Understanding the spiritual world: its relevance, rationale, resplendence

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Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Summary

Explore the profound nature of the transcendental realm through insights from Srimad-Bhagavatam, examining its relevance to modern life, logical rationale, and eternal resplendence.

• Four Characteristics of the Spiritual World: The Srimad-Bhagavatam describes the spiritual realm as free from the material modes of passion and ignorance, completely untouched by the destructive influence of time, entirely outside the illusion of maya, and universally characterized by the loving glorification of the Supreme Lord by all residents.

• Holistic Relevance of the Worldview: Unlike materialism, which restricts reality to the physical universe, or impersonalism (mayavad), which dismisses the material world as entirely false, the bhakti perspective embraces both realms. It encourages responsible action and contribution in the physical world while maintaining an ultimate aspiration for the spiritual.

• The Rationale Behind Higher Longing: Just as humans naturally suspend disbelief to escape into fictional or virtual worlds, an innate attraction to the supernatural stems from a deeper reality. Exploring the spiritual world is not mere escapism, but a transition from a constricted material existence to true freedom.

• Time and Reality Beyond Material Limits: In the transcendental realm, time exists cyclically to assist in divine pastimes rather than to cause deterioration, aging, or destruction. It represents an eternal present free from the anxieties of past regrets and future fears.

• Universal Accessibility in Consciousness: The spiritual world is not just a distant destination to reach after death; its essence—the consciousness of glorifying the Lord—is accessible right now through devotion, service, and spiritual association.

Full Transcription

Lord, the material modes of ignorance and passion do not prevail, nor is there any of their influence in goodness. There is no predominance of the influence of time, so what to speak of the illusory external energy? It cannot enter that region.
Without discrimination, both the demigods and demons worship the Lord as devotees. The kingdom of God, or atmosphere of Vaikuntha nature, which is called the Tripāda Vibhuti, is three times bigger than the material universes, and is described here, as also in the Bhagavad Gita, in a nutshell. This universe, containing billions of stars and planets, is one of the billions of such universes, clustered together within the compass of the Mahat-tattva.
And all of these millions and billions of universes combined together constitute only one-fourth of the magnitude of the whole creation of the Lord. There is a spiritual sky also. Beyond the sky are the spiritual planets, under the names of Vaikuntha, and all of them constitute three-fourths of the entire creation of the Lord.
God’s creations are always innumerable. Even the leaves of a tree cannot be counted by a man, nor can the hairs on his head. However, foolish men are puffed up with the idea of becoming God himself, though unable to create a hair of their own bodies.
Man may discover so many wonderful vehicles of journey, but even if he reaches the moon by his much-advertised spacecraft, he cannot remain there. The same man, therefore, without being puffed up, as if he were the God of the universe, abides by the instructions of the Vedic literature, the easiest way to acquire knowledge in transcendence. So let us know through the authority of Shrimad Bhagavatam, of the nature and constitution of the transcendental world, beyond the material sky.
In that sky, the material qualities, especially the modes of ignorance and passion, are completely absent. The mode of ignorance influences the living entity to the habit of lust and hankering. And this means that in the Vaikuntha lokas, the living entities are free from these two things.
As confirmed in the Bhagavad Gita, in the Brahma-bhuta stage of life, one becomes free from hankering and lamentation. Therefore, the conclusion is that the inhabitants of the Vaikuntha planets are all Brahma-bhuta living entities, as distinguished from the mundane creatures, who are all compact in hankering and lamentation. When one is not in the modes of ignorance and passion, one is supposed to be situated in the mode of goodness in the material world.
Goodness in the material world also, at times, becomes contaminated by touches of the modes of passion and ignorance. In the Vaikuntha loka, it is unalloyed goodness only. The whole situation there is one of freedom from the illusory manifestation of the external energy.
Although illusory energy is also part and parcel of the Supreme Lord, illusory energy is differentiated from the Lord. The illusory energy is not, however, false, as claimed by the monist philosophers. The rope accepted as a snake may be an illusion to a particular person.
