To love anything in this temporary world, we need to suspend our head and close our eyes to the misery that will inevitably result because of the frustration of that love. Sooner or later, time will rupture and shatter our sweet dreams. Even before that, the deluding sheen of worldly things will gradually decline and disappear, leaving us disappointed. Given this gloomy prognosis, worldly love can captivate us only by sidelining our intelligence.
Gita wisdom invites us to a love of a different kind – a love that asks us not to give up our intelligence, but to go beyond our intelligence. The Gita (18.63) invites us to deeply deliberate its message of love and then decide whether to tread its path of love. This bold call for intellectual investigation of its teachings reveals how its message of love differs dramatically from worldly love that flourishes by intellectually paralyzing us.
The trajectory of the Gita’s message goes as far as our intelligence goes, meaning that its wisdom answers the sharpest of our intelligence’s questions about how and why its love is enduring and fulfilling: as we are eternal souls and Krishna is the eternal all-attractive Supreme Person, our spiritual love for him can triumph over death and continue forever.
After giving us intellectual conviction, the Gita grants us experiential confirmation. In delineating the path of love, bhakti-yoga, the Gita’s trajectory supersedes the intellect, going into the realm of transcendence. Therein by bhakti-yoga we experientially realize and relish the supreme sweetness of devotion. Thus, the Gita goes to the heart not by suspending the head but by transcending it. As the Gita (07.19) indicates succinctly, when we ascend the highest summit of knowledge, we realize that Krishna is everything. Love for him fulfills our heart’s longing forever.
Bhagavad Gita Chapter 07 Text 19
“After many births and deaths, he who is actually in knowledge surrenders unto Me, knowing Me to be the cause of all causes and all that is. Such a great soul is very rare.”
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