Escape this temporary material nature through Krishna consciousness to achieve eternal, deathless spiritual existence.Listen — Srila Prabhupada Uvaca
Prabhupāda: ...kalpa-kṣaye punas tāni kalpādau visṛjāmy aham [Bg 9.7] [O son of Kuntī, at the end of the millennium every material manifestation enters into My nature, and at the beginning of another millennium, by My potency I again create.] Now, this verse we have been discussing last meeting, that this whole cosmic manifestation, it is not permanent. It is created, and it is again annihilated, and the whole energy is wound up into the body of the Supreme Lord. It comes out, and again it is winded. Now, jagad avyakta-mūrtinā...
Sarva-bhūtāni kaunteya prakṛtiṃ yānti māmikām [Bg 9.7]. The prakṛti... Prakṛti is not independent. Prakṛti means nature.
It is dependent on the Supreme Lord. When He desires, or when the time is, He gives us chance. This prakṛti, this material cosmic manifestation, is meant for the conditioned souls. We are all conditioned souls.
So this manifestation is given, a chance, so that we can return back to the eternal prakṛti, or eternal nature. Otherwise this prakṛti, bhūtvā bhūtvā pralīyate [Bg 8.19], [Again and again the day comes, and this host of beings is active; and again the night falls, O Pārtha, and they are helplessly dissolved.] 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. prakṛtiṃ svām avaṣṭabhya visṛjāmi punaḥ punaḥ bhūta-grāmam imaṃ kṛtsnam avaśaṃ prakṛter vaśāt [Bg 9.8] [The whole cosmic order is under Me. By My will it is manifested again and again, and by My will it is annihilated at the end.] 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.