But the rope is a fact and the snake is also a fact. The illusion of water on the hot desert may be an illusion for the ignorant animal searching for water in the desert. But the desert and water are actual facts.
Therefore, the material creation of the Lord may be an illusion to the non-devotee. But to a devotee, even the material creation of the Lord is a fact. as the manifestation of His external energy.
But this energy of the Lord is not all. The Lord has His internal energy also, which is another creation known to be the Vaikuntha lokas, where there is no ignorance, no passion, no illusion, and no past and present. With a poor fund of knowledge, one may be unable to understand the existence of such things as the Vaikuntha atmosphere, but that does not nullify its existence.
That spacecraft cannot reach these planets does not mean there are no such planets, for they are described in the revealed scriptures. As quoted by Shilajiv Goswami, we can know from the Narad Pancharatra that the transcendental world or Vaikuntha atmosphere is enriched with transcendental qualities. These transcendental qualities, as revealed through the devotional service of the Lord, are distinct from the mundane qualities of ignorance, passion, and goodness.
Such qualities are not attainable by the non-devotee class of men. In the Padma Purana, Uttarakhand, it is stated that beyond the one-fourth manifestation of God’s creation, is the three-fourths manifestation. The marginal line between the material manifestation and the spiritual manifestation is the Viraja river.
And beyond the Viraja, which is the transcendental current flowing from the perspiration of the body of the Lord, there is the three-fourths manifestation of God’s creation. This part is eternal, everlasting, without deterioration, and unlimited. And it contains the highest perfectional stage of living conditions.
In the Sankhya Kaumudi, it is stated that unalloyed goodness or transcendence is just opposite to the material modes. All living entities there are eternally associated without any break. And the Lord is the chief and prime entity.
In the Agama Puranas also, the transcendental abode is described as follows. The associated members there are free to go everywhere within the creation of the world. And there is no limit to such creation, particularly in the region of the three-fourths magnitude.
Since the nature of that region is unlimited, there is no history of such association, nor is there end of it. The conclusion may be drawn that because of the complete absence of the mundane qualities of ignorance and passion, there is no question of creation nor of annihilation. In the material world, everything is created and everything is annihilated.
And the duration of life between the creation and annihilation is temporary. In the transcendental realm, there is no creation and no destruction. And thus the duration of life is eternal unlimitedly.
In other words, everything in the transcendental world is everlasting, full of knowledge and bliss, without deterioration. Since there is no deterioration, there is no past, present and future in the estimation of time. It is clearly stated in this verse that the influence of time is conspicuous by its absence.
The whole material existence is manifested by actions and reactions of elements, which make the influence of time prominent in the matter of past, present and future. There are no such actions and reactions of causes and effects there. So the cycle of birth, growth, existence, transformation, deterioration and annihilation, the six material changes are not existent there.
It is the unalloyed manifestations of the energy of the Lord without illusion as experienced here in the material world. The whole Vaikuntha existence proclaims that everyone there is a follower of the Lord. The Lord is the chief leader there without any competition for leadership.
And the people in general are all followers of the Lord. It is confirmed in the Vedas, therefore, that the Lord is the chief leader and that all other living entities are subordinate to Him. For only the Lord satisfies all the needs of all other living entities.
Srimatye Bhaktivedanta Swaminidinamine Namaste Saraswati Devi Gauravani Pracharine Nirvishesha Shunyavadi Pashyatya Deshatarine Vanchakalpatarubhyascha Krupasindhubhyaevacha Patitanampavanebhyo Vaishnavebhyo Namo Namaha Jai Shri Krishna Chaitanya Prabhu Nithyananda Shri Advaita Gadadhara Shri Vasadhi Gaurabhakta Vrinda Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare Hare Krishna So today morning we are discussing the chapter of the Srimad Bhagavatam which is the answers of the questions that were raised in the previous chapter and here specifically the spiritual world is being described. So today I will talk about understanding the spiritual world and I will talk about three broad themes within it but before that let’s look at what is this verse saying. This verse gives four broad characteristics of the spiritual world.
