Text 10]
Answers by Citing the Lord's Version
475
TRANSLATION
In that personal abode of the Lord, the material modes of ignorance and passion do not prevail, nor is there any of their influence in the matter of goodness. There is no predominance of the influence of time, so what to speak of the illusory external energy that cannot enter in that region. Without discrimination, both the demigods and the demons worship the Lord as devotees.
PURPORT
The kingdom of God, or the atmosphere of Vaikuṇṭha nature, which is called the  tripād-vibhūti , is three times bigger than the material universes and is described here, as also in the  Bhagavad-gītā , in a nutshell. This universe, containing billions of stars and planets, is one of the billions of such universes clustered together within the compass of  mahat-tattva . And all these millions and billions of universes combined together constitute only one fourth of the magnitude of the whole creation of the Lord. There is the spiritual sky also; beyond this sky the spiritual planets are there under the names of Vaikuṇṭha, and all of them constitute three fourths of the entire creation of the Lord. God's creations are always innumerable. Even the leaves of a tree cannot be counted by a man, nor the hairs on his head. However, foolish men are puffed up with the idea of becoming God Himself, though unable to create a hair of their own bodies. Man may discover so many wonderful vehicles of journey, but even if he reaches the moon by his much advertised spacecraft, he cannot remain there. The same man, therefore, without being puffed up, as if he were the God of the universe, abides by the instructions of the Vedic literature, the easiest way to acquire knowledge in transcendence. So let us know through the authority of  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  of the nature and constitution of the transcendental world beyond the material sky. In that sky the material qualities, especially the modes of ignorance and passion, are completely absent. The mode of ignorance influences a living entity to the habit of lust and hankering, and this means that in the Vaikuṇṭhalokas the living entities are free from these two things. As confirmed in the  Bhagavad-gītā , in the  brahma-bhūta  stage of life one becomes free from hankering and lamentation. Therefore the conclusion is that the inhabitants of the Vaikuṇṭha planets are all  brahma-bhūta  living entities, as distinguished from the mundane creatures who are all compact in hankering and lamentation. When one is not in the modes of ignorance and passion, one is