“Greatness of Krishna” (SB 2.9.8)
Lord Brahma, who is described in the Puranas as the celestial engineer of the material cosmos, is also said to experience a single day that would last four billion solar years on a human scale of experience. Thompson suggests that descriptions such as these are practically inconceivable; and yet he goes on to show how Lord Brahma can appear comparatively insignificant when compared to the unlimited expansive qualities attributed to Lord Krsna. Thompson proposes that a variety of scientific and intellectual constructs, such as “higher dimensions” and “time dilation,” can offer helpful tools for considering the extensive time frames and expansive energies described in Puranic literature.
TRANSCRIPT: Srimad-Bhagavatam, Canto 2, Chapter 9, Text 8. “Greatness of Kṛṣṇa.” Alachua - July 7, 1994 / (048)
[Text 8:
Lord Brahmā underwent penances for one thousand years by the calculations of the demigods. He heard this transcendental vibration from the sky, and he accepted it as divine. Thus he controlled his mind and senses, and the penances he executed were a great lesson for the living entities. Thus he is known as the greatest of all ascetics.
Purport by Śrīla Prabhupāda:
Lord Brahmā heard the occult sound tapa, but he did not see the person] ...who vibrated the sound. And still he accepted the instruction as beneficial for him, and therefore he engaged himself in meditation for one thousand celestial years. One celestial year is equal to 6 × 30 × 12 × 1000 of our years. His acceptance of the sound was due to his pure vision of the absolute nature of the Lord. And due to his correct vision, he made no distinction between the Lord and the Lord’s instruction. There is no difference between the Lord and sound vibration coming from Him, even though He is not personally present. The best way of understanding is to accept such divine instruction, and Brahmā, the prime spiritual master of everyone, is the living example of this process of receiving transcendental knowledge. The potency of transcendental sound is never minimized because the vibrator is apparently absent. Therefore Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam or Bhagavad-gītā or any revealed scripture in the world is never to be accepted as an ordinary mundane sound without transcendental potency.
One has to receive the transcendental sound from the right source, accept it as a reality and prosecute the direction without hesitation. The secret of success is to receive the sound from the right source of a bona fide spiritual master. Mundane manufactured sound has no potency, and, as such, seemingly transcendental sound received from an unauthorized person also has no potency. One should be qualified enough to discern such transcendental potency, and either by discriminating or by fortunate chance if one is able to receive the transcendental sound from the bona fide spiritual master, his path of liberation is guaranteed. The disciple, however, must be ready to execute the order of the bona fide spiritual master as Lord Brahmā executed the instruction of his spiritual master, the Lord Himself. Following the order of the bona fide spiritual master is the only duty of the disciple, and this completely faithful execution of the order of the bona fide spiritual master is the secret of success.
Lord Brahmā controlled his two grades of senses by means of sense perception and sense organs because he had to engage such senses in the execution of the order of the Lord. Therefore controlling the senses means engaging them in the transcendental service of the Lord. The Lord’s order descends in disciplic succession through the bona fide spiritual master, and thus execution of the order of the bona fide spiritual master is factual control of the senses. Such execution of penance in full faith and sincerity made Brahmājī so powerful that he became the creator of the universe. And because he was able to attain such power, he is called the best amongst all the tapasvīs.
om ajñāna-timirāndhasya
jñānāñjana-śalākayā
cakṣur unmīlitaṁ yena
tasmai śrī-gurave namaḥ
śrī-caitanya-mano-'bhīṣṭaṁ sthāpitaṁ yena bhū-tale
svayaṁ rūpaḥ kadā mahyaṁ dadāti sva-padāntikam
Translation:
Lord Brahmā underwent penances for one thousand years by the calculations of the demigods. He heard this transcendental vibration from the sky, and he accepted it as divine. Thus he controlled his mind and senses, and the penances he executed were a great lesson for the living entities. Thus he is known as the greatest of all ascetics.