One is it is free from modes. na pravartate yatra ajas tamas and then sattvam ca mishram that even the uncontaminated good uncontaminated is there so even goodness is there but in an uncontaminated way then it is beyond time na kalavikramaha that influence of time is not there over there then it says it is outside maya na maya that there is no maya over there and you could say these three are more of negative describers what it is not and then the last is a positive describer is everyone is glorifying the Lord everyone glorifies the Lord so sura sura architaha that sura and asura they are all glorifying the Lord so this is a positive describer so in this way these four characteristics of the spiritual world are being described in this verse and in the purport Prabhupada elaborately talks about how the material world is insignificant just very small as compared to the spiritual world and there are so many universes and that here is characterized by the six changes is temporary whereas that is eternal so I will talk about this in three broad terms the nature of the spiritual world first I will talk about relevance now why does it matter whether the spiritual world exists or not then second I will talk about the rationale how can we logically rationally talk about the idea of a spiritual world is it just some religious fantasy and last I will talk about its resplendence how it is so attractive so the first point is relevance now how does it matter so basically every one of us we all long for a better life in fact the hope that tomorrow can be better than today or today can be better than yesterday that is what inspires us to wake up every day to do things the hope that day can be better that we can be better that we can help make things better it’s that the longing for something better is innate within the human psyche and actually across the world if we consider the pre-scientific civilization so before the pre-scientific age in that time whether we go to the east or the west or the middle east or wherever this is one common feature across all the major civilizations of the world that they had an understanding that beyond this world there is some other higher world and that is the world to be attained so in the biblical tradition for example it is said that this world is like a bridge cross over it even if we consider traditions like Buddhism where they don’t necessarily talk about personal divinity but there also there is a higher state of being now it’s almost like a state of non-being and I’ll talk about it but it’s considered to be better at least we are free from the cravings we are free from the distress so the idea that there is a higher world that we should all aspire for that was common to everyone in the pre-scientific age now how much people prioritize that that’s open to question but the idea that there is a higher world and we need to go from this world to another world it is actually cross-civilizational a tenet that was accepted now once the scientific age started what happened was we started to think this idea of another world is just a religious mythology and there is no such thing like that so the idea was that instead of some kind of a religious paradise in another world what science promised science and especially modern science it was technology that they promised that this is just wrong so what we will do is science and technology will convert this world itself into paradise into a technological paradise and this particular idea is prominent even today there is a whole school of thought called transhumanism and this transhumanism they hold that we human beings are inherently limited we suffer from old age we suffer from death we suffer from sickness and we all have self-destructive drives and they say if we can rejig the biological programming of our body and we can rewire the brains then we can make humans live forever we can free humans from self-destructive tendencies none of that has been actualized but because technology has done so many things people start believing that it is possible so their idea is this world itself will be made into paradise and as the idea became that this world will become paradise the idea of there being another world or that we should go to another world that started becoming relegated to the background so nobody cares for it in today’s world so that is a significant difference that’s why even if people today read say Shakespeare’s writings or any of the writings of the authors before the scientific age the way people think doesn’t really resonate people seem to quite resign to fate quite passive it’s because at one level they understood that the real aspirations are to be beyond this world so we could talk about four quadrant analysis we can have so Prabhupada talks about how this material world is also real so we could say the material world and the spiritual world so positive means this means it’s real and this means it’s unreal so if we consider different schools of thought they have different ideas about what is real and what is unreal so let’s start from the where would materialism fall the material world is real but the spiritual world is unreal so this is where materialism falls and this is the prominent philosophy in today’s world and here from you can have other philosophies like scientism scientism is different from science science is largely methodology scientism is ideology that science alone has a monopoly on knowledge that anything that science can’t find doesn’t exist so