Many people think that the goal of spirituality is to go beyond emotions and actions, and attain peace by merging in an impersonal light.

However, life in such an existence, such a ‘beyond’, is unnatural, unfulfilling and unstable.

Unnatural: Our emotions and actions define our very being; they are characteristic of our essential nature. For us as conscious beings, to be stripped of emotions and actions is profoundly unnatural.

Unfulfilling: Peace, like a painkiller, offers relief from worldly miseries. But just as physically we soon find pain-relief unfulfilling and long for health, spiritually we soon find peace unfulfilling and long for happiness. And happiness comes through love, through relationships and reciprocations.

Unstable: Any unfulfilling situation makes us unstable as we seek something better. So, as the peace of impersonalism turns out to be unfulfilling, we become unstable. We seek something higher, but feel lost not knowing where to look as we had assumed impersonalism to be the summit of spirituality.

No wonder the Bhagavad-gita (12.05) underscores that attachment to the impersonal conception makes spiritual life difficult. Offering a higher alternative, the Gita’s next two verses (12.06-07) recommend the path of devotional service. Devotion catapults us to a dynamic spiritual reality that lies beyond the beyond, to Krishna whose transcendental eternal personality exists beyond the impersonal absolute.

Loving Krishna is natural, fulfilling and stable.

Natural: We discover a spiritual avenue for our natural need for emotions and actions;

Fulfilling: We relish loving reciprocations with the all-attractive supreme person, Krishna, who satisfies our heart fully and eternally;

Stable: Once we taste the fulfillment of loving Krishna, we don’t need anything else; our heart finds the supreme shelter in him.

Thus Krishna is the beyond the beyond personified, the pinnacle of spirituality, the goal worth our loftiest aspirations.

Bhagavad Gita Chapter 12 Text 07

“But those who worship Me, giving up all their activities unto Me and being devoted to Me without deviation, engaged in devotional service and always meditating upon Me, having fixed their minds upon Me, O son of Prtha – for them I am the swift deliverer from the ocean of birth and death.”