Srimad-Bhagavatam: Canto 10 - Chapter 1 - Verse 14


Sanskrit:

तस्मान्न सन्त्यमी भावा यर्हि त्वयि विकल्पिता: ।त्वं चामीषु विकारेषु ह्यन्यदाव्यावहारिक: ॥ १४ ॥

ITRANS:

tasmān na santy amī bhāvāyarhi tvayi vikalpitāḥtvaṁ cāmīṣu vikāreṣuhy anyadāvyāvahārikaḥ

Translation:

Thus these created entities, transformations of material nature, do not exist except when material nature manifests them within You, at which time You also manifest within them. But aside from such periods of creation, You stand alone as the transcendental reality.

Purport:

When the universe is wound up at the time of its periodic annihilation, all the inert objects and bodies of living beings that hitherto were manifested by the Lord’s Māyā become disconnected from His sight. Then, since He maintains no association with them during the period of universal dissolution, they in fact no longer exist. In other words, material manifestations have real, functioning existence only when the Lord turns His attention to the creation and maintenance of the material cosmos. The Lord is never “within” these objects in any material sense, but He does mercifully pervade them all as the impersonal Brahman, and as the Paramātmā He enters within every atom and also accompanies the jīva souls in their individual embodiments. As the Lord describes in His own words in the verses of Bhagavad-gītā (9.4-5): “By Me, in My unmanifest form, this entire universe is pervaded. All beings are in Me, but I am not in them. And yet everything that is created does not rest in Me. Behold My mystic opulence! Although I am the maintainer of all living entities and although I am everywhere, I am not part of this cosmic manifestation, for My Self is the very source of creation.”