this is the prominent philosophical world view in today’s world that the material world is all that exists this is the one and only heaven and this is what we have to make into heaven if we can unfortunately instead of making it to heaven we are seeming to have made it into hell it’s at least a physical level we can say a lot of things have improved as compared to at least recent historical memory you know starvation and poverty have decreased but at an internal level depression and stress and addiction and self-destruction and suicide have all increased so the hope that the material world will itself be converted into a paradise that has not been actualized at all now when people become skeptical yeah so there is no higher purpose to life there is no higher reality then now the material world and its own reality is quite disturbing is quite distressing so some people go to this extreme either this world is real nor the other world is real so this is nihilism and this is a very dangerous philosophy to be there is no reality to at all existence at all even this world is false even this world is false when you start saying that then what happens is what is the point of living there was a prominent existentialist philosopher Alberto Camo he read existence is suffering and the more we try to remove the suffering the more the suffering increases therefore the only philosophical question worth asking is whether to commit suicide today or tomorrow what a gloomy view of the world now he wrote many books saying don’t commit suicide today try to find something meaningful in life but the idea that this world is also meaningless this is actually a terrible way to live so materialism is bad but nihilism is worse and nihilism can make people extremely destructive that if my life is not happy why should anyone else’s life be happy it is quite toxic now the idea that the spiritual world alone is real and the material world is false this is the idea of monism or specifically impersonalism mayavad so in our philosophy we call it mayavad so mayavad is the idea that brahma satya jagan mithya that this world is completely false and many historians attribute this mayavad to the cause of the downfall of India India had one of the most prosperous and formidable civilizations in the past but as mayavad started spreading then the idea became yeah if this whole world is false then who rules this world what happens in this world who cares for that and as people became more and more indifferent to the world now that indifference led to apathy and we may become apathetic about the world but others who think this world to be real they are not going to be apathetic they are going to be aggressive that’s how aggressor after aggressor for almost a thousand years the Indian subcontinent was ruled by various aggressors so so this the idea of monism or mayavad can make us very unhealthily indifferent to this world not just indifferent to the world but unhealthily indifferent so it can make us irresponsible it can also breed a toxic kind of apathy so the idea this is if you consider the material world is real and the spiritual world is real this is the this is the this is the bhakti worldview this is the bhakti idea this is we could call it as personalism that the material world is real and the spiritual world is real and this actually inspires a person to do both to act responsibly in the world and to also aspire for something bigger than this world when Krishna says mam anusmara yudhya cha he is not just saying mam anusmara yudhya cha why fight because this world is also worth fighting for that Krishna considers this world so important that he comes regularly to establish dharma in this world so with this worldview what happens is this 8.7 what I said mam anusmara yudhya cha the bhakti worldview says that we function in two ways our primary is our connection with the lord that is important to do we want to connect with him through our hearts devotion but also because this world belongs to the lord we want to serve him in this world also and that is contribution so mam anusmara is connection we remember the lord and our ultimate aim is to develop devotion to him so that we can attain him but that does not mean we don’t care for this world we want to we want to make this world also harmonious with the purpose of the lord sometimes we as devotees might gravitate if you start with say here quadrant 1,2,3,4 we also gravitate towards the third that oh this world is all temporary just a place of misery just get out of it well yes that is the ultimate purpose but the way to get out of it is not just by by just turning away in frustration for the world it is by responsibly doing our service in the world suppose some guest comes to our house and they are feeling I am feeling very cold now will we tell them what to do prabhu the world is a place of distress the world is a place of distress well I don’t think the world is a place of distress your house is a place of distress so the world may be a place of distress but we should not be when we are interacting with each other our focus should be what is my dharma what is my duty how can I serve Krishna in this situation and as devotees our purpose is not just to make things better in the hope of converting this world into paradise that’s not our purpose but we can make things better so that we can focus our mind on Krishna better so if right now if this was not a closed place and we had cold wind blowing over here now we could still