Follow the Brain or the Heart?

Question: At times I get confused….to follow the brain or to follow the heart? How do we get that signal from God to take the right decision?

Radhanath Swami: The same way you access a television station. You have to tune into the correct frequency, and that comes by associating with the people who are tuned in. In their association, really learning how to hear from holy scriptures and from the holy Acaryas, we get the proper understanding.

If we do it with right association and with the right character, the chanting of God’s names tunes us into the frequency of God’s grace, God’s infinite grace. When we chant as a group together we are not only accessing the grace but we are spreading that vibration throughout the universe.

The heart is the seat of feeling; the brain is the seat of discrimination. Srila Prabhupada would say religion or devotional feeling, using the heart, without philosophy often is degraded to sentimentalism or even fanaticism. Then instead of feeling love, we feel hate and envy; that’s what fanaticism is about.

But just discrimination, using the brain, without feeling, often breeds just cold mental speculation, no transformation of character, no love – just intellect discrimination. We must harmonize the two.