Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Eternal Spiritual Time




SB 1.8.28 
My Lord, I consider Your Lordship to be eternal time, the supreme controller, without beginning and end,

SB 2.5.21 
By His own potency, the Lord, who is the controller of all energies, thus creates eternal time, the fate of all living entities, and the particular natures the living entities had accepted for being created again, before they had independently merged into Him.

SB 2.6.42 
Kāraṇārṇavaśāyī Viṣṇu is the first incarnation of the Supreme Lord, and He is the master of eternal time, space, cause and effects, mind, the elements, the material ego, the modes of nature, the senses, the universal form of the Lord, Garbhodakaśāyī Viṣṇu, and the sum total of all living beings, both moving and nonmoving.

SB 3.5.27 
Thereafter, influenced by the interactions of eternal time, the supreme sum total of matter called the mahat-tattva became manifested, and in this mahat-tattva the unalloyed goodness, the Supreme Lord, sowed the seeds of universal manifestation out of His own body.

SB 3.10.11
Eternal time is the primeval source of the interactions of the three modes of material nature. It is unchangeable and limitless, and it works as the instrument of the Supreme Personality of Godhead for His pastimes in the material creation.

Purport
The impersonal time factor is the background of the material manifestation as the instrument of the Supreme Lord. It is the ingredient of assistance offered to material nature. No one knows where time began and where it ends, and it is time only which can keep a record of the creation, maintenance and destruction of the material manifestation. This time factor is the material cause of creation and is therefore a self expansion of the Personality of Godhead. Time is considered the impersonal feature of the Lord.

Metaphysically, time is distinguished as absolute and real. Absolute time is continuous and is unaffected by the speed or slowness of material things. Time is astronomically and mathematically calculated in relation to the speed, change and life of a particular object. Factually, however, time has nothing to do with the relativities of things; rather, everything is shaped and calculated in terms of the facility offered by time. Time is the basic measurement of the activity of our senses, by which we calculate past, present and future; but in factual calculation, time has no beginning and no end.

SB 3.10.12 
This cosmic manifestation is separated from the Supreme Lord as material energy by means of kāla, which is the unmanifested, impersonal feature of the Lord.

SB 3.11.38 
The duration of the two parts of Brahmā's life, as above mentioned, is calculated to be equal to one nimeṣa [less than a second] for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is unchanging and unlimited and is the cause of all causes of the universe.

PURPORT
The great sage Maitreya has given a considerable description of the time of different dimensions, beginning from the atom up to the duration of the life of Brahmā. Now he attempts to give some idea of the time of the unlimited Personality of Godhead. He just gives a hint of His unlimited time by the standard of the life of Brahmā. The entire duration of the life of Brahmā is calculated to be less than a second of the Lord's time, and it is explained in the Brahma-saṁhitā (5.48) as follows:

yasyaika-niśvasita-kālam athāvalambya
jīvanti loma-vilajā jagad-aṇḍa-nāthāḥ
viṣṇur mahān sa iha yasya kalā-viśeṣo
govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

"I worship Govinda, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the cause of all causes, whose plenary portion is Mahā-Viṣṇu. All the heads of the innumerable universes [the Brahmās] live only by taking shelter of the time occupied by one of His breaths." 

The impersonalists do not believe in the form of the Lord, and thus they would hardly believe in the Lord's sleeping. Their idea is obtained by a poor fund of knowledge; they calculate everything in terms of man's capacity. They think that the existence of the Supreme is just the opposite of active human existence; because the human being has senses, the Supreme must be without sense perception; because the human being has a form, the Supreme must be formless; and because the human being sleeps, the Supreme must not sleep. Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, however, does not agree with such impersonalists. It is clearly stated herein that the Supreme Lord rests in yoga-nidrā, as previously discussed. And because He sleeps, naturally He must breathe, and the Brahma-saṁhitā confirms that within His breathing period innumerable Brahmās take birth and die.
There is complete agreement between Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam and the Brahma-saṁhitā. Eternal time is never lost along with the life of Brahmā. It continues, but it has no ability to control the Supreme Personality of Godhead because the Lord is the controller of time. In the spiritual world there is undoubtedly time, but it has no control over activities. Time is unlimited, and the spiritual world is also unlimited, since everything there exists on the absolute plane.

SB3.11.40
Eternal time is certainly the controller of different dimensions, from that of the atom up to the superdivisions of the duration of Brahmā's life; but, nevertheless, it is controlled by the Supreme. Time can control only those who are body conscious, even up to Satyaloka or the other higher planets of the universe.