have this class but all of us would be extremely uncomfortable so trying to make this a comfortable place not for the sake of comfort but comfort so that there can be better focus on Krishna and that much endeavor is something which is required that’s why the bhakti philosophy is actually the holistic way of functioning in the world that there is connection with the lord so that we aspire for the spiritual world and there is contribution in the world we try to make this world harmonious with the spiritual world so now I don’t think I’ll be able to talk of all the points here what I was planning to talk but just quickly I’ll make a couple of points so I’ve talked about the relevance why is it relevance? this is the most holistic way we can function in the world now the second part I made is rationale some people may say how do you know even the spiritual world exists Prabhupada talks about the authority of the supreme law authority of the bhagavatam from the authority of the bhagavatam we can know the spiritual world but how do we explain to people who do not accept the authority of the world see the point is that everyone we can make some inference we cannot have a conclusive verdict but we can make some inference from it from logic this is say our daily world the physical world now what happens is if the physical world is not distressing at the very least generally it is boring it’s everyday is humdrum we do our daily ablutions we go through our routines we go for our job, it’s not that everyday is exciting it becomes boring and people seek some relief some break, some escape way from it and now even those people who claim to be very scientific very rational they say there is no such thing as a spiritual world but all these people most of these people they they try to lose themselves in some kind of imaginary world the imaginary world may be through movies, through novels through fiction so what happens is people create what you could call a virtual world and they try to escape to that world when say a new marvel universe movie is released or a new, in the past there was harry potter something would be released they would be like a mania people would just completely immerse themselves in it they will wear the kind of paraphernalia and they will try to get the things and go over there and transport themselves to that world you tell them harry potter is not real, who cares you know I enjoy it I enjoy it, who cares whether it is real or not so the point is as soon as people start enjoying fiction they suspend their disbelief they suspend their rationality so what actually the physical world what we can call as a natural world it is limited and it is unsatisfying so people may be rational, they say there is no such thing as mystical powers but everybody has the whole star wars has this force and its mystical and people enjoy that what happens is that actually attraction to the supernatural is natural that there is something more than the daily world, the natural world attraction to the supernatural is natural for human beings and because of that if there is nothing supernatural that our world view allows then we just suspend that world view and may call it fiction but we just lose ourselves in it so what the bhagwatam’s world view says is that yes actually this is escape from reality if you consider the physical world to be reality what are people doing they are creating an alternative which they themselves acknowledge as fictional but they escape from it escape from the physical world to that world so what the bhagwatam says is why do we have this longing because there is a higher world and when we go towards that world that is not escape from reality that is escape to reality there is a higher reality and we escape this escaping is not escapism this escape is actually going from a constricted condition to a more free, a more liberated condition so it’s a reasonable inference that when we long for a better life and we are ready to lose ourselves in fiction then why not explore the idea that there might be a better life and there might be a better world beyond this world so this is what the great saints have talked about and these saints have been they are not just sentimental fans of some fictional characters many of the saints who have talked about the spiritual world are some of the greatest philosophers that the world has ever seen and they have used their philosophical intelligence to talk about the glory of the spiritual world so it’s a reasonable reasonable possibility to at least explore and the key part of the spiritual world is the third part I want to talk about is the resplendence resplendence is its attractiveness so now there are multiple factors in this I’ll quickly summarize what Prabhupada mentions now Prabhupada says there is no time in the spiritual world na kaala vikrama now the key point is that the statement in scripture have to be understood in context if we read books like Govinda Lila Amrit or the bhajan paddhati’s that are given in our Gaudiya tradition in the traditional Gaudiya way of meditation, it’s all about the timing, it is about Krishna in the morning from this time to this time performs this pastime, in the afternoon he performs this pastime, and later afternoon he performs this pastime, and the devotees in this world they meditate at those times on those pastimes which Krishna is performing in the spiritual world so what does no time mean so no time essentially means no control by time time does not Prabhupada