Why contemplation is something essential in spiritual life

There is an essential factor in converting the knowledge we get from books into deep spiritual realization, and it is something modern life is progressively depriving us of .

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In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa speaks about jñana and vijñāna. Jñana means book knowledge, which we gain by studying the scriptures, while vijñāna means realized knowledge that we can practically apply. Sometimes, exalted Vaiṣnavas are able to acquire very deep spiritual realization without even studying books (like in the case of Gaurakiśora Dāsa Babaji), while in other cases devotees may study their whole lives and be able to quote all kinds of obscure books, but still don’t have a grasp on what they mean. Most of us stay somewhere between the two extremes, showing a combination of study and realization.

However, there is a very important factor in converting the knowledge we are getting from books into deep spiritual realization, and it is something modern life is progressively depriving us of. That’s contemplation.

According to the dictionary, contemplation is “the action of looking thoughtfully at something for a long time.” When we speak about spiritual knowledge, most points are quite intricate, including the nature of the soul, the workings of the material energy, the relationship between the soul and matter, the relationship of the soul with Kṛṣṇa, the process of creation and dissolution of the universe, the nature of material time and transcendental time, the nature of karma and of the three modes and how to gradually become free of it, and so on. These are all topics described in the Bhagavad-gītā and the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, but grasping them demands an in-depth study of the text, something most of us don’t have the time and concentration to do nowadays.

Instead, what we do most of the time is superficial reading, jumping from one post to another, or superficially reading some piece of news here and there. Even this is progressively being replaced by short videos of 90 seconds or less. This type of content is created with the purpose of being emotionally appealing (which is the key to getting more hits) and not to transmit any kind of profound message. As we become habituated to this kind of content, we become less and less capable of going deep into different topics, and as a result, our capacity to understand spiritual topics atrophy.

Decades ago, people used to read books. Common people would read novels, while intelligent people would read deeper books, but in both cases, people would read books of reasonable length. With the popularization of the internet, texts of 10,000 characters (about 2,000 words) would be considered reasonable. Nowadays, most people expect to read texts of 2,200 characters or less, like on Instagram, and we are gradually progressing in the direction of 500 chars, like on Threads. Many find even this difficult and prefer to focus on short videos.

In such a scenario, the concentration needed to read a long treatise like the Śrīmad Bhāgavatam or the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, or even the Bhagavad-Gita (what to say about really studying it) is becoming progressively rarer. Many of us lack the concentration to even hear one-hour lectures.

Without this deep contemplation of the topics we are studying, it’s very difficult to understand spiritual knowledge, and as a result, we tend to become polarized around different topics, based simply on emotional response, without being able to deeply consider anything. This, of course, can have a very negative impact on our spiritual evolution. Our human intelligence is the tool we can use to get out of the material illusion, but modern life is progressively robbing us of it.

How to escape this cycle? Each one will have to find his or her own solution, but acknowledging the problem is already a good start.

To be able to develop the introspection necessary for contemplating spiritual topics, we need to reserve times when our intelligence is free to contemplate them. This doesn’t mean to be idle, but to avoid being constantly exposed to information (and especially to useless information). We may use this time to do some work with our hands, or even do some physical activity, but we should distance ourselves from social media.

We can observe that this is what people were doing throughout most of human history, being exposed to information during certain times when they were reading or studying, and having time to digest it during the other parts of the day. That’s one of the reasons Vedic culture gives such great importance to cows, for example, since taking care of cows helps us to develop this peacefulness and concentration we need to understand spiritual topics. Having a phone constantly beeping in our pockets and infinite feeds of useless posts as we have nowadays is a dangerous social experiment.

Not everyone will have the opportunity to live a pure life surrounded by cows, but it’s important to restrict our use of social media to just certain times and restrict the people we follow to a small group of individuals who have something relevant to share. It’s important that we restrict our intake of information to certain times and focus on relevant spiritual topics instead of useless noise. In this way, not only do we feed ourselves with good quality information, but also have the time to properly assimilate it.

We can see that all great thinkers contemplate a lot in order to formulate their theories and create their inventions. Prabhupada himself was waking up at midnight to have a time when he could work undisturbed, composing his purports. Before that, he lived for several years in Vrindavana, deeply studying the scriptures and writing. All of this, of course, in a time before social networks.

Introspection is also a characteristic of the mode of goodness and is sustained by other habits connected with it, such as waking up early and doing everything in its time. Modern life pushes us in the direction of passion and ignorance, being constantly connected, trying to follow everything, but not getting anything deep at the end.

Without contemplation, the knowledge we are receiving may remain as just theoretical knowledge that we will not be able to practically apply. When we just run around without stopping, time passes quickly, because we don’t really process the information we are receiving. We are thus basically just wasting our time.

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