18.73 – An intellectual adventure with an emotional climax

We have two essential faculties: the head and the heart. The head is our intellectual center and the heart, our emotional center.

The Bhagavad-gita being a book of intellectual adventure with an emotional climax addresses both of our core faculties. Let’s see how.

Intellectual Adventure: The Gita charts a clear pathway for us through the maze-like alternatives that the world presents us. It first informs us that life’s purpose and perfection is to connect with Krishna and then equips us with a conceptual framework to connect with him constantly. This knowledge empowers our intelligence to see beyond the veil of matter and perceive Krishna’s reassuring presence. Using our intelligence to perceive Krishna’s hand amidst life’s ups and downs is life’s greatest intellectual adventure.

Emotional climax: The Gita culminates in Krishna’s unequivocal proclamations that he loves all of us intensely, that he desires our highest good and that he stands ready to remove all obstacles from our path when we choose to return to him. The Gita’s emotional climax is its leading us to the experience of relishing this disarming profession of Krishna’s love. And wonderfully enough, the climax keeps climaxing for all of eternity because the more we love Krishna, the more we relish his love for us.  This emotional climax enables our heart to see beyond life’s crests and troughs, and relish Krishna’s empowering benevolence constantly.

Thus, Gita wisdom enables us to connect with Krishna with both our faculties: to perceive his presence with our head and to relish his benevolence with our heart. By this dual divine connection, we become confident, like Arjuna (18.73), to do Krishna’s will and thereby convert any challenge that life sends our way into an opportunity for spiritual growth.