What is time – Is there no time in the spiritual world?

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Transcript

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Question from Sharath Prabhu. Is time, the manifestation of the Lord, is time one of the elements of material existence? And is time not present in the spiritual world? What exactly is time when we understand it in different, in these different contexts? There is the practical conception of time. In terms of, we say, what is the time now? We may say it is 12.55 now, or whatever.
So, this conception of time is a practical feature for our day-to-day life. And this time feature has not just the conception of past, present and future. It’s 12.55 now, few minutes ago it was 12.50. Few minutes later it will be 1 o’clock.
So, this sort of flow of time, in terms of there being a past and there being a future, that is just a practical fact of life. And this is there even in the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, there are different past times.
Krishna person comes at different times. In the morning, he performs certain pastimes. In the afternoon, he performs certain pastimes.
And this daily cycle goes on. So, then what do we say that, when we say that even as much time as is required for the blinking of an eyelid, even that much time does not flow in the spiritual world. That essentially means, if you look at how Krishna defines time in the Bhagavad Gita.
कालोस्मी लोकक्षेर्प्रम्धो Time I am the destroyer of the worlds. So, in this world, time has the characteristic of controlling and has the characteristic of destroying. Destroying means that our body is getting deteriorated, our intelligence is getting deteriorated.
And we are going to lose whatever we have. That happens by the passage of time. In the spiritual world, this destructive feature of time is not there.
So, there is eternal cyclicity. And there are elderly people in Vrindavan, but they are eternally elderly. In Mahadeshwar, they are not exactly elderly.
They are middle-aged. But they are eternally middle-aged. It’s not that they will grow older and older.
So, Krishna is also an eternally youthful person in the spiritual world. So, the flow of time in terms of there being facilitation of variety in Krishna’s pastimes, in that sense, time is there. But time does not destroy.
And similarly, time does not control. Now, we may enjoy doing something, but then the time runs out. Oh, I don’t have time to do this.
But in the spiritual world, time never runs out in that sense. When Krishna wants to perform Raas Leela, he can expand one night of one day into as long as one Rama’s night. He can just expand it.
So, time does not control Krishna. And time does not destroy. So, it is in this sense that time is not present.
But in the spiritual world, time is like an assistant of Krishna facilitating his various pastimes. In the spiritual world, everything is centred around maximizing Krishna’s pleasure. And time also facilitates Krishna’s pleasure by providing variety in his pastimes.
And then, it is only when there is time, then there can be recollection. Oh, we had this wonderful pastimes with Krishna. They were in the past, but in their memory, they are like eternally there in the present.
So, certainly time in that sense is present in the spiritual world, but not in the sense of controlling or destroying. So, that Kaalausmi, Lokakshay, that Lokakshay never happens in the spiritual world. Because things are eternal.
Now with respect to time as it is present in this world, yes, in the standard Sankhya analysis into 24 elements, time is not considered to be one of the elements because these are talking more about the constituent elements within the world. Whereas, time is like the actuating agent, is the agent which causes changes. Like, when we are cooking some food, if we want to make Kheer, then when we are giving a list of ingredients, we will not say, have gas over there.
Of course, gas or fire or some sort of heating energy is required. But that is not listed as an ingredient. That is the agent which causes change.
So generally, in the same sense, when Sankhya analysis of material world is done, when the ingredients of material world are talked about, Kaal is not talked about as one of them. Kaal is the change. And when Kaal does change like this, the thrust, the focus of the change is that, where does the energy for change come from? That is Krishna himself.
So when we say, when Kunti Maharaj says this in 1.8.28, that time, I consider you to be time, the control. So that is, Krishna is manifesting himself as time. And he brings about changes in this world for the sake of for the sake of gradually reforming and elevating the living beings.
So in that sense, time is not exactly an ingredient among the particular ingredients and standards of Sankhya analysis because it is the agent which brings all these ingredients together, transforms them and creates variety in this world.