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Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 10, Ch. 3]
red, because Brahmā represents the qualities of passion for creation. Darkness is entrusted to Lord Śiva because he annihilates the cosmos. The creation, annihilation and maintenance of this cosmic manifestation are conducted by Your potencies, yet You are always unaffected by those qualities.” As confirmed in the  Vedas ,  harir hi nirguṇaḥ sākṣāt : the Supreme Personality of Godhead is always free from all material qualities. It is also said that the qualities of passion and ignorance are nonexistent in the person of the Supreme Lord.
In this verse, the three colors mentioned— śukla ,  rakta  and  kṛṣṇa —are not to be understood literally, in terms of what we experience with our senses, but rather as representatives of  sattva-guṇa ,  rajo-guṇa  and  tamo-guṇa . After all, sometimes we see that a duck is white, although it is in  tamo-guṇa , the mode of ignorance. Illustrating the logic called  bakāndha-nyāya , the duck is such a fool that it runs after the testicles of a bull, thinking them to be a hanging fish that can be taken when it drops. Thus the duck is always in darkness. Vyāsadeva, however, the compiler of the Vedic literature, is blackish, but this does not mean that he is in  tamo-guṇa ; rather, he is in the highest position of  sattva-guṇa , beyond the material modes of nature. Sometimes these colors ( śukla-raktas tathā pītaḥ ) are used to designate the  brāhmaṇas ,  kṣatriyas ,  vaiśyas  and  śūdras . Lord Kṣīrodakaśāyī Viṣṇu is celebrated as possessing a blackish color, Lord Śiva is whitish, and Lord Brahmā is reddish, but according to Śrīla Sanātana Gosvāmī in the  Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī-ṭīkā , this exhibition of colors is not what is referred to here.
The real understanding of  śukla ,  rakta  and  kṛṣṇa  is as follows. The Lord is always transcendental, but for the sake of creation He assumes the color  rakta  as Lord Brahmā. Again, sometimes the Lord becomes angry. As He says in  Bhagavad-gītā  (16.19):
tān aham dviṣataḥ krūrān saṁsāreṣu narādhamān kṣīpāmy ajasram aśubhān āsurīṣv eva yoniṣu
“Those who are envious and mischievous, who are the lowest among men, are cast by Me into the ocean of material existence, into various demoniac species of life.” To destroy the demons, the Lord becomes