Blog

Our conscience - the internal voice that inspires us to do good and to avoid bad - is a great gift from God, for it empowers us to make right choices in life. Every time we abide by our conscience, our moral strength and willpower increases. Every time we neglect our conscience, our moral strength and willpower decreases.

Whenever we act against our conscience, we feel a sense of guilt. When we feel feverish, that feeling is the means by which we come to know that dangerous germs are overcoming our immune system. Similarly, when we feel guilty, that feeling is the means by which we come to know that destructive desires have started overcoming our intelligence. If the fever is neglected or suppressed, then the germs may cause a complete breakdown of the body. Similarly, if the guilt is neglected or suppressed, then the destructive desires may cause a complete moral and personal breakdown.

Unfortunately, nowadays the notion is being popularized is that guilt is an undesirable emotion and should not be cared for. However, such notions, far from freeing people, are only depriving them of their inbuilt defense systems and thus making them prone to emotional breakdowns.

For example, in the current internet age, even small children have easy, unguarded access to sexually explicit images. Looking at obscene images may be initially pleasurable, but it soon gives rise to dangerous drives that may lead to the abuse of our own and others' bodies, as also to infection by deadly diseases. When one's conscience is alert, one becomes empowered to resist the short-sighted urges and make wise choices. God is the source of all beauty, and whatever worldly object seems beautiful to us actually reflects only a spark of his beauty, as confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita (10.42). Our current attraction to worldly beauty is a distortion of our

original attraction to the Lord's beauty. Knowing that God's beauty is eternal, whereas all worldly beauty is temporary, a wise person redirects his attraction for beauty to God by regularly taking darshan of the beautiful deity of the Lord and chanting his holy names.

Similarly, in all fields, our conscience helps us to redirect our quest for pleasure from temporary, unfulfilling surrogates to eternal, supremely fulfilling originals. Of course, our current notions of conscience may be culturally determined and not divinely determined. In other words, we - even our apparent inner voice - may decide what is right or wrong based on prevalent socio-cultural values rather than on timeless spiritual principles. To align our conscience with these eternal principles, we need to study God-given scriptures like the Bhagavad-gita.

The author is associate-editor of ISKCON's global magazine, Back to Godhead