Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita.

Spiritual happiness never goes away – it just pushes us on the way by Chaitanya Charan Das Based on Bhagavad Gita.

Seekers sometimes ask, “It is said that material happiness is temporary, whereas spiritual happiness is eternal. But even spiritual happiness seems temporary – sometimes we experience it and sometimes we don’t. When we face material temptations, it seems as if spiritual happiness has gone entirely away.”

Firstly, spiritual happiness is not temporary, though our present experience of spiritual happiness is temporary because our connection with the source of spiritual happiness – Krishna – is unsteady. The steadier that connection becomes, the longer our experience of spiritual happiness lasts. When the impurities that interrupt the connection are removed, we experience spiritual happiness uninterruptedly, in fact, eternally, for the source of spiritual happiness is eternal.

Secondly, spiritual happiness never goes away; even if we because of our past conditionings choose to pursue material pleasures, still the impressions of spiritual happiness never go away – they remain embedded deep in our consciousness and they make us look for something higher, something better, something deeper.

The Bhagavad-gita (06.44) declares that seekers feel helplessly attracted to transcendence due to the impressions from their previous lives. These impressions impel them to practice spiritual life and eventually attain spiritual perfection. While material impressions from past lives also attract and pull us in future lives, they don’t attract us to an eternal object, as do spiritual impressions. And further, they are connected with our outer shell – the body-mind mechanism – whereas spiritual impressions are connected with our soul, the essence of who we are. So whereas material impressions push us off the way to transcendence towards sense objects, spiritual impressions push us forward on the way.

By cherishing the spiritual impressions we already have and creating new impression by practicing devotional service and further by acting on our existing spiritual impressions, we can march towards supreme success on our spiritual journey.