PURPORT

The creation is nondifferent from the Lord, and still He is not in the creation. This is explained in the Bhagavad-gita as follows:

maya tatam idam sarvam jagad avyakta-murtina
mat-sthani sarva-bhutani na caham tesv avasthitah
(Bg. 9.4)

The impersonal conception of the Absolute Truth is also a form of the Lord called avyakta-murti. Murti means form, but because His impersonal feature is inexplicable by our limited senses, He is the avyakta-murti form, and in that inexplicable form of the Lord the whole creation is resting, or, in other words, the whole creation is the Lord Himself, and the creation is also nondifferent from Him, but simultaneously He, as the original Personality of Godhead Sri Krsna, is aloof from the created manifestation. The impersonalist gives stress to the impersonal form or feature of the Lord and does not believe in the original personality of the Lord, but the Vaisnavas accept the original form of the Lord, of whom the impersonal form is merely one of the features. The impersonal and personal conceptions of the Lord are existing simultaneously, and this fact is clearly described both in the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and also in other Vedic scriptures. Inconceivable by human intelligence, the idea must simply be accepted on the authority of the scriptures, and it can only be practically realized by the progress of devotional service unto the Lord, and never by mental speculation or inductive logic. The impersonalists depend more or less on inductive logic, and therefore they always remain in darkness about the original Personality of Godhead Sri Krsna. Their conception of Krsna is not clear, although everything is clearly mentioned in all the Vedic scriptures. A poor fund of knowledge cannot comprehend the existence of an original personal form of the Lord when He is expanded in everything. This imperfectness is due, more or less, to the material conception that a substance which is distributed widely in parts can no longer exist in the original form.

The original personality of Godhead (adyah) Govinda expands Himself as the Maha-Visnu incarnation and rests in the Causal Ocean which He Himself creates. The Brahma-samhita confirms this as follows:

yah karanarnava-jale bhajati sma yoga-
nidram ananta-jagad-anda-sa-romakupah
adhara-saktim avalambya param sva-murtim
govindam adi-purusam tam aham bhajami

Lord Brahmaji says in his Brahma-samhita, "I worship the primeval Lord Govinda, who lies down in the Causal Ocean in His plenary portion as Maha-Visnu, with all the universes generating from the pores of hair on His transcendental body, and who accepts the mystic slumber of eternity."

So this Maha-Visnu is the first incarnation in the creation, and from Him all the universes generate and all material manifestations are produced, one after another. The Causal Ocean is created by the Lord as the mahat-tattva, as a cloud in the spiritual sky, and is a part of His different manifestations only. The spiritual sky is an expansion of His personal rays, and He is the mahat-tattva cloud also. He lies down and generates the universes by His breathing, and again, by entering into each universe as Garbhodakasayi Visnu, He creates Brahma, Siva and many other demigods for maintenance of the universe and again absorbs the whole thing into His person, as is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gita:

sarva-bhutani kaunteya prakrtim vanti mamikam
kalpaksaye punas tani kalpadau visrjamy aham.
(Bg. 9.7)

"O son of Kunti, when the kalpa or the duration of the life of Brahma is ended, then all the created manifestations enter into My prakrti, or energy, and again, when I desire, the same creation takes place by My personal energy."

The conclusion is that these are all displays of the Lord's inconceivable personal energies only, of which no one can have any full information, and this point we have already discussed.