Text 21]
Departure of Lord Kṛṣṇa for Dvārakā
533
PURPORT
There are two types of dissolution of the manifestive cosmos. At the end of every 4,320,000,000 solar years, when Brahmā, the lord of one particular universe, goes to sleep, there is one annihilation. And at the end of Brahmā's life, which takes place at the end of Brahmā's one hundred years of age, in our calculation at the end of 8,640,000,000  \times  30  \times  12  \times  100 solar years, there is complete annihilation of the entire universe, and in both the periods both the material energy called the  mahat-tattva  and the marginal energy called  jīva-tattva  merge in the person of the Supreme Lord. The living beings remain asleep within the body of the Lord until there is another creation of the material world, and that is the way of creation, maintenance and annihilation of the material manifestation.
The material creation is effected by the interaction of the three modes of material nature set in action by the Lord, and therefore it is said here that the Lord existed before the modes of material nature were set in motion. In the  Śruti mantra  it is said that only Viṣṇu, the Supreme Lord, existed before the creation, and there were no Brahmā or Śiva and other demigods. Viṣṇu means the Mahā-Viṣṇu who is lying on the Causal Ocean, and by His breathing only all the universes are generating in seeds and gradually developing into gigantic forms with innumerable planets within each and every universe. The seeds of universes develop into gigantic forms in the way seeds of a banyan tree develop into numberless banyan trees.
This Mahā-Viṣṇu is the plenary portion of the Lord Śrī Kṛṣṇa, who is mentioned in the  Brahma-saṁhitā  as follows:
"Let me offer my respectful obeisances unto the original Personality of Godhead, Govinda, whose plenary portion is the Mahā-Viṣṇu. All the Brahmās or the heads of the universes live only for the period of His exhaling, after the universes are generated from the pores of His transcendental body." ( Brahma-saṁhitā  5.58).
Thus Govinda, or Lord Kṛṣṇa, is the cause of Mahā-Viṣṇu also. The ladies talking about this Vedic truth must have heard it from authoritative sources. An authoritative source is the only means of knowing about transcendental subject matter definitely. There is no other alternative.
The merging of the living beings into the body of Mahā-Viṣṇu takes place automatically at the end of Brahmā's one hundred years. But that does not mean that the individual living being loses his identity. The identity is there, and as soon as there is another creation by the supreme will of the Lord, all the sleeping or inactive living beings are again let loose to begin their activities in the continuation of past different spheres of life. It is called  suptotthita naya , or awakening from sleep and again engaging in