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By Kadamba Kanana Swami

There is another world than the one we live in. It is transcendental and is not subjected to the material influences of our world. There, Lord Brahma operates on a different time scale to ours where one of his days includes thousands of cycles of the four yugas – even one cycle of which in our world is considered to be a very long period of time. In fact, kali yuga does not even manifest in such higher regions of the universe. It is said that in the heavenly planets, there is always an atmosphere of treta yuga, however Lord Brahma’s abode is called satyaloka where there is a fully transcendental atmosphere. It is so transcendental that there is no varnashrama and all its citizens are of one caste – transcendentalists.

So how insignificant are all the events that are taking place in our world!? How minute are they compared to the events of the spiritual world. Back when Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura was publishing newspapers, magazines and periodicals about the spiritual reality, he was asked by someone, “How can you publish papers about such a world all the time?” He responded that if newspapers can report about what is happening in one town or city, then why would we not report on the entire spiritual world! This is because the material world is only ekapadvibhuti (one quarter of the entire realm), whereas the spiritual world is tripatbhutam (three quarters of the total manifestation). So the spiritual world is by far much greater in every way!

In that world, more than half of the entire spiritual sky is taken up by Goloka Vrndavana and is therefore much larger than the heavenly planets of Vaikuntha which themselves happen to be much greater than the universes we know here. Yet somehow, the Lord makes the tripatbhutam (three quarters) appear in the ekapadvibhuti (one quarter), something which cannot be understood by our knowledge of physics or mathematics. So how is this possible?

There is the story that Narada told about the cobbler and the Brahmana. The cobbler was telling the Brahmana how his Lord could pull an elephant through the eye of a needle. The Brahmana refuted that this was not possible. But the cobbler was persistent and held that his Lord was amazing where he could do such things. He pointed to a banyan tree and to all the seeds that were scattered near the tree and said, “The Lord is so amazing that he can fit a whole banyan tree inside each one of these little seeds. If he can do that, then why can’t he pull an elephant through a needle?” So in this way the cobbler was not blindly believing in the Lord, but had a transcendental vision through which he could witness the Lord’s miracles around him in the material world. Such is a man of great faith. So Krsna has indeed manifested the spiritual world, a much larger dimension, within this material world, a much smaller dimension. The Lord is constantly manifesting his transcendental potency around us, through his holy name, through Govardhana and so on, and that is amazing!