Question
Guru Maharaja,
Reading the meaning of Bhagavad-Gita, chapter 3, verse 37, in the last paragraph, it says “so that lust and anger, when used in Krishna consciousness, they become our friends, and not our enemies.”
The question is how can we turn lust and anger into the process of Krishna? Wouldn’t it be to use two energies that go to bad processes for something good? Give me the light as you have always done.
Your well-wisher,
Bhakta Jomi
Answer
The blessings of the spiritual masters are automatic in the act of asking for them. However, it remains necessary to ask for them and do something concrete to deserve them.
The verse 3.37 of the Bhagavad-Gita is particularly interesting and rich of philosophical topics. I’ll give a class on this verse explaining all point of views, and I will put it online for everyone to hear it.
Kama and krodha mean lust and wrath.
These two emotions, as all our personal characteristics, are originally spiritual. There cannot be lust or wrath made of matter because only a living entity can feel lusty or angered, and matter by itself has no jiva. What is material is the illusion that twists our spiritual qualities and makes them work on a material platform.
Therefore, in the spiritual world there is lust, (which should be called prema, or love -We attach a very negative connotation to the word lust-, and a spiritual wrath.
There are innumerable evidences of this point. It is enough to remember Krishna’s love for Radharani and the Gopis (and their love for Krishna). This is a very evident example of lust, or love.
Then, we are familiar with the wrath that Arjuna displayed during the battle of Kuruksetra.
While fighting, he is described in the Maha-Bharata as scary as death.
Since Krishna and Arjuna are not two conditioned souls, their “lust” and “wrath” were spiritual.
By saying, “Therefore, when lust and wrath are employed in Krishna’s consciousness, they become our friends instead of our enemies”, Srila Prabhupada reconfirms that those two emotions exist in the spiritual world. However, in the material world they are contaminated by material energy.
To purify these emotions, we have to use them in Krishna’s Consciousness. For example, we can purify our natural lust (better called love), by remembering Krishna’s pastimes. Wrath can be purified by preaching, by being firm in not admitting deviances in our Sampradaya, and in other similar ways.
This is a section of the book “A Sidelong Glance”.
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