mentions in this purport that time does not deteriorate time does not destroy kaalosmi lokakshayakrut Prabhupada Krishna says time I am the destroyer of the worlds so what makes time so damaging is that time deteriorates and destroys things in the spiritual world there is cyclicity without any deterioration, there is morning after evening so time actually aids Krishna in his pastimes, so time doesn’t control Krishna, time assists Krishna so what is present in the material world may also be present in the spiritual world but there it doesn’t limit, it doesn’t control it doesn’t destroy so that means no deterioration by time, no destruction by time that is the key characteristic of time in the spiritual world and then similarly it is now Prabhupada says that this spiritual world is far bigger than this material world this is one-fourth that is three-fourth and now and he says that there is a viraja river in between and beyond that is the spiritual world now that is important to understand but at the same time it is important to understand also the spiritual world doesn’t just exist at another place, say if you consider this is England and this is something like Ireland or Scotland or whatever on top so it is like you just cross one place and you go there the spiritual world is not like that the spiritual world is not just existing at another place it exists at another level of reality so it is not that somehow that you cannot gate crash into the spiritual world it is not that you just get a good enough boat or a good enough truck and you break through the doors and go in it exists at another level of reality so that means because it exists at another level of reality what it means is that that level of reality can be accessed even now while we are in this world and that brings us to the last characteristic that is everybody is glorifying the lord over there and so there is that well known verse that where the lord says so he says so he says I don’t reside in Vaikuntha I don’t reside in the hearts of my of the yogis I reside wherever the devotees are glorifying the lord devotees are glorifying now what does it mean does it literally mean that if we go to the spiritual world we say that it’s vacant, god is not there over there god is there in everybody’s heart, so why is he not there in the yogi’s heart the point which Krishna is making here is that the lord is present in the spiritual world the lord is present in everyone’s heart including the yogi’s heart but he is not perceivable there for us we can’t perceive the spiritual world we can’t perceive what is in the yogi’s heart but where there is glorification of the lord that is where we can feel his presence we come to a temple even people who are non-theistic they come to a sacred place like a temple they feel that some different vibes over here I don’t know what it is but something is different and if we come and there is an ebullient kirtan going on melodious sweet soft kirtan going on either way we find that there is some kind of sublime presence over here something extraordinary is there so we perceive the lord’s presence where the lord is glorified and that means if we start glorifying the lord we start associating with devotees whose lives are dedicated to glorifying the lord then we can start perceiving his presence even in this world and in that sense we can experience the spiritual world here itself once the devotees were taking Ishwara Prabhupada for a morning walk and normally they would take him to a park but then somehow they it was a new place they messed up the directions and they went to a place which was like quite dirty and not at all attractive and they said sorry Prabhupada we brought you here Prabhupada said you know this is Vaikuntha is really the devotee Prabhupada says you are a devotee and we are discussing Krishna katha Prabhupada is so humble he says not that I am a devotee he says you are a devotee he says wherever devotees discuss Krishna katha that is Vaikuntha so Vaikuntha is not just a place that we will attain in the future it is a consciousness that we can attain even now as we dedicate our life more and more to the glorification of the lord we can experience the contentment the freedom from not time but the fear of the influence of time freedom from cravings created by the lower modes freedom from maya all that can be experienced if we devote ourselves to glorifying the lord the essence of the spiritual world is the mood of the glorification of the lord and when we cultivate that mood so the most glorious aspect of the spiritual world is that it is always accessible it is accessible to anyone who glorifies the lord and in that sense it is not that we have to after death go to the spiritual world even now we can immerse ourselves in the consciousness that characterizes the spiritual world by reorienting our life in every situation we ask ourselves how can I serve Krishna, how can I glorify Krishna in this situation and that is what Srila Prabhupada did and that is what Srila Prabhupada has inspired and equipped all of us to also grow towards so I will summarize I spoke three broad points today, first one I spoke about the relevance of the idea of the spiritual world and then we talked about the relevance is that it is the most meaningful way to live, the connection in terms of the lord, growth of the lord and growth in our relationship with lord, contribution in this world we talked about four quadrants that materialism and modern modernity hold that