We may have a taste of that divine life only in that plane of nectar. That we may live in the waves of that ocean of love is the highest objective of our lives.
In that divine realm, our individual personalities can be maintained. It is not necessary that if we dive deep into the plane of consciousness, we must lose our own personality, our own individuality. It is not necessary at all. And yet, the nature of divine love is that you are still living, but you are living on His behalf, wholesale converted into His service. It is a wonderful thing: you can keep your personality for the interest of Krishna. But you must have no selfish motive, no conception of separate interest. Merging there is not physical, mortal merging, not merging of the losing variety, but the kind of merging spoken of in Srimad Bhagavatam (11.29.34):
martyo yada tyakta-samasta-karma
niveditatma vichikirsito me
tadamrtatvam pratipadyamano
mayatma-bhuyaya cha kalpate vai
«One who is subjected to birth and death attains immortality when he gives up all material activities, dedicates his life to the execution of My order, and acts according to My directions. In this way, he becomes fit to enjoy the spiritual bliss derived from exchanging loving mellows with Me.»
And in Bhagavad-gita (18.55), Krishna says:
bhaktya mam abhijanati yavan yas chasmi tattvatah
tato mam tattvato jnatva visate tad-anantaram
«Only through love and devotion can I be understood as I am. Thereafter, fully understanding Me, you can merge into My entourage.»
This ‘merging’ is explained by Krishna: «They enter into Me to become a person in My family. Among the circles of My friends, he enters: visate tad-anantaram. He becomes as if My own. That means that without losing your personality you can be fully My own.» To enter into the Lord’s family is a living merging, not a physical or dead merging into brahma, spirit. That is the result of prema, divine love.
That ideal is above the general conception of merging into the oneness of brahma, where one loses oneself in the ocean of consciousness as if in a sound sleep. We are not interested in that. Rather, through Krishna consciousness, we become lost swimming in the ocean of sweetness. This has been accepted by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.