Modern culture expertly teaches spiritual truths while quietly erasing God from the picture

By Aarushi Agrawal

All of us want to be happy. The Bhagavad-gita teaches us that we are all essentially souls, wearing one body after the other, until we make a conscious effort to escape the cycle of birth and death. And the soul is sac-cid-ananda — eternal, full of knowledge, and inherently blissful — because it is in constant loving exchange with Krishna, the Supreme Lord and reservoir of pleasure. But this true state is covered by material influences, contaminated by dust and muck accrued over millions of lifetimes.

So today, we still feel that pull for happiness. We know it is a state that’s possible to experience. But instead of turning inward, acknowledging the soul and understanding its connection with Krishna, we turn outward. Kali-yuga essentially means fewer and fewer people have awareness about Vedic philosophy and about the true nature of ourselves and the world. So we look at the world outside for answers.

And the scary part is, in Kali-yuga, there are answers sophisticated enough to satisfy us at least on a material level. Today, it is absolutely possible to live a materially fulfilled life without ever bringing God into the picture. Even someone that has grown up in the culture might not really engage with it. “I have been able to manage life all this time without really needing spirituality. I will continue to be fine. God is for puja days and festivals. That’s enough to make me good and devout,” one might think.

This is because there are many people today teaching the same lessons spirituality teaches, but without connecting life back to Krishna. Material success is painted as the ultimate goal of our society, and there are many people equipping one with the tools to achieve it.

These universal lessons are easily available on generic posters and WhatsApp forwards. “Be grateful. Become comfortable with being uncomfortable. Stay positive. After defeat, get back up. Be kind. Stay focused.” And in this age, at least within the English-speaking world, many languages have developed, all essentially teaching these same lessons, but in different contexts. For everyone who has this intrinsic urge to learn and grow, and to want to be happy, there’s a language that will speak to them.

Let’s take the lesson “be grateful,” for instance.

Someone who believes in manifestation and the energy of the universe will talk about how when we think positively and focus on the good in our lives, our vibration increases, and we attract more positive things in life. It’s framed as a positive loop that must be constructed and maintained.

A therapist will talk about neuroplasticity, and how one can literally rewire the brain. Focus on all the things you do have in life, consistently and consciously, and before you know it, that becomes your natural way of thinking, and so your personality.

A motivational speaker will highlight how being grateful will increase your inherent confidence and make you more open to new challenges that may come your way.

A corporate leader focuses on how what you pay attention to decides your team’s health. If you only find problems, your team will eventually burn out. If you also notice progress and practice constructive criticism, you make smarter decisions and the team is more focused.

It’s the same lesson contextualised in different ways. It all leads to a person slowing down, focusing on the good in life and eventually feeling better. But it’s a virtue without a larger scriptural and cultural framework to sit within.

This is dangerous.

It packages life as something that can be practiced without Krishna in it. In its essence, being grateful is a type of meditation where we’re focusing on Krishna and all that He has done for us, given us, continues to give us: the love, the protection, the safety, things so large that we will never fully understand them. And so we’re also humbled. We’re reminded of our position as the soul and His as the Supersoul, the Father, the Creator. Without Krishna, this spiritual essence of gratitude is lost. It becomes simply a tool to navigate this one life better.

And with these tools, we’re then set with the task of finding meaning in life — because there’s no knowledge, or if there is, then no acknowledgement, of the eternal Vedic principles. Mainstream society doesn’t talk about our identity as souls and our purpose as one to learn and grow so we can leave this world and return to Krishna. So meaning has to be manufactured. Because we can’t live without a purpose, human beings simply aren’t wired that way.

So we find meaning in work, our relationships, in the spectacularity of consuming and creating art, in helping others, in activism, in connecting with nature. All of these routes can lead one to living a life that is qualitatively better than it was before they found this goal or meaning. And this leads one to be satisfied in their material lives, as though this is all there is to life. It lets one believe that life is about doing well in the here and now and that one’s chosen language, which is teaching one how to do that, is all that’s needed.

That is the sophistication of maya in Kali-yuga. It has strengthened material culture in a way that our inner hankering for Krishna can be satisfied, on a surface level, through other avenues. Enough to keep us trapped in the cycle of birth and death. If we don’t feel a sense of dissatisfaction or meaninglessness with material life, why will we stop to ask the larger questions about our existence? Maya has perfected these distractions, making them seem like the answer. Krishna stays veiled, or worse, forgotten.

As devotees, this is the challenge we are up against. Convincing our loved ones, and the world at large, that there is a central, unifying puzzle piece, connecting all of these lessons and meanings together, and that that piece is Krishna. Through his teachings, Srila Prabhupada has given us a road map to carry out Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu’s mission of spreading Krishna consciousness. Now, we must serve.


Aarushi is an independent culture journalist with an interest in reading and writing. She has been connected with ISKCON Chowpatty since 2023 and finds deep satisfaction in the association of devotees around her. She’s slowly making sense of Srila Prabhupada’s teachings and learning how to notice Krishna’s presence at the heart of everything and everyone around her.