Suppose an abductor abducts a child and demands a huge ransom from the parents. Even after receiving the ransom, however, they don’t release the child, but demand more ransom, again and again, ad infinitum. Such an abductor would be vicious indeed.

Scarily, we all are potential victims of such an abductor. That abductor is worldly attachment, which abducts our consciousness (Bhagavad-gita 02.44). If not guarded against, attachment can degenerate to addiction. Among our many attachments, sensual attachments centered on lust are especially prone to become addictive. If we indulge in them nonchalantly, they impel us to indulgences that become increasingly irresistible, till we end up addicted. Because of their ruthless relentlessness, the Gita calls such attachments our “eternal enemies” (03.39). 

When we become attached to something, our consciousness gets dragged toward that thing. When we are thus tormented by the desire to indulge in it, we have to put more and more of our consciousness into how we can indulge so as to get more pleasure or at least more relief. While pursuing the indulgence, we also need to maintain the façade of normalcy in the other areas of our life. Thus, addiction consumes our consciousness even when we are not indulging – we are abducted, even if we seem free. 

How can we guard against such addiction? We need to begin with whatever consciousness we have free from attachment, whenever we have it free. And we can offer that consciousness to the all-pure, all-powerful, all-pleasurable supreme reality, Krishna. The resulting  connection with the divine will gradually satisfy and purify us, eventually empowering us to break free from addiction or stay free from it. But for us to seek that divine connection, we need to first unsentimentally understand that the attachments which seem like harmless titillations can become ruthless addictions, thereby remembering the necessity to counter them gravely and promptly.

 

Think it over:

  • How is addiction a deadly abductor?
  • Why is addiction a peculiar abductor?
  • How can we protect ourselves from addiction?

 

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03.39 Thus the wise living entity’s pure consciousness becomes covered by his eternal enemy in the form of lust, which is never satisfied and which burns like fire.

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