only material world is real but we have not been able to replace the religious paradise by a spiritual, by a technological paradise physically many things have improved but psychologically things have worsened far more, the nihilism is nothing is real and that is a very toxic way to live the idea that monism impersonalism mayava that only the spiritual world is real that can make us again harmfully apathetic but when we understand this world is real and the other world is also real, spiritual world is real then we can act most responsibly and resourcefully and the rationale was that we may, that we all seek to seek some other world and that’s why we create fiction as an escape way so but fiction we all know is false so instead of escaping from the physical reality to a virtual reality why not be open to the possibility that there is actual reality and because there is actual higher reality that’s why we are attracted to higher reality, so attraction to the supernatural is natural because there is a natural supernatural reality and then last part was the resplendence that actually there is no time in the sense that no deteriorating aspect of time that there is it is not geographically limited it is at a particular place but it is also accessible to us if we devote ourselves to glorifying the lord thank you very much Hare Krishna we are little over time is there one question ok there are quite a few questions ok let me know when to stop thank you very much for a very nice class, I just had a question based on the last point you mentioned in your class and I was just wondering if you could maybe expand a little bit more on that basically so I’d say maybe for some of us we might have gratitude and appreciation actually from the material world because it gives us the opportunity to practice Krishna consciousness and build that connection but then I received some senior advice once that if we don’t have a distaste and really want to get out of the material world we can’t build attraction for the spiritual world and I was just wondering if you could expand a bit on that point or how we can practice and still be happy in the material world so do we need to have distaste for the material world to practice spiritual life well this is not an absolute principle see bhakti is very much individual and dynamic so the broad principle is in bhakti surrender means we accept the favorable and we avoid the unfavorable so now what will be unfavorable for whom that can vary from person to person in the bhagavad gita itself there are two broad attitudes to the material world one is as you said that how do we see the material world it is a distressful place that we need to transcend but then other is for example 8th chapter Krishna talks about this but this is also the abode of the lord’s vibhuti his opulence that everything attractive in this world manifests a spark of his splendor that’s in the 10th chapter so the idea key point is are we remembering the lord so as you said if we can remember the lord in this world then that’s wonderful so the key point is that we want to develop our relationship with the lord so for some people this world being so filled with distress that’s what inspires them to develop the relationship with the lord for some other people it may be that yeah this world is not been so bad for me but my heart longs for something more so I’m grateful for what I have and I seek something more so I don’t think we need to always focus on the fact that see distress may inspire us to turn towards the lord but distress cannot sustain us so we need a positive impetus for connecting with the lord so if it’s only distress then okay then it’s like is it really a loving relationship or is it like a forced relationship you know it’s like you know Krishna I want to come to you why because everything else is miserable well okay that’s not the like if a boy proposes to a girl please marry me she says why because no one else is ready to marry me you know that’s not the most flattering proposal so generally we should have a positive impetus for turning towards the lord thank you thank you for the class Prabhu you were talking about time and how when he says there is no time in the spiritual world that means we don’t have control we don’t have control time does not control and then also in the purport there is no past present and future can you say something about that yeah now this idea of past present and future again see there are many places in the spiritual world where in our scripture where the literal and the non literal are just seamlessly brought together so for example the Bhagavata Krishna says that that which is night for all living beings is day for the enlightened now that’s clearly not literal, it’s not that all enlightened people stay in one time zone and all ignorant people stay in another time zone and that is just 12 hours apart you know so it’s not like that, it’s referring to the domain of activity, the domain of knowledge the domain of clarity, perception night is the absence of all that it’s non literal so here when we talk about past present and future in the material world there is the idea that for example in the first canto of the Shrimad Bhagavatam it says that when we hear about the lord then what happens is when we hear about Krishna then shoka moha and bha bhaya go away and Prabhupada writes in the purport that generally we have shoka, we have lamentation about the past we have moha about the present and we have bhaya about the