Krishna Consciousness
Krishna consciousness means an awareness of and affection for the Supreme, Krishna. It is the culmination of all forms of yoga, knowledge, meditation, and spirituality.
Krishna consciousness is every individual's natural, original, and blissful condition. Only when Maya's illusion covers us do we forget who we are and who the Supreme is. We want happiness but don't know who we are or what we're supposed to do. We try to enjoy life through the body and mind, with hit-or-miss results. And we fear death since we don't know what happens afterward.
The practices of Krishna consciousness, or bhakti-yoga, are meant to free us from the root cause of all anxiety by reawakening our normal, eternal spiritual happiness. The process is simple—a meditation on Krishna's name, form, activities, and qualities.
Krishna is the Vedic name for the Supreme Person, the source of our existence and all pleasure. Different names in different cultures know him, but all genuine spiritual traditions agree that there's only one Supreme God. Bhakti-yoga aims to recover our natural sense of connectedness (yoga) with that one supreme God by serving Him with love (bhakti).
The search for happiness
Everyone is looking for happiness, but it elusively slips away from everyone. What is the reason that despite our numerous attempts, we never feel completely satisfied, and when we do feel happy, the bliss is short-lived, and once again, we are plunged into the ocean of miseries? We suffer even though we don’t want to suffer. We experience loss, heartache, depression, and all such undesirable feelings even though we never want to. What then forces us to go through such emotions and keeps us away from the happiness and peace that all of us are hankering after?
The Krishna consciousness answers all such questions and gives the perfect path to uninterrupted eternal happiness, untinged by any misery experienced in the company of the blissful Lord Sri Krishna. The true nature of a living entity is to be eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. Still, this material creation, which is running under the influence of time, has a beginning and an end, unlike our actual eternal existence, and is a place of utter misery, unlike our inherent nature to be blissful. We do not belong here and are meant to experience something more sublime.
However, we ourselves are responsible for being in this situation, as we made the wrong decision of trying to become that Master and Lord. In contrast, we are by nature meant to be the servants of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Seeing his subordinate souls straying away from their true nature, the Lord arranged for this material world that the living entity could attempt to enjoy independently. Still, due to being repeatedly unsuccessful, the person is sure to turn back to him. When that happens, the Lord mercifully calls him back to the spiritual realm where there is no birth, death, old age, and disease, where there is no misery but true bliss, and where the soul experiences an ultimate pleasure, being situated in its true nature of loving and associating with Sri Krishna. This is the ultimate destination where true happiness can be realized.
The goal is to be transported to the transcendental realm of Sri Krishna, the abode made up of pure eternal bliss and knowledge, where misery, old age, disease, and death are non-existent. The only experience there will be that of unalloyed love and devotion shared between the Supreme being Sri Krishna and the individual souls.
That blissful abode is beyond material imagination; the love experienced there is the zenith of all happiness. The abode, where the flowering groves are full of fragrant flowers, the riverbanks studded with jewels, lotuses swaying on the cooling waters of the river, and birds and bees making sweet sounds, is the place where Sri Krishna enjoys various loving pastimes with his numerous associates such as his friends, parents, servants, and beloved Gopis. This Vrindavan, the place of the most wonderous pastimes of Sri Krishna, is the Goal of all the Gaudiya Vaishnavas.
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