Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 11.7.47

sva-māyayā sṛṣṭam idaḿ

sad-asal-lakṣaṇaḿ vibhuḥ

praviṣṭa īyate tat-tat-

svarūpo 'gnir ivaidhasi

SYNONYMS

sva-māyayā — by His own material energy; sṛṣṭam — created; idam — this (body of the individual jīva); sat-asat — as demigod, animal, and so on; lakṣaṇam — characterized; vibhuḥ — the Almighty; praviṣṭaḥ — having entered; īyate — appears; tat-tat — of each different form; svarūpaḥ — assuming the identity; agniḥ — fire; iva — as; edhasi — in firewood.

TRANSLATION

Just as fire manifests differently in pieces of wood of different sizes and qualities, the omnipotent Supreme Soul, having entered the bodies of higher and lower life forms created by His own potency, appears to assume the identity of each.

PURPORT

Although the Supreme Lord is within everything, everything is not the Lord. By the mode of goodness the Lord creates the exalted material bodies of demigods and brāhmaṇas, and by expanding the mode of ignorance He similarly creates the bodies of animals, śūdras and other lower forms of life. The Lord enters all of these superior and inferior creations, but He remains vibhu, the all-powerful Personality of Godhead. Śrīla Viśvanātha Cakravartī Ṭhākura explains that although fire is present within smoldering wood, it blazes forth when we stir the wood around. Similarly, although the Personality of Godhead is indirectly present everywhere, when we chant and hear His glories with love and devotion the Lord is stirred into manifestation and directly appears before His devotees.

The foolish conditioned souls ignore the spectacular presence of the Lord within everything and instead absorb their mediocre consciousness in their own temporary material coverings, thinking, "I am a strong man," "I am a beautiful woman," "I am the richest man in this city," "I am a Ph.D.," and so on. One should cut off such useless entanglement and accept the fact that one is pure spirit soul, the eternal, blissful servant of Lord Kṛṣṇa.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness
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