20 Mar 2023
[Shri Phani asked: In one of Your messages, You said that God is past eternal. God is beyond space and time. How can we understand the past eternality of God as eternal means existing in all times like past, present and future? All the mediated incarnations (energetic or human) are eternal only existing in all the times. How can past eternal be understood in this context of mediated incarnations?]
Swami replied:- Eternal definitely means that which is permanent in past, present and future (Trikālābādhya sattā). But, Dr. Nikhil introduced this terminology like past eternal, present eternal and future eternal and I felt that he is also correct because past eternal means that the item existed throughout the past time and did not perish after some little time in the past. The time that passed before creation was very very long. Suppose, I wanted to say that a human being existed in past, which was some millions of years before creation (an assumption only). But, that human being lived for its full lifetime, which might have been 100 yrs. Now, I cannot say that this human being was past eternal because he did not live for all those millions of years. I have to say that this referred human being was not past eternal. Suppose I say that human being lived all the millions of years in the past till the beginning of this creation (an assumption only).
Therefore, the terminology like past eternal, present eternal and future eternal can be justified in view of the above discussion. Past eternal means that the item existed throughout the past time that ran till the starting point of creation and disappeared in the beginning of creation and hence, it will not exist in the future also. Such an item is past eternal and present non-eternal and future non-eternal. If you refer an item which is eternal in the past, present and future, you can say that it is simply eternal, which means that it is past eternal, present eternal and future eternal. Such terminology was used in philosophy (Vedaanta Shastram) by ancient scholars like ‘Sādiranantaḥ saṃsāraḥ’, which means that this world is having beginning (which means that it is past non-eternal), but, is existing in the present (present eternal) and will exist in the future (future eternal).
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