So we have Lord Brahmā, who is sitting on the lotus flower, and who has just heard the vibration tapa, which came from an unknown source, and he accepted this as a divine instruction. This indicates that his consciousness was already developed. He basically had just taken birth, and there were no other persons around to instruct him. But he understood the meaning of this word tapa, so he apparently didn't have to learn language by, basically, listening to his parents speak and so on and so forth.
[4:51]
The situation for Brahmā is quite remarkable. He lives, first of all, for a very long period of time. It is said that one day in the life of Lord Brahmā is 4,320,000,000 years, so the day – that means the period of daylight – the day plus the night makes one full day, so that's twice 4,320,000,000 years. And then, 360 of such days make up one year in the life of Brahmā. He lives 100 years, so that comes out to a rather long period of time. It's interesting to consider how big these numbers are. Consider this number 4,320,000,000. Now if you replace each year by one second, then ask how long that would be. It's how long is 4,320,000,000 seconds? That comes out to about 137 years. None of us has lived, thus far, for 4,320,000,000 seconds, so even that is a very long time, but the day of Brahmā is 4,320,000,000 years. Of course, there are changes in scale of the time. Lord Brahmā apparently lives on a different scale of time than we do.
It's described that, for example, there is a king named Kakudmī, a somewhat remarkable king. He was living on the earth, but he had a daughter named Revatī. He wanted to get a husband for his daughter, so he decided he would ask Lord Brahmā to select the husband. So he went with his daughter to Brahmaloka, where Lord Brahmā lives. And I think not… this can't generally be done by a typical king of the time, but he was able to do it somehow. So he went there with his daughter. Lord Brahmā was engaged in listening to a symphony put on by the Gandharvas, so he was busy. But after the musical performance was over, the king made his request. Brahmā laughed and said, “Well, all of the prospective husbands that you were thinking of for your daughter died long ago. And as a matter of fact, the very civilization in which you are living has been reduced to dust and all memory of it has been completely lost.” In fact, 120 million years had passed on the earth during the time that humans were waiting there for Lord Brahmā to answer his request. Of course, the story goes, that Lord Brahmā told him that, actually, Lord Balarama is the suitable husband for your daughter. He's on the earth right now, so if you go back really quickly, you'll be able to meet him. So he did that, and so Revatī married Lord Balarama. So a somewhat unusual king! He was connected with Dvārakā, by the way, in some fashion. The previous name of Dvārakā was Kuśasthalī, and this king was involved with that city, so a somewhat unusual king.
There was another story also illustrating how time goes at a different rate for Brahmā. That's the story of the brahma-vimohana-līlā, in which Lord Brahmā steals the calves and cowherd boys from Kṛṣṇa and hides them in a cave in a state of suspended animation, just to see what Kṛṣṇa can do. Of course, the story is that Kṛṣṇa immediately expanded himself as a duplicate set of calves and cowherd boys who were identical with the ones that had been hidden away by Brahmā, so everything seemed to go on exactly as before.
[9:47]
The story is that Brahmā, after hiding the calves and cowherd boys, returned to his abode. But he was quite worried about what he had done, because this was a sort of a somewhat rash thing to do. So within a moment of his time, he came back to see what happened. So during that period, one year had passed on the earth. Brahmā came back after one year and saw that all the calves and cowherd boys were still there. And he just couldn't figure out what happened. Then he checked in the cave and he found that they were there also. So this was quite bewildering to him. Finally, Kṛṣṇa revealed the actual situation. He revealed his full potency and all the calves and cowherd boys that he had simulated to have been seen by Brahmā as expansions of Kṛṣṇa – they were all Viṣṇu forms – and Brahmā was completely astonished by this. In fact, he even fainted as a result of seeing this.
