Illusions

Lord Brahma's second question in the Bhagavatam-"How are the different energies of the Lord working?"-is answered as follows: "Whatever appears to be of value, if it is without relation to Me, has no reality. Know it as My illusory energy, that reflection which appears to be in darkness." (Bhag. 2.9.34)

Bhagavad-gita's Seventh Chapter confirms that the Lord has two energies, one spiritual and one material. Material energy manifests itself as that which appears not to be produced from God but to be independent. In other words, anything held not to relate with the Lord is a part of the illusory material energy because factually nothing can exist without being related to Him.

The knowledge, theories and research of modern scientists who try to dismiss any connection between God and tine the world must therefore be considered illusory. These scientists refuse to accept the authoritative statements of the scriptures with regards to the Lord's creating the world, yet they can furnish only a plethora of theories and contradictory speculations on how the world is created, maintained and destroyed. Medical scientists refuse to accept the existence of the soul in the physiological constitution of the body, yet with all their laboratories they cannot give life to a dead body, even if all its physical mechanisms continue to exist.

Like materialistic scientists, impersonalists who maintain that in the ultimate realization the individual self becomes God are in illusion. Their claiming to be the Supreme is another way of saying that they have no connection with God, for if one is Himself God he does not have to connect himself with the Lord. Personalism clears away this illusion by explaining that the spiritual energy of the Lord cannot be as great as the Lord Himself, although there is very little qualitative difference between the energy (the living entities) and the possessor of the energy (the Lord). Just as a fire is a source of heat but the heat is not the fire itself, so the Lord is the source of innumerable living entities, although these living entities are not equal to God.

To consider God and the living entities one and the same is unreasonable because it is apparent that the living entity is forced to accept many conditions that do not at all affect the infinite Lord. For instance, the embodied soul can exhibit potencies and powers only according to the development of his body. Thus the potencies of an infant, for example, are quite limited in comparison to those of a fully grown man. But when Krsna, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, appears as an infant, He is competent to exhibit His full powers. Srimad-Bhagavatam relates in the Tenth Canto that Krsna killed the terrible demon named Pūtana when He was only an infant on the lap of His mother.