How do we balance thinking and feeling in spiritual life?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
What we are feeling is important, but so is understanding what we are feeling. We may sometimes get a question, how important, how defining are our feelings in bhakti? Actually, feelings are important because devotion is essentially a feeling. It is a special feeling.
It is a spiritual feeling. It is a pure feeling. And most of the feelings that we have are often impure.
They arise from our sense perception and they are often not connected with our spiritual core. And even when we start on a spiritual path or start on something that we think is a spiritual path, even then whatever experiences we may have are not necessarily spiritual. Yes, we may feel calm, feel good, feel comforted and relaxed by doing certain activities.
But why we are feeling them, understanding that is also important. Without understanding that, we simply end up deluding ourselves into thinking that whatever we are experiencing is spiritual. Whereas actually it may not be spiritual.
It may just be psychological. Or it may be a manifestation of pseudo-spirituality or shallow spirituality. The Bhagavad Gita 9.2 states that राजविद्या राजवुहियं पवित्रमिदमुत्तमं प्रत्यक्षावगमं धर्म्यं सुसुखं कर्तमवययं The process of Bhakti Yoga is the topmost knowledge, Rajvidya.
And that it gives us direct experience of the absolute. So it’s significant that here knowledge and experience are considered as parts of the same process. The process of Bhakti Yoga comprises the highest knowledge and it delivers the highest experience, the experience of Krishna.
In fact, the Gita offers us the knowledge by which we can make sense of our experiences. If we are blind, then if something cold touches us or something comfortingly warm touches us when we are cold, then we need some knowledge to understand that this is a blanket that has been placed around us and we need further knowledge to understand that it is our mother or someone who loves us, who has out of their love for us placed the blanket around us. Without that knowledge, we may still feel cozy and warm because of having that blanket, but we won’t know anything about how or why the blanket came there.
Similarly, if we do not understand the spiritual dimension of life with proper philosophy, then even if we feel comforted, we feel good, we won’t know why we are feeling good and how that good feeling has come. And more importantly, we won’t be able to repeatedly experience that good feeling. So by understanding that the feeling of serenity and ecstasy that we experience when we practice Bhakti comes because we are connecting with Krishna who is the source of the supreme serenity and the supreme ecstasy.
By understanding this, we can make better sense of our experience. We can perceive better the reality of Krishna’s existence and Krishna’s love for us. Thus, the knowledge helps us make sense of the experience and inspires us to apply ourselves more diligently to the process of Bhakti Yoga by which we can again get that experience.
And conversely, the experience itself serves as a confirmatory test for what we have learned through our knowledge, thereby inspiring us to study more to understand about Krishna and about the spiritual level of reality wherein Krishna reigns supreme in his personal abode. Thus, knowledge and experience become complementary in the profoundly transformational process of Bhakti. And we can accelerate this transformation by not just seeking experience, spiritual experience but also by seeking spiritual understanding of those experiences.