Text 21
ekaḥ sṛjati bhūtāni
bhagavān ātma-māyayā
eṣāṁ bandhaṁ ca mokṣaṁ ca
sukhaṁ duḥkhaṁ ca niṣkalaḥ
ekaḥ — one; sṛjati — creates; bhūtāni — different varieties of living entities; bhagavān — the Supreme Personality of Godhead; ātma-māyayā — by His personal potencies; eṣām — of all the conditioned souls; bandham — the conditional life; ca — and; mokṣam — the liberated life; ca — also; sukham — happiness; duḥkham — distresses; ca — and; niṣkalaḥ — not affected by the material qualities.
The Supreme Personality of Godhead is one. Unaffected by the conditions of the material world, He creates all the conditioned souls by His own personal potency. Because of being contaminated by the material energy, the living entity is put into ignorance and thus into different conditions of bondage. Sometimes, by knowledge, the living entity is given liberation. In sattva-guṇa and rajo-guṇa, he is subjected to happiness and distress.
The question may be raised why the living entities are situated in different conditions and who has arranged this. The answer is that it has been done by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, without anyone’s help. The Lord has His own energies (parāsya śaktir vividhaiva śrūyate), and one of them, namely the external energy, creates the material world and the varieties of happiness and distress for the conditioned souls under the supervision of the Lord. The material world consists of three modes of material nature — sattva-guṇa, rajo-guṇa and tamo-guṇa. By sattva-guṇa the Lord maintains the material world, by rajo-guṇa He creates it, and by tamo-guṇa He annihilates it. After the varieties of living entities are created, they are subject to happiness and distress according to their association. When they are in sattva-guṇa, the mode of goodness, they feel happiness, when in rajo-guṇa they are distressed, and when in tamo-guṇa they have no sense of what to do or what is right and wrong.