Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.10.9

etāvāñ jīva-lokasya

saḿsthā-bhedaḥ samāhṛtaḥ

dharmasya hy animittasya

vipākaḥ parameṣṭhy asau

SYNONYMS

etāvān — up to this; jīva-lokasya — of the planets inhabited by the living entities; saḿsthā-bhedaḥ — different situations of habitation; samāhṛtaḥ — performed completely; dharmasya — of religion; hi — certainly; animittasya — of causelessness; vipākaḥ — mature stage; parameṣṭhī — the highest personality in the universe; asau — that.

TRANSLATION

Lord Brahmā is the most exalted personality in the universe because of his causeless devotional service unto the Lord in mature transcendental knowledge. He therefore created all the fourteen planetary divisions for inhabitation by the different types of living entities.

PURPORT

The Supreme Lord is the reservoir of all the qualities of the living entities. The conditioned souls in the material world reflect only part of those qualities, and therefore they are sometimes called pratibimbas. These pratibimba living entities, as parts and parcels of the Supreme Lord, have inherited different proportions of His original qualities, and in terms of their inheritance of these qualities, they appear as different species of life and are accommodated in different planets according to the plan of Brahmā. Brahmā is the creator of the three worlds, namely the lower planets, called the Pātālalokas, the middle planets, called the Bhūrlokas, and the upper planets, called the Svarlokas. Still higher planets, such as Maharloka, Tapoloka, Satyaloka and Brahmaloka, do not dissolve in the devastating water. This is because of the causeless devotional service rendered unto the Lord by their inhabitants, whose existence continues up to the end of dvi-parārdha time, when they are generally liberated from the chain of birth and death in the material world.

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