In that story, the time period that Brahmā was away in his calculation was one truṭi. You can ask how long a truṭi is. Let's see, I forget the exact figure, but it's something along the order of 1/37,000th of a second, something like that. It's interesting, if you ask how many 1/37,000th’s of a second there are in one year, which was the earth time that had lapsed when Brahmā was away, it turns out to be the same as the number of hours that there are in 120 million years. So then it makes sense that the King, Kakudmī, was in Brahmaloka for about an hour. It's the same ratio. That fits the story quite nicely, because he went up there, waited for the symphony presentation by the Gandharvas to finish, then asked his question, and came back down to the earth. So there are different scales of time. The situation of Brahmā is that, on the one hand, he has a material body, but his body is so much greater in terms of its potencies than the material bodies we know of that it provides an interesting standard of comparison.
There's a story about how to show a child how far away the moon is. The story is, you show the child the moon through the branches of a tree, because if you just looked at the moon in the sky and you don't have anything to compare it with, you can't really tell how far away it is – it’s just a light you see. But if you see it against the branches of the tree, you can see it's a lot further than the branches of the tree. I was just noticing this type of thing the other day. I was walking under one of the trees here, and through the tree, you could see these cirrus clouds up above. You could see: well, they're a lot higher up than the branches of the tree. So you might think: well, the branches of the tree are quite far overhead, but those clouds were obviously much further than the branches of the tree. And, of course, the moon is much further than the clouds. In fact, if you used even the scientists' figures for the distance to the moon, the moon would be about 500 times further than the clouds than the clouds are further than the branches of the tree. It gives you an idea of how far things are.
By looking at the description of Lord Brahmā, you can get an idea of how great the Supreme Personality of Godhead is. That's one of the functions of these descriptions in the Bhāgavatam, because if you hear directly of, say, the pastimes of Lord Kṛṣṇa, as given for example in the Third Canto, then it's difficult there to appreciate the actual position of Kṛṣṇa. So there will be a tendency to think that Kṛṣṇa may be actually like an ordinary human being. That tendency would be there. But if you compared Kṛṣṇa with Brahmā, then you can see how great Kṛṣṇa must be, because He is unlimitedly greater than Brahmā, but Brahmā is so much greater than we are that it's hard even to understand his situation.
[15:00]
So these time spans can help do that also. For example, you think of something that is eternal – it goes on for an infinite period of time, and it never had a beginning, so no matter how far back you go in time, you never come to the beginning. So it's a little bit difficult to understand infinity, but you can make a comparison, let's say, with the lifespan of Brahmā, which is 4,320,000,000 years as one day. That's actually nothing compared with infinity. Infinity is quite large. You can say, take a billion and run a billion times a billion, that's still nothing compared to infinity. So you can multiply a billion times a billion a billion times, and that's still nothing compared to infinity. But you can take that number, and you can multiply that number by itself a number of times equal to that number, which is still nothing compared to infinity. And you can up that process. Of course, quickly, it becomes meaningless. We can't even imagine a number like that. So you can say that, but it's just words if you can't even grasp how big that is. Still, those are finite numbers. So Kṛṣṇa, in terms of time, is infinite like that.
In terms of, well let’s see, extent over space, consider that Brahmā is the creator within this universe, and this is just one universe. There are unlimitedly many universes. Each universe is like... it's compared to a bubble of foam in the ocean. So if you’ve ever walked along the shore of the ocean, especially in a place like San Diego, you'll see that there's a lot of foam. The foam is made of tiny little bubbles that you can hardly see. But the ocean is vast, and there's this foam extending over the vast area. So you can imagine, each little bubble of foam corresponds to an entire universe floating within the causal ocean. That gives you an idea of how big the universe is. Within each universe like this, there's a Brahmā. So Brahmā is so much greater than we are, but there are innumerable Brahmās.
Furthermore, it turns out – this is curious, he seems to be always winding up being humbled in various ways – it turns out, this is the smallest of the universes. Of course, I'd imagine there are many universes the same size as this one. It's sort of like the Volkswagen model of the universe, you could say. In any case, many other universes are a lot bigger than this one.
