṇa one develops a higher taste. When he loses his propensity and attraction for these lower things. If someone says: "Oh why don't you eat meat." We can answer, "I don't care for it." Not that, "I am not allowed to." No, that is negative renunciation. "No I don't care for it because everything I am doing is in relationship with Kṛṣṇa. Those things, I care for those things only."
So these regulative principles must be practised and if they are practised nicely and we are chanting 16 rounds then in due course we come to the realisation, ahaṁ brahmāsmi—I am pure spirit soul. I am not this body and I am not these bodily designations that so many people have foisted upon me. My family and friends, my country, this that. We should think, "I am now, I am Kṛṣṇa's. I am Kṛṣṇa's. I'm not Russian, I am not Hindu, I'm simply Kṛṣṇa's."
This is beyond the impersonal conception, this is beyond knowing that I am simply pure spirit soul. This knowing how to act, everyone must act, this is made clear in the Bhagavad-gītā that no man can refrain from activity. But the activity that we do, how we act, this is the important point in human life. Regarding renunciation, Rūpa Gosvāmī Prabhupāda made it clear that to give up things in this material world that belong to God, to Kṛṣṇa, even though they are material, is not full renunciation.