Srila Sridhar Maharaj: The Manu-samhita (1.5–6) begins describing the creation from this point:
asid idam tamo-bhutam aprajnatam alaksanam
apratarkyam avijneyam prasuptam iva sarvatah
tatah svayambhur bhagavan avyakto vyanjayann idam
mahabhutadi-vrttaujah pradur asit tamo-nudah
Just before the creative movement began, the marginal potency of the Lord was in a state of equilibrium. Tatastha means equilibrium: asid idam tamo-bhutam. Everything was in darkness, fully enveloped by ignorance. Alaksanam means there was no possibility of any estimation; no symptoms of reality existed by which any conjecture or inference about the nature of reality would have been possible. And it was aprajnatam: science has no capacity for investigating the nature of that stage of existence. We can only say from here that it was completely immersed in deep sleep. The analogy of deep sleep may give us some conception of that period: prasuptam iva sarvatah. Material existence was as if in a sound sleep.
At that time, movement began from within the spiritual plane and light came. Light was seen by the seers. That light was pre-existent, but at that time the seers received the vision to see light. They began to see. The first conception of this material world after light was water. The light revealed a substance like water.
That primal light is compared with personality. Light means consciousness, and consciousness means personality. That light, or personality, first gave birth to the onlookers to the feelers of material existence, and then to an objective substance like water. That water is known as Viraja, or causal substance. What is known in Vaisnava vocabulary as Brahmaloka — the world of consciousness — is represented by light, and Viraja, or causal substance, is represented by water. The conscious world is represented by light, and the first objective reality is represented as water. Then, the seeds of consciousness are sown in the causal water which is the shadow of that light. Although the actual element of water was created long after this, the first conception of matter is compared to water because water is an accommodating, moving solution. The Sanskrit word for water, apa, means «of lower conception». In this way, the lower creation began.
Then, in connection with the seeds of consciousness and the primal water, the next production was known as mahat-tattva: the energy of consciousness represented by light mixed with matter as a mass. When the mass of matter is infused with the energy of light-consciousness, that is known as mahat-tattva.
After further development, that entity was divided into many units of ahankar, the element of ego. Mahato ahankarah. First there is ahankar, mass ego as a whole. The element of conglomerate ego is called mahat-tattva. As objective substance evolves by the influence of consciousness, it expresses itself in five main ingredients: that which can be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, and touched. These five elements are the primitive principles of material existence.
And that fivefold principle evolved in three phases: sattva, raja, tamah: goodness, passion, and ignorance. Expressing itself as ether, sound, hearing, and the ear; air, mass, touch, and the skin; fire, colour, vision, and the eye; water, tastes, the sense of taste, and the tongue; and earth, aroma, the sense of smell, and the nose. There are twenty-four elements. The self, three subtle elements — prakrti, mahat-tattva, and ahankar, five gross elements, five senses, five sense objects, five sense-gathering instruments — in this way, the development of the material world has been described to have come down through a process of subtle to gross, from consciousness to matter. Again when this material existence is withdrawn by superior will, the gross dissolves into the subtle. Beginning with the most gross, gradually the whole of material existence becomes more and more subtle until it finally enters into the subtle expression of material existence known as prakrti — the subtle causal watery substance.
With the dissolution of material energy, the atma or individual soul is absorbed in brahma, the nondifferentiated mass of consciousness. The position of the different kinds of spiritual energy has been described by Krishna in Bhagavad-gita (15.16–17) as follows:
dvav imau purusau loke ksaras chaksara eva cha
ksarah sarvani bhutani kuta-stho ’ksara uchyate
uttamah purusas tv anyah paramatmety udahrtah
yo loka-trayam avisya bibharty avyaya isvarah
«There are two kinds of beings: the perfect and unchanging, or infallible, and the fallible souls. The fallible souls reside in the material world, and the infallible souls reside in the spiritual world.» Krishna says, «I exist, transcending both fallible and infallible aspects of spiritual substance (ksara and aksara), so I am Purusottam, Vasudev, Parambrahma, the Supreme Absolute Truth. Within Me, the whole of My jurisdiction is also to be considered.»
Vaikuntha, Goloka — the whole creation — is represented by the name of Purusottam or Vasudev. Then, when one enters into that domain of Vasudev, he can see so many demarcations, stages of reality, Pastimes, and transcendental dealings and activities. There he will find the perfected living beings busy in their dedicated life in the eternal world.
The general conception of the spiritual world is Vaikuntha wherein we find calculative dedication. Above that is the plane of spontaneous dedication. That realm is called Goloka, and there are many different kinds of Pastimes there. In Goloka, all the various relationships with Godhead are represented in full: santa, passive, dasya, servitude, sakhya, friendship, vatsalya, parenthood, and madhura, conjugal. And the conjugal mellow can be subdivided into svakiya, wedded love, and parakiya, a paramour relationship. This is, of course, a very elevated subject matter. Still, we have to have some view of these things since our fate is ultimately connected with such high things given to us by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and great Acharyas like Bhakti Vinod Thakur and discussed in scriptures like Srimad Bhagavatam and Chaitanya-charitamrta.
What is found in their teachings about Goloka is our prospect, our aspiration. According to our devotional taste, we will develop, and our taste can also be improved by hearing from a higher source. The spirit of our selection may be improved when we are shown different ideas, different models of transcendental reality. And according to what attracts us most based upon our inner choice, we shall have to act.
Question: What part do the individual souls play in the process of creation?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: I have described that. At first, a general, conglomerate false ego (ahankar) is created. This is called Sambhu in Brahma-samhita, wherein it explains how the soul as a ray of consciousness mingles with material energy. Consciousness and prakrti, the most primitive conceptions of energy, are categorically different. The conglomerate consciousness comes in contact with mass energy, and as they mingle together, a general ego evolves. That general ego gradually dissolves into innumerable egos, and the conglomerate consciousness distributes itself as individual units of consciousness absorbed in material energy. In this way, gradually, the individual conditioned souls come down and are entangled within the material world.
