Text 18
tri-vidhākṛtayas tasya
rākṣasā asurāḥ surāḥ
guṇinyā māyayā sṛṣṭāḥ
sattvaṁ tat tīrtha-sādhanam
tri-vidha — of three kinds; ākṛtayaḥ — forms; tasya — of His; rākṣasāḥ — the ignorant spirits; asurāḥ — the demons; surāḥ — and the demigods; guṇinyāḥ — qualified by the material modes; māyayā — by His material energy; sṛṣṭāḥ — created; sattvam — the mode of goodness; tat — among them; tīrtha — of success in life; sādhanam — the means of attainment.
The Lord expands into three kinds of manifest beings — the Rākṣasas, the demons and the demigods — all of whom are created by the Lord’s material energy and conditioned by her modes. But among these three modes, it is the mode of goodness which is the means of attaining life’s final success.
In Kṛṣṇa Śrīla Prabhupāda writes: “There are different kinds of people existing in the modes of material nature. Those who are in the mode of ignorance are called rākṣasas, those in the mode of passion are called asuras [demons], and those in the mode of goodness are called suras, or demigods. Under the direction of the Supreme Lord, these three classes of men are created by material nature, but those who are in the mode of goodness have a greater chance to be elevated to the spiritual world, back home, back to Godhead.”