Spiritual Fulfilment

Unlike material pursuits, which must end in defeat, spiritual life is an eternal adventure. There is, in the awakening of full consciousness, a satisfaction unparalelled by any experience of the mundane world, as the words of all great saints and mystics attest. And, in the development of loving relationships with God, there is an eternal competition to give pleasure rather than to take-a competition between the devotee and Krishna, Who happily responds. And there is a security in the faith in eternal life which no concept of materialistic philosophy can establish.

Faith is, of course. the whipping boy of modern science. But no scientist has ever produced a theory or concept to remotely approach it in terms of human happiness. On the contrary, modern cynics are little more than dead stones compared to those who actually believe in God, in goodness, and in the immortality of the soul. The hopeless condition of modern mentality is a result of this loss of faith, and if this is progress, one must sincerely wonder where it's pointing. Not that faith is ever absent. It has simply, now, been fixed in the material concept of life-in science, evolution, and so forth.

At this point, we can see that the goals of the materialist and of the spiritualist are, to a degree, the same: eternal life (for self or race, as you like), full knowledge, and bliss. And we can further see that the latter two, happiness and knowledge, are qualities of awareness, or consciousness . It takes no more than the proper adjustment in one's consciousness to have happiness and knowledge-and eternal life too, though this will be less apparent. However, if one involves one's consciousness simply in understanding the mechanics of the material universe, the driving of awareness away from self and into the complexities of an unpredictable machine can only result in ignorance and misery-and death, too, though this again will be less apparent.