Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita Chapter 18.

Everything attractive comes from Krishna, but everything attractive doesn’t take us to Krishna by Chaitanya Charan Das Based on BhagavadGita Chapter 18.

The Bhagavad-gita repeatedly urges us to not become attracted by sense objects. Yet the same Gita (10.41) asserts that the attractiveness of everything attractive comes from a spark of Krishna’s splendor. When the attractiveness of sense objects also comes from Krishna, why shouldn’t we be attracted to them?

Because becoming attracted to them doesn’t take us to Krishna. We get so infatuated by sense objects that our consciousness gets locked in them alone, and doesn’t go towards their source. What takes us towards Krishna is our remembrance of him and the resulting increase in our attraction for him. When we see beautiful sense objects, we hardly ever remember him; instead, we get overrun by the feeling that enjoying those objects will make us happy – a feeling that takes away most of our impetus for remembering him.

When we see beautiful sense objects, we hardly ever remember Krishna; instead, we get overrun by the feeling that getting those objects will make us happy – a feeling that takes away most of our impetus for remembering him.

Pertinently, the same Gita that asserts Krishna’s pervasion of everything also categorizes everything into three modes: goodness, passion and ignorance. Gita wisdom recommends that while pursuing the long-term goal of awakening pure love for Krishna, we should strive to live in goodness because among the modes, goodness is the most hospitable for our spiritual growth. In goodness, we can have the intelligence, as the Gita (18.30) indicates, to know which worldly things are spiritually conducive and which aren’t – and to accordingly choose liberating, not entangling, activities. If our mind somehow gets infatuated with a spiritually undesirable sense object, then we can, by contemplating how the attractiveness of that object comes from Krishna, convince the mind that by renouncing that object and focusing on Krishna, we will be giving up the spark for the sun – we will be gainers, not losers.

By thus philosophically guarding and guiding our consciousness, we can march straight towards the all-attractive Lord of our heart.