Text 7] The Process of Creation 181

atmanam kridayan kridan
karoti vikaroti ca

yatha—as; gopayati—maintains; vibhuh—the great; yathd—as; sarivya-
cchate—winds up; punah—again; yam yam—as; sak tim—energies; upasritya—
by employing; puru-sak tih—the all-powerful ; parah—the Supreme; puman—
Personality of Godhead; dtmanam—plenary expansion; kridayan—having
engaged them; kridan—as also personally being engaged; karoti—do them;
vikaroti—and causes to be done; ca—and.

TRANSLATION

Kindly describe how the Supreme Lord, who is all-powerful, engages
His different energies and different expansions in maintaining and again
winding up the phenomenal world in the sporting spirit of a player.

PURPORT

In the Kathopanisad the Supreme Lord is described as the chief eternal
being amongst all other eternal individual beings (nityo nityanam cetanas
cetandndm) and the one Supreme Lord who maintains innumerable other
individual living beings (eko bahiindm yo vidadhati kaman). So all living
entities, both in conditioned state and in liberated state, are maintained by
the Almighty Supreme Lord. Such maintenances arc effected by the Lord
through His different expansions of Self and three principal energies,
namely the internal, external and marginal energies. The living entities are
His marginal energies, and some of them, in the confidence of the Lord,
are entrusted with the work of creation also, as are Brahma, Marici, etc.,
and the acts of creation are inspired by the Lord unto them (tene brahma
hrda). The external energy (mayd) is also impregnated with the jivas or
conditioned souls. The unconditioned marginal potency acts in the spiritual
kingdom, and the Lord, by His different plenary expansions, maintains
them in different transcendental relations displayed in the spiritual sky.
So the one Supreme Personality of Godhead manifests Himself in many
(bahu Sydma), and thus all diversities are in Him and He is in all diversities,
although He is nevertheless different from all of them. That is the incon-
ceivable mystic power of the Lord, and as such everything is simultaneously
one and different from Him by His inconceivable potencies (acintya-

bhedabheda-tattva).
