Suppose a child is asked to choose between a toy and a million-dollar-check. The child may grab the toy, not knowing that the check can get thousands of toys.

We are often like that child when we compare our material assets with our spiritual assets. Our material assets are wealth, gadgets, property, and so forth. Our spiritual asset is our realization of our spirituality: our identity as souls and our relationship with the supreme spiritual reality, Krishna. We often value the material more than the spiritual.  

Such misevaluation may continue even after we become nominally religious; we may still treasure material possessions more than spiritual realizations. What Krishna gives us may matter more to us than Krishna himself and our connection with Krishna. If we don’t get the material things we seek from him, we may discontinue the devotional practices that connect us with him. 

How can we avoid such misevaluation? By studying Gita wisdom, which explains that our material assets are important, but they can’t fill our life with meaning or contentment. And they will be lost at death or maybe even earlier. Only our spiritual realizations will stay with us forever (Bhagavad-gita 02.40). 

How can we grow spiritually? By nourishing our intelligence with Gita wisdom and diligently engaging in bhakti-yoga practice for remembering Krishna. Over time, and especially amidst adversities, we will experience that our remembrance of Krishna shelters and strengthens us even when our worldly treasures let us down. Thus, we will gradually come to the realization of the topmost spiritualists (06.22): nothing is more valuable than absorption in Krishna. 

Just as a child, on growing up, starts treasuring the check, we too start treasuring Krishna more as we grow up spiritually. Indeed, spiritual growth essentially means that our conception of our greatest treasure becomes increasingly aligned with our greatest treasure.

 

Think it over:

  • How does Gita wisdom protect us from misevaluating our assets?
  • How can we come to the realization of the topmost spiritualists?
  • What does spiritual growth essentially mean?

 

***

06.22  Upon gaining this he thinks there is no greater gain. Being situated in such a position, one is never shaken, even in the midst of greatest difficulty. 


To know more about this verse, please click on the image
Explanation of article:

Podcast:

Download by “right-click and save”