There's an account that illustrates this where Lord Brahmā goes to see Lord Kṛṣṇa in Dvārakā. The story goes that a lot of demigods and so on were visiting Lord Kṛṣṇa. He had a secretary who was keeping track of everybody's appointments and scheduling and so forth. So Brahmā sat down in the waiting room and told the secretary, please tell Lord Kṛṣṇa Brahmā has come to see him. The secretary went in, came out a little while later and said, “Lord Kṛṣṇa wants to know which Brahmā has come to see him.” Brahmā was a little bit astonished by that. He said, “Well, it's the four-headed Brahmā who is the father of the four Kumarās.” That should at least identify who he is. Later, when Brahmā got to see Lord Kṛṣṇa, he asked Lord Kṛṣṇa, “What do you mean by asking which Brahmā has come to see you? Is there any Brahmā other than me in this universe? Lord Kṛṣṇa meditated and sent out a message to innumerable Brahmās in various universes. And all of them immediately came into the same room with Kṛṣṇa and our Lord Brahmā.
[19:56]
It is said that these Brahmās had varying numbers of heads. It seems pretty much they went by powers of two: there were four-headed Brahmās, and then Brahmās with 16 heads, 64 heads, and then many thousands of heads. This creates, by the way, a problem for artists. There's a painting by Jadurani, I think in the Teachings of Lord Caitanya, which depicts this – each of these Brahmās sort of looks like a Christmas tree of heads [laughter]. And of course, you can wonder, how does this work exactly? How are the necks arranged, not to speak of the, you know, the esophaguses [laughter]. But in any case, so there were Brahmās there with millions of heads. The thought that I've had on this is that these heads must be arranged in a higher dimensional fashion, because in higher dimensions, you have more room for these things.
In any case, the entry of these Brahmās into Kṛṣṇa's room was definitely a higher dimensional thing. It was interesting that our Brahmā could see all of them by Kṛṣṇa's grace, but each of the other Brahmās found that he was alone with Kṛṣṇa in that room. And each one of them separately had a conversation with Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa would say to the Brahmā, “How are things doing in your universe now?” The Brahmā would say, “Well, now that you have incarnated within my universe, there's no problem with the demons.” Each Brahmā thought that he was with Kṛṣṇa in his own universe. He couldn't see these other Brahmās. That means that the one Kṛṣṇa was in all of the universes of these different Brahmās at one time. Each Brahmā was visiting him within his own universe, but our Brahmā was allowed to see all of that. So each Brahmā was separately bowing down at the feet of Lord Kṛṣṇa. It's described that when his helmets would touch the floor at Lord Kṛṣṇa's lotus feet, there would be a clinking sound. And so the total summation of all of these clinking sounds from unlimited millions of Brahmās was heard by our Lord Brahmā – it was a tumultuous sound. Somehow or other, he was able to see within that one room all of the different Brahmās meeting Kṛṣṇa, who was simultaneously in all of the different universes. So that was the situation. That gives you an idea then of how great Kṛṣṇa must be, because we have trouble even imagining how great Brahmā must be. But Kṛṣṇa could summon all of those Brahmās, and of course that's not all that He was doing. That was just one of His activities. So, let’s see.
Now in the purport, Śrīla Prabhupāda then makes some practical observations concerning this. Actually, it's interesting to consider what the implications are if all of this is true, because you could say, “Well, is this true? Do we really believe this? What are the implications?” So the basic story that you have presented here is that, of course, you have Kṛṣṇa ,who was the person who created everything, who's in control of everything; He has deputed this being, Brahmā, who He created as the secondary creator of the universe. So Brahmā proceeds by creating a number of very powerful beings called Prajāpatis. These Prajāpatis then create additional beings, and they produce generations of beings, and so forth, and finally you have the entire population of the universe being generated. You have basically a hierarchy of different levels. There's Brahmā, there's Prajāpatis, there are the ruling demigods, and so forth. The whole thing is organized, and it is all under control. There’s intelligent control at every level.
