04.09 – Are we giving ourselves permission to love Krishna?
When we are practicing devotional service externally, internally we may be checked by the doubt: “How can I love Krishna when I am not sure that he even exists?”
Actually, many people love characters like spiderman, batman, superman that they know for sure don’t exist. How? By suspending disbelief.
If they can suspend their disbelief for loving a character that is definitely false, can’t we suspend our disbelief for loving a person who is at least possibly real?
If we choose to, we have several additional reasons to boost us:
- Quality of lovers: Fictional heroes attract for a few years some fans, who are mostly not deep thinkers and who rarely ponder the reality or unreality of their hero. In contrast, Krishna has attracted for thousands of years millions of people whose ranks have included many of the world’s greatest thinkers who have explained systematically how Krishna is not just a reality, but is the supreme reality.
- Explanation of life: Fictional heroes don’t provide any philosophy or logic to explain real life; all that is on offer is a call to stop thinking for the sake of enjoying. In contrast, Krishna provides coherent philosophical and cogent logical answers to life’s fundamental questions. What is on offer is rigorous thinking about a higher kind of enjoyment that continues eternally.
- Entry into a higher world: Fictional heroes don’t offer any process by which their fans can enter into their world simply because there is no such world. In contrast, Krishna offers an extensively delineated process of purification by which we can enter into his delightful world, as indicated in the Bhagavad-gita (4.9). If we give that process an honest try, we can experience the resulting purification even in this world and also sense the reality of Krishna’s world.
Therefore, why not suspend our disbelief and give ourselves permission to love Krishna?