06.44: How long will we run away from Krishna?

The Bhagavad-gita (6.44) indicates that those who have experienced Krishna, even if they subsequently get deviated from the path to him, are attracted back to him helplessly.

Those of us who are spiritual seekers have probably tasted the sweetness of Krishna in one or other of his various manifestations: his holy name, his beautiful deity or, if nothing else, his delicious prasad. Despite having relished this sublime sweetness, our mind being addicted to materialism keeps impelling us toward mundane pleasures. Thus, as seekers our consciousness becomes the battleground for two contradictory forces: consciously our mind goads us toward sensual pleasures, whereas subconsciously we know that none of these pleasures are going to satisfy us and thus we long to taste again the joy of remembering Krishna. Often, we let our mind deceive us, and so we return back to the same revelry that we had earlier rejected because of its emptiness and pointlessness. As long as we let ourselves be predominated by the mind, we keep running away from Krishna in search of worldly pleasures. But our flight from Krishna is inescapably doomed because our subconscious never lets us forget what we are missing.

Therefore, rather than exerting ourselves in the futile attempt to run away from Krishna, why not expend the same energy to run down the mind? If we can combat and conquer the mind’s addiction to materialism, then we will become free to relish forever the nectar-ocean of Krishna consciousness.