06.28: The new life outside begins with the new life inside

We may sometimes feel dissatisfied with the same old things that keep repeating themselves in our life’s routines. To get rid of this dissatisfaction, we try to acquire new things: delicacies, cars, jobs, houses or even spouses. Such new things excite us initially, but the sheen of their newness wears away soon, and the familiar old dissatisfaction returns to gnaw at our heart. Why is our longing for a new life repeatedly thwarted thus?

Gita wisdom answers. Material objects, no matter how new-looking, are essentially made of just one old substance: matter. And the emotions that we as living beings, souls, can get by contacting dead matter are pathetically few. When we contact a new material object, we may initially experience new emotions as long as we are contacting the externals of the object, for that external is new. However, as soon as our contact with that object goes beyond its external appearance to its essential substance, we are forced to admit, “There’s nothing new here.”

If we truly wish to have a new life, Gita wisdom encourages us to redirect our search for newness from outside to inside, from matter to Krishna, the ever-fresh ocean of supreme beauty residing eternally within our own hearts. The Bhagavad-gita (6.28) proclaims the glorious result of this contact sukhena brahma samsparsham atyantam sukham ashnute. If we strive to increase our inner connection with Krishna, then we can constantly relish newer and newer aspects of his beauty and personality. As we deepen our inner consciousness of Krishna, this makes us better attuned to detecting and relishing his ever-new presence in our life externally.

Thus does the new life within lead us to the new life without.