Answer
Srila Prabhupada answers this within the same purport. He explains that the material body has no factual existence in relation to the eternal soul. It is like a dream. In a dream, we may think we are flying in the sky or sitting on a royal chariot, but when we awaken, we realize that none of it was actually real.
Similarly, our experience of past, present, and future belongs to the dream-like experience of material existence. We should not assume that the time scale we are currently experiencing is the ultimate reality. It is an illusory time scale created within material existence.
Think of an actor absorbed in a drama. While acting, he experiences the script and its timeline as if it were real. But once the drama ends, he returns to his actual life. In the same way, material time (kala) is an energy of the Lord that operates only within the material world.
The Vedic system encourages self-realization by understanding the non-existence of the material body in relation to the eternal self. Our false identification with the body creates the experience of material time. Once we identify ourselves as the soul, we begin to understand that the soul is beyond the material sequence of past, present, and future.
Even within this world, different beings experience time differently. An animal lives largely in the immediate moment. A small baby has very little perception of past and future. As we grow, we develop a stronger sense of time. Thus, these perceptions are all part of the material time scale.
There are many relative scales of time. Brahma experiences time differently from humans. A movie may portray a person’s entire life in three hours, while the viewer continues living in ordinary time. The mind itself can create many different experiences of time.
Suppose you perform in a drama where your character suffers intensely from beginning to end. When the drama ends, you feel relief because you realize that the suffering was limited to the duration of the performance. Similarly, our present lifetime, which seems so significant, is actually insignificant from the perspective of the eternal soul.
We mistakenly think, “This body is my life; this span of years is my existence.” But the soul is not the body.
In the spiritual world, there is also time, but it is not material time. We cannot fully understand spiritual time because it is beyond our present experience. Material time destroys everything. Spiritual time does the opposite—it expands existence, consciousness, and bliss (sat, cit, and ananda). Nothing diminishes there; rather, relationships, rasa, and spiritual joy continually increase.
Therefore, the soul is eternal, and its true existence is beyond the material conception of past, present, and future. Material time belongs only to the temporary dream-like experience of bodily identification.