BTG, 1970, #32 , Hayagrīva dās Adhikārī, Kṛṣṇa līlā: The Divine Forms and Pastimes :
While He was here He remained 125 years, and while He was on the Battlefield of Kurukṣetra He was 100 years old, yet His eternal Body appeared as that of a fresh youth’s. During every second of these 125 years, this sequence of pastimes was appearing in all other parts of the infinite universes. Although these līlās are always occuring with clock-like precision, Lord Kṛṣṇa is always aloof from them.

BTG, 1999, #33-6, Manjari devi dasi, Navadvipa, A Timeless History:
The air fills with the sounds of voices, bells, and hand cymbals as the devotees sing the Lord’s glories. The eternal activity of worshiping the Lord saturates the atmosphere, and past, present, and future merge. Such a sense of eternal time is possible only here, in the holy dhāma (abode) of the Lord, which continues to exist even after this world is annihilated. 


BTG 2006 # 40, Time in the Spiritual World:
Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura
Jaiva Dharma
Time in the spiritual world has a singular aspect; it is always in the present, whereas past and future are absent. The jiva and the Supreme Lord, Sri Krsna, exist in that spiritual time.

Brahma-saṁhitā 5.56
[Time in the spiritual world] is ever present and without past or future and hence is not subject to the quality of passing away even for the space of half a moment.


Bhaktivinoda thakura, Sri Bhaktya Loka,  8: Niścaya :
The living entities who are under the blind wheel of Māyā are called nitya-baddha. In this regard, the word nitya is applied in regard to material time. When by the touch of spiritual substance the spiritual time factor is awakened, then their conditioned nature is seen as temporary.


Bhaktivinoda thakura , Jaiva dharma, 2,  The Nitya-dharma of the Living Entity Is Pure and Everlasting:
Material time, within this illusory energy field, has three conditions—past, present and future. Time in the spiritual world has a singular aspect; it is always in the present, whereas past and future are absent. The jīva and the Supreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa, exist in that spiritual time. 

Bhaktivinoda Vani vaibhava, Sri Krsna, 34. 
How are Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes transcendental? What are the ingredients of such pastimes?
The material world is the perverted reflection of the spiritual world. Here everything is polluted by māyā. In the spiritual world, māyā and the three modes of material nature do not exist. There everything is impeccable and made of pure goodness including time, place, and all other objects. The pastimes of Kṛṣṇa are transcendental to material nature, and therefore they are fully spiritual. Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes are nourished by faultless time, place, sky, water, and so on. Within spiritual time, which is unlike material time, the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa are eightfold. They take place at dawn, morning, pre-noon, noon, afternoon, evening, night, and late at night. In this way Kṛṣṇa’s pastimes are divided into eight, according to the different times of the day and night, and thus they are nourishing the eternal uninterrupted rasa.
(Caitanya-śikṣāmṛta 6/5)

Brihad Bhagavatamrita, 2.4.117:
“The duration of the two parts of Brahmā’s life is calculated to equal one nimeṣa [less than a second] for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, the unchanging, the unlimited, the cause of all causes of the universe.” This scale of comparative time is only metaphorical, yet such a figurative sense of spiritual time contributes to the charm of the Supreme Lord’s līlās in Vaikuṇṭha. In reality, time in Vaikuṇṭha is not the kind of force it is in the material world; time does not delimit the lifespan of residents in Vaikuṇṭha, because everything there is eternal and infallible.

SuhotraSwami, Dimention of Good and Evel,  2: 
Chapter Two, The Fall From Beyond Time 
Material time originates from spiritual time (citkāla). Caitanya-sikṣāmṛtam 5.3


Bhakti Tirtha Swami, Reflections on secred teachings, Time Consciousness :
Interestingly, in the spiritual world, the nature of time is completely the opposite. Spiritual time is not only perpetual, but rejuvenates rather than destroys. We should remind ourselves that the amount of time we spend engaged in devotional service is only a moment in eternal time.
We can acquire a sense of happiness through the realization that the amount of time we spend engaged in sadhana-bhakti constitutes an insignificant interval of spiritual time. When we wake up, we will be back in the spiritual kingdom.

H.H. Sivarama Swami, Nava Vraja Mahima, volume one, prefece:
 So immersed are the Vraja-vāsīs in loving exchanges with the Lord that they forget the passing of time, which, although eternally fixed in the present, also drives the sequence of events that constitute their loving pastimes with Kṛṣṇa.

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