What we internally conceive as necessary, we externally pursue. Thus, an alcoholic internally thinks of alcohol as essential and externally chases it.
What are our actual necessities?
Beyond basic bodily necessities for survival, we also need something for satisfaction. After all, happiness, or at least the hope of happiness, is what brings purpose to survival.
And what we think will make us happy is determined by our conceptions – conceptions that frequently don’t align with reality. Gita wisdom helps re-align them. The Bhagavad-gita (15.07) indicates that we are all souls, eternal parts of Krishna, the reservoir of all happiness. We are meant to delight eternally in love with him, but presently our mind’s conceptions and senses’ perceptions misdirect us towards worldly things – a pursuit that simply brings struggle and suffering. Why? Because material things being temporary never live up to their promise of pleasure.
If guided by Gita wisdom we redirect our heart towards Krishna, we can gradually relish the happiness that has been eluding us for so long. Unfortunately, even when we strive for such redirection by practicing bhakti-yoga, the same mental conceptions and sensual perceptions come in the way. Though Krishna is our greatest necessity, indeed our only eternal necessity, the mind makes us think that we don’t need him: that we can do quite well without remembering him or seeking his mercy. Consequently, we let our inner connection with him go lax, thereby unwittingly depriving ourselves of higher devotional happiness and making ourselves vulnerable to the allure of worldly things. Thus, the more we think that Krishna is unnecessary, the more worldly things seem necessary.
By empowering our intelligence with Gita wisdom and thus persevering in bhakti, we can break free from the mind’s misconceptions, and gradually realize Krishna to be our life’s be-all and end-all.
Explanation of article:
The flow of divine unfolding of Lord Sri Krishna is like an ever expanding film. Grabbing onto one frame of that film is freezing and conceptualizing its dynamic reality which means missing out on the exiting adventure of His divine unfolding. In the grip of material sense perception our intellect can only fuse a few fragments together but is never able to reconstruct His entire film. The only option for true divine perception is to wholeheartedly surrender to Lord Sri Krishna. Then, by His unlimited grace, He will break the dam of our conceptual fortress and we instantly find ourselves overwhelmingly present in His eternal flow of divine unfolding.
Thank you very much for this answer. This answer implies that we can very easily determine if we are making progress in Krishna Consciousness. If we feel about Krishna more and more, certainly we would avoid getting into more and more worldly things.