Otherwise this prakṛti, bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate (BG 8.19): as you have studied in the Eighth Chapter, it is created, it is maintained and it is annihilated. Kalpa-kṣaye punas tāni kalpādau visṛjāmy aham. So each creation is called a kalpa, and it, after kalpa, after similar years . . . one kalpa, that is not possible for us to calculate, how many years, but some idea is given in this Bhagavad-gītā that suppose the kalpa exists for so many years, and as we have got calculation of the day of the year, just like 365 days in a year, so the duration of one day is given in the Bhagavad-gītā as forty-three hundred thousands of years into one thousand. That is the calculation of one day of the whole cosmic creation.
Now, we are concerned how to get out of this temporary life. We are hankering after eternal life, how to get out of this temporary life. That should be our problem. There is no use calculating for how many years one kalpa, one duration of this cosmic manifestation, is maintained. But our concern is that whether we can get out of these clutches of material nature and get into our spiritual nature and have our eternal blissful life. That is our problem.
That we can make solution. If we culture the Kṛṣṇa consciousness seriously, then even after annihilation of this body, we can get into the spiritual nature and . . . spiritual nature, and we are also spirit; therefore there is no difference; there is no question of birth and death. That is the problem.
- prakṛtiṁ svām avaṣṭabhya
- visṛjāmi punaḥ punaḥ
- bhūta-grāmam imaṁ kṛtsnam
- avaśaṁ prakṛter vaśāt
- (BG 9.8)
Prakṛter vaśāt. We are completely under the grip of the stringent laws of material nature, and we are repeatedly put into that stringent laws of material nature so that we may come into our consciousness that "Why we are suffering this repeated birth and death?" But we have become so much dull and so much accustomed to this habit . . . because it is continuing since a very, very long time, time immemorial, so we have become accustomed. We have become accustomed. So we don't take it very seriously that why we are dying and why we are getting again body and why we are suffering these miseries.
So this is called ignorance. This is called ignorance. So we are not very serious. Especially in this age we are not very serious. We think that this is the process of life. No. This is not the process of life. You have got your life. If you like, you can have your life eternal, without any birth and death, just to get rid . . . just getting out of this material nature.