What does Krishna’s statement that “I am time the destroyer” mean?

Similarly, what does Srila Prabhupada’s statement that he felt Krishna was coming as the bombs during the Second World War mean? Does it mean that Krishna is responsible for the destruction

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question, when Krishna says that time I am the destroyer of the worlds, when Shrila Prabhupada saw the bombs falling in Kolkata during the Second World War as Krishna coming, what exactly does this mean? Is Krishna the cause of the destruction? Answer, no. The cause of the destruction is the person’s bad karma because of which that person ends that particular life or ends that particular phase in the material life which gets destroyed. Now there are different levels of consciousness at which things are seen differently.
And if we don’t understand these different levels, we will get completely confused. For example, we say that actually everything is spiritual. Everywhere he would just see Krishna.
He would not see moving or unmoving things at all. Now this is a very exalted level of spiritual vision. At the same time, spiritual life begins with a basic differentiation that this is matter and this is spirit.
This is the body. This is the soul. So if we don’t differentiate this, we don’t even begin spiritual life.
And later on when we become very advanced, we learn to go beyond differences and see Krishna, see everything as a stimulus for remembering Krishna. But initially we have to separate just like a Kanishka Adhikari doesn’t see any, sees Krishna only in the deity. A Madhyam Adhikari sees that there are different reciprocations which I do with different people, which are conducive to my devotional service.
An Uttam Adhikari sees everything as a source for remembering Krishna. Similarly, with respect to death, initially when people are materialistic, they are afraid of death because they think that death is the end of their existence. When we start becoming sadhakas, at that time we need to also develop a healthy fear of death.
We don’t think of death as the end of our existence because we know that we as souls are eternal. But at the same time, death is painful. For the soul to be separated from the body to which it is attached is extremely painful.
And to the extent we recognize that death is a painful experience, to that extent we want to realize our spiritual nature. So Krishna talks about this in the 13th chapter. So that means initially we see death as the end of existence.
Then later on we see death as a fearful event which inspires us to go towards spirituality. Just like a disease inspires us to go towards the treatment. Now at a still higher level, death can be seen as Krishna.
Now Krishna talks about both. But in the 13th chapter, when he is talking about the symptoms of knowledge in 13.8-12, so in 13.9, there he doesn’t say that the person who is trying to cultivate Jnana sees death as me. No, he sees that birth, old age, disease and death are the miseries of material existence.
And one should try to find out a way to get rid of them. So if we simplistically or naively or prematurely try to, at our sadhakas, you are thinking that death is Krishna and Krishna is going to come and embrace me. Then that is a good meditation.
But factually, if we are not on that level, then we will not be able to remember it at that time. And we will undergo excruciating pain and we may not be prepared if we have not cultivated systematic remembrance of Krishna. So therefore, at our level, though conceptually we understand that death is also a manifestation of Krishna and we appreciated the exalted consciousness of advanced devotees like Srila Prabhupada, of Acharyas like him, who can see even a bomb falling as Krishna coming.
But we don’t necessarily have to, we can’t see like that at our level. So at our level, we see that death is an impetus for intensifying our devotional service. And so this is from the point of view of our vision.
Now, beyond that, if you want to see ontologically, ontologically means in terms of existence, what actually is death? So death in one sense is the destruction of the body or more specifically the separation of the soul from the body, which causes the destruction of the body. And now what is the cause of that? At a highest level, sarvakarana karanam. Krishna is the cause of everything.
But at an intermediate level, there are other causes. And those other causes are specifically our own karmic reactions. So when we, when say the World War II occurs, we can’t blame Krishna for World War II and the destruction of Calcutta, the destruction of Dresden or various European countries.
That is actually the people who, by their own misuse of free will and as a consequence of their own past karma, had to get into that war and suffer the consequences. So education means not only seeing things from a point of view of knowledge, but also seeing things from the point of view of knowledge that is appropriate for that particular context. So even in science, when scientists are looking at matter, they may sometimes look at matter from the perspective of quantum physics, where they see everything just as waves.
And other times they may see it all as particles, if they’re looking from the point of view of relativity. Or if they’re doing it at an anthropic, normal day-to-day level, then they may just apply the laws of gravity as given by Newton. So now all these are theories and depending on the framework that they are using, they will apply a particular theory.
So that’s a rough analogy, but the principle is that just as in science, depending on the framework, a particular vision is used. Similarly within scripture also, with the spirituality also, depending on the level of our consciousness, depending on the context, we see things accordingly. So we can’t in any way blame Krishna for the destruction.
And we can try when the destruction happens to see that as a manifestation of Krishna, if it is possible, but that shouldn’t paralyze us or prevent us from doing the appropriate reaction. Srila Prabhupada was always remembering Krishna and was also remembering Krishna when the bombs fell. Now if we start seeing, say, a destructive movie on television, a movie which has a lot of destruction, and start thinking this is Krishna, we may think that it is Krishna, but we will basically be enjoying tamo guna over there.
And similarly, and later on at other times, because we are not really very sober, so we are not thinking of Krishna at other times. Or actually when there is a terrorist attack and people are destroyed, houses are destroyed, people are killed, and we say actually this is Krishna coming. Now for other people, this would be terribly insensitive.
It might appear that Krishna is a heartless or vindictive God. And from our point of view also, at that time, we should be able to express human emotions of concern and compassion and commiseration. And if at that time we just in our idealistic sense say that this is Krishna, then we are actually doing a disservice.
So therefore, philosophy, we have to understand it. We want to be Krishna conscious all the time, but we want to be Krishna conscious, not just for the sake of imagining that we have a very advanced level of consciousness. We want to be Krishna conscious so that we can serve him.
Srila Prabhupada writes in the Upadesha Amrita that devotional service is not sentimental imagination or speculative ecstasy. Its substance is practical service. So from that perspective of practical service in every situation, we should not only just be philosophical and try to see from a Krishna conscious perspective, but we also also see that what Krishna conscious perspective enables me to best serve Krishna in the situation and then adopt that perspective.