Krishna now draws a firm boundary. He lists the most respected spiritual practices — studying the Vedas, performing sacrifices, giving generously, observing rituals, undertaking severe penances — and says plainly: none of these can produce the vision you just received.
This is not a dismissal of those practices. Vedic study, charity, and discipline all have their place. But they operate within a certain sphere. What Arjuna witnessed goes beyond that sphere entirely. It is like saying: a telescope can show you the moon's surface, but it cannot carry you there. The practices are telescopes. The vision required something else altogether.
That something else, as the coming shlokas will make explicit, is undivided devotion. Krishna is quietly setting the stage for the chapter's conclusion. Everything in this section converges toward one point: bhakti — not as one option among many, but as the only door to the deepest reality.