382
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 4, Ch. 9]
ordinary living entities. As Lord Viṣṇu, You maintain all the affairs of the entire universe, and yet You stand aloof and are the enjoyer of the results of all sacrifices.
PURPORT
An atheistic argument against the supremacy of the Supreme Personality of Godhead states that if God, the Supreme Person, appears and disappears and sleeps and awakens, then what is the difference between God and the living entity? Dhruva Mahārāja is carefully distinguishing the existence of the Supreme Personality of Godhead from that of the living entities. He points out the following differences. The Lord is eternally liberated. Whenever He appears, even within this material world, He is never entangled by the three modes of material nature. He is known, therefore, as  try-adhīśa , the master of the three modes of material nature. In  Bhagavad-gītā  (7.14) it is said,  daivī hy eṣā guṇamayī mama māyā duratyayā : the living entities are all entangled in the three modes of material nature. The external energy of the Lord is very strong, but the Lord, as the master of the three modes of nature, is ever liberated from the action and reaction of those modes. He is, therefore, uncontaminated, as it is stated in the  Īśopaniṣad . The contamination of the material world does not affect the Supreme Godhead. Kṛṣṇa therefore says in the  Bhagavad-gītā  that those who are rascals and fools think of Him as an ordinary human being, not knowing His  paraṁ bhāvam .  Paraṁ bhāvam  refers to His being always transcendentally situated. Material contamination cannot affect Him.
Another difference between the Lord and the living entity is that a living entity is always in darkness. Even though he may be situated in the mode of goodness, there are still so many things which are unknown to him. But it is not the same for the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He knows past, present and future and everything that is happening in everyone's heart.  Bhagavad-gītā  confirms this ( vedāhaṁ samatītāni ). The Lord is not part of the soul—He is the unchangeable Supreme Soul, and the living entities are His parts and parcels. The living entity is forced to appear in this material world under the direction of  daiva-māyā , but when the Lord appears, He comes by His own internal potency,  ātma-māyā . Besides that, a living entity is within the time of past, present and future. His life has a beginning, a birth, and in the conditioned state his life ends with death. But the Lord is  ādi-puruṣa , the original person. In the  Brahma-saṁhitā  Lord Brahmā offers his respect to the  ādi-puruṣa , Govinda, the original person, who has no beginning, whereas the creation of this material