NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES change people, often starting them on a sincere spiritual search. But they only happen to people extremely close to death who live to tell about it. So most of us won't get the benefit of such a traumatic event to jump-start our spiritual lives. The Krsna consciousness movement offers an alternative: a near-life experience.

Lord Krsna teaches in the Bhagavad-gita that real life exists on the platform of the soul. The body is always dead it displays symptoms of life only while the soul is present. So, strictly speaking, a life absorbed in the body and everything related to it is not really life at all.

The Krsna conscious life offers a chance to get near the real life of the soul free from the chains of matter. Unlike some religious traditions, the Krsna consciousness movement doesn't claim that its members are saved merely by membership. Krsna consciousness entails the practice of living like the souls who exist eternally in God's company. Life in the spiritual world is real life. We approach that life through acts that mirror what goes on there.

While one could say that the Krsna conscious life here on earth is full life, our bodies will always limit how much we can replicate the life of the liberated souls in the spiritual world. In Brhad-Bhagavatamrta, Sanatana Gosvami gives a vivid description of Vaikuntha, the part of the spiritual world where Krsna as Lord Narayana is worshiped like a king, with full respect and limitless opulence. A striking feature of Vaikuntha is that the souls there can assume any form they desire for their service to the Lord. And no matter what the form, the residents of Vaikuntha can move from place to place at will and do many other things impossible for us.

Whether we know it or not, our actions in this world reveal that we all naturally yearn for a life of complete freedom. But that's available only in the spiritual world, a place reached only by those who never misuse their freedom. They can do whatever they want because, having awakened their innate love for God, they want only to please Him. And they think of endless ways to do so.

In Krsna consciousness we often refer to degrees of perfection. So while it may seem that nothing can surpass Vaikuntha, spiritual realms above it, especially Goloka Vrndavana, the abode of Lord Krsna, provide even greater freedom. Vrndavana's unequalled opulence is the freedom to enjoy with God in the familiarity of unrestricted love. Krsna's parents have the freedom to punish Him, His girlfriends the freedom to refuse His advances, and His playmates the freedom to wrestle with Him and defeat Him in games.

The freedoms of the spiritual world spring from pure love and selfless service. The culture of Krsna consciousness in this world delivers a taste of that freedom. In presenting the teachings of Lord Krsna, Srila Prabhupada always invited people to associate with devotees of Krsna and take advantage of all the ways we can experience as closely as is possible in our situation the happiness of the real life that is the life of the soul.

Nagaraja Dasa