When our moral failings overcome us, we tend to feel discouraged: “Maybe I am too impure to ever become pure; Maybe Krishna is beyond my reach.”

Gita wisdom assures us that there is so need to be discouraged even if this may be true. In fact, it is true for all of us – not only those of us who are impure but also for those of us who are pure. After all, Krishna is infinite and we are finite.

Can the finite ever reach the infinite?

Never.

Never, that is, except by the grace of the infinite. And that grace is needed for the impure – and the pure. For we all are finite.

Thankfully Krishna is infinite and so is his grace. So he can reach down to us, no matter how far away we have fallen from him.

And while reaching down to us, Krishna doesn’t see our purity; he sees our receptivity.

When we are receptive to his grace, we let him help us. He wants to help us at all times, for he is our greatest well wisher and wants to grant us the supreme peace, as the Bhagavad-gita (05.29) assures us. But our apathy or worse still our antipathy prevents us from accepting his help. And he respects our free will too much to thrust his will on us. That’s why we may not feel his help when we turn away from him.

But he is always waiting for us to turn back towards him. If we can just cultivate receptivity, his grace will empower us on the journey to purity. By mistaking purity as the pre-requisite for our journey when the actual pre-requisite is receptivity, we unwittingly deprive ourselves from Krishna’s unfailing mercy.

Gita wisdom saves us from that blunder.

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 05 Text 29

“A person in full consciousness of Me, knowing Me to be the ultimate beneficiary of all sacrifices and austerities, the Supreme Lord of all planets and demigods, and the benefactor and well-wisher of all living entities, attains peace from the pangs of material miseries.”