The following was first published on my blog in September, 2005. I still see devotees thinking that transcending is some transformative, get out of jail free card and as so few were reading my blog back then, I am reposting this in the hope it may help someone trying to get their head around why, even though devotees transcend varnashram, we still need it:

This ties into the Great Wheel Metaphor (graphics done for me by Sakya Rasa das) which is about transcending whereby each concentric circle transcends the contained circles without replacing them.

Krishna, of course, can do anything, can always make a miracle. But miracles are, by definition, exceptional, not general. In general, the rules of material nature apply rather than miracles, and miracles are extremely rare.

So just as color transcends the form, it doesn’t change the form. You can have Form, and no Color, but Form with Color transcends Form. Just as Life transcends Matter. You can have Matter without Life, but Matter with Life transcends Matter. The same as you study matter with physics, the study of life (as in biotic life, not Life as an abstraction) is biology. Biology transcends physics. Biology doesn’t transform (change) the laws of physics, but does go beyond them and etc. as you view Great Wheel Metaphor.