Govinda! Feeling Your separation, I am considering a moment to be like twelve years or more. Tears are flowing from my eyes like torrents of rain, and I am feeling all vacant in the world in Your absence.

Sri Siksastakam Verse Seven
Reflections, by Bhakti Caitanya Swami

On the highest levels of pure Krishna consciousness time appears to act very differently to how we normally experience it. When the devotee is with Krishna, time flies, and when the devotee is separated from Him time appears to practically stop and the whole world appears devoid of anything.

Is the world actually vacant? No, not at all. It is full of so many things, but when the devotee is completely absorbed in his or her relationship with Krishna, then the depth of that relationship makes all other things seem completely unattractive. Compared to what Krishna has to offer, they have nothing at all to offer. So in that condition, when the devotee becomes separated from the Lord he feels that everything is completely empty and valueless, and the hankering to be with Krishna becomes so strong that the devotee feels time has stopped. The emptiness is so profound that it consumes everything else until everything is lost completely.

How all consuming that experience must be can be understood a little by considering the opposite condition—how wonderful it is for such a perfect devotee on the level of prema to be with Krishna. Srimad-Bhagavatam describes:

brahma-ratra upavrtte vasudevanumoditah
anicchantyo yayur gopyah sva-grhan bhagavat-priyah

"After an entire night of Brahma had passed, Lord Krsna advised the gopis to return to their homes. Although they did not wish to do so, the Lord's beloved consorts complied with His command." (SB 10.33.38)

The gopis came out to dance with Krishna in the early evening, but it seemed to them that as soon as they started dancing with the Lord, suddenly the morning came and the sun started rising. The gopis felt that something had gone wrong with the universal functions, as it seemed that the whole night of perhaps 10 or 12 hours had suddenly passed in a matter of seconds. However the fact is that Krishna, in order to increase the ecstasy of the rasa dance, extended it so that it became the length of a night of Lord Brahma—in other words 4 billion 320 million years—and it was this fantastically long period of time which now seemed to have passed in seconds. Such is the ecstasy of being in Krishna 's company.

On the other hand, when the pure devotees are separated from Krishna, even seconds can feel like millions of years, and the devotee can become completely incapacitated by the effects of those emotions. For example, when Uddhava took the messages of Krishna to the inhabitants of Vrindavana, it is described that when he arrived at the house of Nanda Maharaja he was fed first class sweet rice and greeted very nicely. However Srila Visvanatha Cakravarti Thakura explains that it was not possible for Mother Yasoda to prepare any foodstuffs at all due to her overwhelming emotions of separation, so therefore it must have been that some brahmana in Nanda's entourage, knowing that Uddhava was coming, had prepared just enough sweet rice for one person. Actually all the inhabitants of Vrindavana were incapable of feeding themselves, and friends from neighbouring villages would come every day and feed them.

In that mood of devastating separation, the devotee cries tears like rain, sometimes without cessation. These tears are not like the tears of a conditioned soul when he or she becomes disturbed by some negative material happening. They are one of the asta sattvika bhavas, or eight main ecstasies that appear in the body of a perfect devotee.

On the perfect platform of devotional service, the internal potency descends into the heart of the pure devotee and interacts with the devotee's body. By that interaction the devotee's life airs become affected, and the body becomes uncontrollably overwhelmed. In Nectar of Devotion Chapter 28 Srila Prabhupada explains that these transcendental tears are caused by the vital force of life contacting the element water in the devotee's body, and therefore water starts pouring out of his body.

Sri Caitanya-caritamrita describes Lord Caitanya's tears of ecstasy during Rathayatra in Jagannatha Puri:

jalayantra-dhara yaiche vahe asru-jala
asa-pase loka yata bhijila sakala

"Tears came forcefully from the eyes of the Lord, as if from a syringe, and all the people surrounding Him became wet." (CC Madhya 13.105)

Caitanya-caritamrta also describes:

garudera sannidhane, rahi' kare darasane, se anandera ki kahiba ba'le garuda-stambhera tale, ache eka nimna khale, se khala bharila asru-jale

"Staying near the Garuda-stambha, the Lord would look upon Lord Jagannatha. What can be said about the strength of that love? On the ground beneath the column of the Garuda-stambha was a deep ditch, and that ditch was filled with the water of His tears." (CC Madhya 2.54)

Of course Lord Caitanya is a very special case, but still the principle is the same for all elevated devotees on the level of pure love of God.

Gradually as the devotees advance in Krishna consciousness they will come to appreciate more and more that being unable to engage in Krishna conscious activity is intolerable, and will always strongly hanker to chant, associate with devotees and render different types of devotional service. This type of attachment for Krishna consciousness ultimately matures into the feelings Lord Caitanya has expressed in this verse.