Text 51]
Vidura's Talks with Maitreya
217
father, but He, the Lord, has no father. When He descends on the material plane, out of His causeless mercy He accepts one of His great devotees as His father to keep pace with the rules of the material world. But since He is the Lord, He is always independent in choosing who will become His father. For example, the Lord came out of a pillar in His incarnation as Nṛṣimhadeva, and by the Lord's causeless mercy, Ahalyā came out of a stone by the touch of the lotus feet of His incarnation as Lord Śrī Rāma. He is also the companion of every living entity as the Supersoul, but He is unchanged. The living entity changes his body in the material world, but even when the Lord is in the material world, He is ever unchanged. That is His prerogative.
As confirmed in  Bhagavad-gītā , the Lord impregnates the external or material energy (Bg. 14.3), and thus the total living entities later come out in different gradations, beginning from Brahmā, the first demigod, down to the insignificant ant. All gradations of living entities are manifested by Brahmā and the external energy, but the Lord is the original father of everyone. The relationship of every living being with the Supreme Lord is certainly one of son and father and not one of equality. Sometimes in love the son is more than the father, but the relationship of father and son is one of the superior and the subordinate. Every living entity, however great he may be, even up to demigods like Brahmā, Indra, etc., is an eternally subordinate servitor of the supreme father. The  mahat-tattva  principle is the generating source of all the modes of material nature, and the living entities take birth in the material world in bodies supplied by the mother, material nature, in terms of their previous work. The body is a gift of material nature, but the soul is originally part and parcel of the Supreme Lord.
TEXT 51
ततो वयं मत्प्रमुखा यदर्थे 
  बभूविमात्मन् करवाम किं ते । 
  त्वं नः स्वचक्षुः परिदेहि शक्त्या 
  देव क्रियार्थे यदनुग्रहाणाम्
tato vayam mat-pramukhā yad-arthe 
  babhūvimātman karavāma kim te 
  tvam naḥ svacakṣuḥ paridehi śaktyā 
  deva kriyārthe yad-anugrahāṇām