Who is Krishna?

In the philosophy of Bhakti Yoga, the Absolute Truth is known as a person. His name is Krishna, a Sanskrit word which means “all attractive”.

Krishna is the all attractive object of your soul’s love. Every living being is seeking pleasure. The essence of pleasure is the pleasure of love. We need it. Without loving someone and being loved by someone, life is very empty and superficial. The origin of that love is the soul’s love for God and God’s love for the soul. We are attracted by someone who is beautiful, someone who is powerful, someone who is learned, someone who is famous, someone who is renounced, someone who has wealth. These are opulences that attract our heart. The name Krishna means, he possesses all opulences in full. He is the source all beauty, all strength, all knowledge, all wealth, all fame, and all renunciation. And Krishna’s love for the soul is unlimited and unconditional. This is Krishna. He is our eternal father, our eternal mother, our eternal friend, our eternal lover.

We could feel Krishna through the path of bhakti. Bhakti is the process God has given us through which we could feel him 24 hours a day. Krishna is within our hearts. Krishna is within the heart of every living being. Krishna is inside every atom and in between atoms through his various energies. But ultimately, the source of everything is that divine person, that all powerful, all loving and all attractive person who we are eternally longing to be reunited with. Bhakti Yoga means to be reunited with our source, with God, through acts of devotion—by remembering about him, by chanting his names and his glories, by praying to him, by worshiping the deity, by rendering service to him, to his devotees and to all living beings. These are ways by which we could always feel the presence of God.