CHAPTER 11, TEXT 32: The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people. With the exception of you [the Pāṇḍavas], all the soldiers here on both sides will be slain.
65 million people die each year in the world.
That is 178,000 each day,
7425 each hour,
and 120 each minute (bioethics.georgetown.edu).
That means that every SECOND, two people die. In the time span of writing this post over the past minute or so, 100 people have died.
Krishna says in this verse, "Time I am, the great destroyer of the worlds, and I have come here to destroy all people." Time does not only destroy people, but all living beings, all natural formations of the earth, the world itself, all the worlds, all the universes... time destroys all.
How come Krishna is saying this powerful statement? In the verses previous to this one, Arjuna is describing what he sees in Krishna's universal form: "I see all people rushing full speed into Your mouths, as moths dash to destruction in a blazing fire" (11.29) and "O Viṣhṇu, I see You devouring all people from all sides with Your flaming mouths" (11.30). Arjuna is again repeating himself, terrified and awestruck, trying to make sense of what he sees. How can he see all people rushing into God's mouth to be devoured and destroyed? Isn't God supposed to be... well, good?
Prabhupad explains, "Although Arjuna knew that Kṛṣṇa was his friend and the Supreme Personality of Godhead, he was puzzled by the various forms exhibited by Kṛṣṇa. Therefore he asked further about the actual mission of this devastating force." Puzzled indeed! One can imagine that Arjuna is trying to process not only that his friend is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but that God would devour people and the worlds in such a terrifying display. Interestingly, Prabhupad writes that Arjuna wanted to know further about the "actual mission" of this force - he wants to know what these flaming mouths actually mean and why they matter.
This is Krishna's response: "Time I am, great destroyer of the worlds."
Time.
Amazing. We glance at the clock throughout the day, keeping track of its passage in order to go to work, eat, go to sleep, make appointments, catch a flight, and more. I have glanced at my computer clock a few times during this post, calculating how long I've spent writing.
In the past 15 minutes, 1,800 people have died.
Prabhupad writes, "Time is destruction, and all manifestations are to be vanquished by the desire of the Supreme Lord. That is the law of nature."
This destruction is what Arjuna is seeing by the flaming mouths of the universal form. Note that Prabhupad says that "all manifestations" will be destroyed. This means that death will come for all of us one day, for death "is an inevitable process eventually occurring in all living organisms" (wikipedia.org). So yes, over 2,000 human beings have died within the past 20 minutes or so, but what about all the living organisms on this planet?
Millions, maybe even billions of beings die every minute, every second.
What's more, the world itself is being destroyed at every minute. For example, if a house is left alone for even a year with no one to live in it or care for it, it begins to decay. Just by the passage of time, the house is destroyed. This goes for anything on this planet, from human structures like The Coliseum to natural formations like The Appalachian Mountains. "All manifestations" are being destroyed.
This is the reality of this material world.
And one day, our own lives will snuff out, and we will be like another moth into the flaming mouth of time.
34 minutes - 4,080 deaths.
Full purport here: https://vedabase.io/en/library/bg/11/32/
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