[24:42]
The universe... actually, the word for it is “cosmos.” Cosmos is a Greek word, and the counterpart of that is “chaos.” Chaos means that everything is just disorderly, running just by natural forces, basically. Cosmos would be an orderly universe controlled by a higher authority and power. So according to this description, what we're living in is actually a cosmos. It's actually controlled at every level. Now it turns out that the basic assumption of modern civilization, on which everything is running, is that we are the only intelligent beings who are within... at least the part of the universe that we are interacting with. If there are any other intelligent beings in the universe, they're very far away, and we don't see them or have anything to do with them, and they don't come here. So according to that basic way of looking at things, we're completely in control. At least, we're the only intelligent controllers. There may be forces in nature that are more powerful than we are. For example, if there's a tremendous earthquake, it will knock down our buildings and so forth, but there's no intelligent power that is above us. Therefore, we can decide what we want to do and carry out our plans without any consideration that we might be violating some higher rule or higher authority. That's basically what you have in modern civilization. And interestingly enough, the result is that we make a total mess of things. There's the widespread fear that we're destroying the environment and the earth and so on and so forth. If the description given here is true, then there are higher authorities in the universe, there are higher authorities directly involved with this earth, and in fact our activities are offensive to these higher authorities. So that would indicate that one can expect some kind of punishment or retribution. This is the basic picture you get if you accept what is being said here in the Bhāgavatam. But, so in any case, I'll stop there. Are there any questions or comments?
Question: Brahmā is praised for being able to perform austerities for 1,000 celestial years. I don't want to be offensive to Lord Brahmā, but is that such an accomplishment, considering his life span... equivalency to what? Is that the same if I perform austerities for a few hours?
Answer: Well, one thing I wondered, considering these relative time spans of Brahmā, is just what his consciousness is during those spans of time. For example, let's say that about an hour in Satyaloka would correspond to 120 million years here. Now in an hour, most of us don't really accomplish very much. What I've observed is that what you can accomplish in an hour varies quite a bit. For example, you can be in sort of in a semi-comatose state – an hour goes by just like that and we haven't done anything. On the other hand, if you're really alert, really in a good state of consciousness, you might get a lot done within an hour. That indicates that within the same period of clock time, we can experience... we can have different degrees of experience both in terms of quality and quantity. So the question is, what is the experience that Brahmā has in one hour of his time? You might actually tap into 120 million years worth of our consciousness in that time. Furthermore, not only that, but it won't be 120 million years of distracted consciousness, just going this way and that. It may be 120 million years worth of focused consciousness. What can you accomplish if you could do that?! You might create a universe. It seems to me that this is quite possible. So when Brahmā was meditating for 1,000 celestial years, then that might in fact be quite beyond our meditation in an hour or so. That's a thought, considering that. Yeah?
[30:00]
Q: [unclear]... he constructed a temple, and then went to Lord Brahmā to ask him to do the honors of carrying out the installation. He had the same experience when he came [unclear], but when he came back, the temple was destroyed – generations and generations of his predecessors were destroyed. No one knew who he was, no one knew what was going on. And then another temple had been constructed for which someone else was taking credit and was going to install the deities, so he had to figure all that out.
A: Right. Yeah?
Q: The demigods, they also get to go to Brahmaloka sometimes, especially when there's a problem. Now the demigods' time span is greater than ours. Is it proper to think, though, it's less than Lord Brahmā's because Brahmā's on a higher platform?
A: I believe so.
Q: So, [unclear]... when they come back, the same thing? The same massive change in time? When Lord Bhūmi, Mother Bhūmi, went to Brahmā and complained that the earth is being over-run, then they all went to the ocean of milk, and then they came back, by that time there would have been a whole different population on the earth.
A: Well yeah, what did Lord Bhūmii do? I don't know exactly. Maybe she didn't spend very much time there. But I don't really have the answer to that.