In a primitive state when the individual souls are massed together as a common whole, the conglomerate false ego, or ahankar, is known as mahat-tattva. As it evolves, it differentiates into innumerable individual units. Just as an atom can be broken down into subatomic particles, electrons, protons, neutrons, and so on, the conglomerate ego gradually breaks into its component individual egos, jiva-souls. Their position is tatastha, marginal, and undetectable. From that subtle, undetectable plane of marginal energy, consciousness first develops into the detectable plane as a whole, and then innumerable individual spiritual units are manifest from that mass lump of ego, or mahat-tattva. Gradually, the other elements of creation develop within this negative plane of exploitation.
This world is sometimes pushing forth, and sometimes withdrawing. In the same way that the heart expands and contracts again and again, the whole universe expands and contracts. Regrouping within the one, and again manifest as the many — the one and the many — the evolution and dissolution of the material universe takes place. As a heart expands and contracts, the whole universe is manifest and withdrawn.
The same characteristics that we find in the smallest unit can be traced in the bigger units. This is the suggestion by which we may know the whole, more or less. There are also some categorically new elements to be added to our knowledge. In this way, those who are within this universe can have some partial knowledge.
But those who are independent, outside the contracting and expanding world, who are impartial onlookers, can give the real history. That is the revealed truth, which is distributed in instalments according to the capacity of the people, of the time, place, and circumstance. The revealed truth is found in varying degrees in the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, and the other scriptures of the world. Through this process, the truth is partially revealed in different places of the world in proportion to the thinking and capacity of each particular group of people. The revealed truth is reliable, but still it is modified to fit the persons to whom it is extended.
For that reason, we find differences in the different versions of the revealed truth. It is said in Srimad Bhagavatam that medicine may be hidden within candy to treat the ignorant. In the same way, the revealed truth may be hidden within the mundane concessions of ordinary religion to help the ignorant class of men: paroksa-vado Vedo ‘yam.
Still, Vedic revelation is conceived of by authorities as the most ancient as well as the most perfect of all versions of revealed truth. The revealed truth as presented by Srimad Bhagavatam and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu must be considered full-fledged theism. There, it is mentioned what lies beyond this created world is the eternally dancing world. Here, we are trapped in the world of contraction and expansion, but in the spiritual realm, everything is an eternal, blissful dance. Still, even the reality there is of a lower and higher type according to the nature of rasa — transcendental mellow, anandam, ecstasy — which is the desired substance of every conscious unit.
Question: Krishna’s Pastimes are eternal. When Krishna finishes one Pastime in this universe, His Pastimes begin in another. At the time of the final annihilation, when all the universes are withdrawn, how do Krishna’s Pastimes continue?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: When the universe is destroyed in the total annihilation of all the stars and planets, the mahapralaya, this side almost equates to zero. It reaches equilibrium. But the spiritual world is always in full swing. No harm can be done to Krishna’s Pastimes because they have an eternal aspect.
Question: But what happens to Krishna’s lila here on earth?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Suppose fruit falls from a tree. The fruit is gradually finished, but the tree remains. It is something like that. This material world may equate to zero, but Krishna’s Pastimes continue eternally.
Question: What is the difference between Goloka, Krishna’s place of Pastimes in the transcendental world, and Gokula, Krishna’s pleasure abode in this earthly plane?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: Gokula Vrndavan eternally exists, but sometimes the seers are all absent. Gokula exists in the ideal world and is extended here. What we see, we see from our different positions of existence, but Gokula is there always. If you have no eye to see something, it cannot be seen. If you have no hand to touch it, it cannot be touched. It is the same with Gokula. It is in such a plane where the different external processes which exert control over material energy cannot touch the fine ideal of existence in Gokula.
If the earth vanishes, that does not mean that the whole solar system will vanish. The solar system may remain, but the men on the earth cannot see it any longer. Its influence on earth can no longer be felt. In a similar way, Gokula exists in another plane. It exists in the finest plane of reality. It is beyond the creation, beyond evolution and dissolution. Such subtle energy can be understood by analogy with ether. If earth is destroyed, ether may not be destroyed. Ether is within and outside earth, but with the dissolution of earth, ether may not dissolve, but continue to exist. The position of Gokula is something like that. This is confirmed by Srimad Bhagavatam (2.9.35):
yatha mahanti bhutani bhutesuchchavachesv anu
pravistany apravistani tatha tesu na tesv aham
«O Brahma, please know that the universal elements enter into the cosmos and at the same time do not enter into the cosmos; similarly, I also exist within everything and at the same time I am outside everything.»
Krishna’s position is similar: He is there and not there. In Bhagavad-gita (9.4-5), He tells Arjuna:
maya tatam idam sarvam jagad avyakta-murtina
mat-sthani sarva-bhutani na chaham tesv avasthitah
na cha mat-sthani bhutani pasya me yogam aisvaram
bhuta-bhrn na cha bhuta-stho mamatma bhuta-bhavanah
«I am everywhere and nowhere. Everything is in Me, and yet nothing is in Me. In My unmanifested form, this entire universe is pervaded. Behold My mystic opulence, My simultaneous oneness and difference! Although I am the maintainer of all living entities and although I am everywhere, I am not implicated by any of this, for I am the very source of creation.»
We have to understand the relationship between cause and effect. The cause and its effect are of different types. Even the inner cause and the outer cause may have different positions. The body may be disturbed, but the mind may not be. The mind may be disturbed, but the soul may not be. By this, we are to understand the difference between cause and effect, subtle and gross, matter and spirit.