future we lament about the past we have illusion, what will make my life better in the present and we have fear this may go wrong, that may go wrong so when we say that there is no past present future that simply means that actually all these negative emotions associated with the past or the past was so terrible or even the past was wonderful, it’s all over now there could be nostalgia which could also be negative and the fear, we don’t know what’s going to happen it’s all filled with fear, so those negative emotions are absent it’s just like it’s eternal present in the sense that it’s like everybody is going to have in one sense be the same and they are going to have loving relationship with everyone so is there a change there is a change in the sense that it’s just new experiences are there, new past times are there, new reciprocations are there, but there is no the negativity associated with the change that we call out past, present and future that is not there Hi, Hare Krishna Could you please explain what’s the difference between the three modes of material nature and Maya Okay, what is the difference between three modes and Maya Well Maya is … … the Maya, the illusory energy is made of the three modes so what does Maya mean the word can have many different meanings the Maya is the energy of the Lord that is the creator of illusion that is it is Maya who creates the various illusions then Maya can also refer to illusion itself that the illusion that is there in the world that is also Maya then Maya can also refer state of illusion that means I am in Maya or somebody is in Maya so we said the world is not Maya, the world is not illusion but what is illusion is that the temporary appears to be eternal for us the pleasure that is insignificant appears irresistible for us there are three things over here, Maya can refer to the energy that creates illusion it can refer to the illusion itself and it can refer to the state in which somebody has gone so this is Maya now generally the modes are you could say the means by which illusion is created so Krishna for example in the Bhagavad Gita says that … … … that the material world, the material energy is, the material world and the sense objects within it they are formed through the modes so we could say the modes are like the building blocks of material existence so if somebody is watching a TV and they are completely lost in the movie now at one level the movie is nothing but just three colors of pixels on a screen That’s all there is. But those three colors of, three color pixels, RYB or whatever, RGB depending on which technology is used, that is what all those three colors of pixels are combined together in such a fascinating way that a person gets consumed by.
There are beautiful forms, there are beautiful scenes, there is action, there is all those things that are there. So, the modes, you could say like the three pixels. Three pixels, they can form so many different images.
Like that, if you consider, three modes are the three color pixels that lead to all the material objects in the world. So, we could say the modes are the resource, the means by which maya creates illusion. Okay? Thank you.
Last question. At the beginning you were saying that the devotees and the demons glorify Vishnu in the spiritual world and I have read that somewhere before as well. Is there any demons in the spiritual world? Yeah, it’s a good question.
Are there demons in the spiritual world? When Prabhupada was asked this question, he said, there are no demons, there are only rumours of demons. What he means is that, what he was explaining at that time was that when Krishna starts doing mischief, Padishah tells him, you know, this demon will come and threaten you, like she’ll bang your head, like that, you know. So, there are rumours that there are demons.
There are rumours, even when Krishna goes out, there is a rumour that demons are going to come, that creates anxiety, that creates greater absorption in Krishna, that flavours the pastime. So, in that sense, we can say there are no demons over there. But there is another way of looking at it also, that there is a demoniac mentality and there is a form that is generally associated with demoniac.
That means, say for example, the conventional idea of demons would be like, they have some horns coming out of their head and teeth coming out of their mouth and they are like ferocious looking. So, there are certain forms, which are generally associated with the demoniac nature. Now, we have the example in the Bhagavatam, Uttarasura, who had a demoniac form, but he did not have a demoniac mentality.
He was even more devoted to the Lord than Indra himself. So, when it is said over here that the Surasura Architaha, actually, I was hoping somebody would ask that question, I didn’t allow you to speak on this, good that you asked. What it means is that there can be all kinds of living beings, even those living beings whose bodily forms are associated with the demoniac nature, but they do not have the demoniac nature.
The principle is everybody is glorifying the Lord. So, even if there are living beings, which are having a form that is generally associated with the demoniac nature, but they have that form, but not that nature. And that’s how they are also glorifying the Lord.
So, the point over there is everyone is glorifying the Lord. That’s the key point. Thank you very much.
So, if you’d like to grab some, please feel free. Hare Krishna. It’s indicative, it’s not literal.