Nitāi: "To the impersonalist, achieving the brahma-bhūta stage, becoming one with the Absolute, is the last word."
O'Grady: O.K. Now, is the Absolute internal or external?
Prabhupāda: Absolute has no internal or external. That is Absolute. If there is internal and external, it is not Absolute.
O'Grady: I don't mean in time, and I don't mean in space. I mean in time in the sense that one is born and one dies, etc., that is, in one's own time, one's own Absolute, ultimately the Absolute that one finds for oneself.
Prabhupāda: No, we are not absolute. We, when we are situated in the absolute platform, then we are absolute. Now we are in the relative world. Here there is absolutism, but the sense is not so elevated to understand the absolutism. So so long we are under the control of time, there is no question of becoming absolute.
O'Grady: So therefore there is a life beyond time.
Prabhupāda: That is stated in the Bhagavad-gītā.
- janma karma me divyaṁ
- yo jānāti tattvataḥ
- tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma
- naiti mām eti kaunteya
- (BG 4.9)
Find out this verse.
Nitāi: Chapter Four, text nine:
- janma karma ca me divyam
- evaṁ yo vetti tattvataḥ
- tyaktvā dehaṁ punar janma
- naiti mam eti so 'rjuna
- (BG 4.9)
"One who knows the transcendental nature of My appearance and activities does not, upon leaving the body, take his birth again in this material world, but attains My eternal abode, O Arjuna."
Prabhupāda: And that is absolute. When he goes back to home, back to Godhead, that is absolute. So long he is in the material world, changing body, transmigrating from one body to another, that is not absolute plane. That is the duality plane, dualism. When we go back to home, back to..., in the spiritual world, that is absolute.
O'Grady: When he goes back to his original.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Thank you very much. That is the position. That is absolute.