Brahman is the source of everything (Taittiriya Upanisad 3.1)
The fact that Brahman creates everything, maintains everything, and destroys everything makes it clear that the Lord is a person. Impersonalism appears due to ignorance.
Section 1: Brahman is the source of everything
The fact that Brahman creates everything, maintains everything, and destroys everything makes it clear that the Lord is a person. The idea that the material universes are a transformation of the Supreme Brahman appears due to ignorance, when one doesn’t accept that the Lord has inconceivable potencies. Sankaracarya didn’t accept the potencies of the Lord, but even he avoided claiming that the Lord transforms himself into the material creation by crafting his theory of illusion. The energy of the Lord gives birth to the material manifestation without being transformed. This doctrine is called pariṇāma-vāda, or doctrine of by-products. The material energy, the external potency of the Lord, is permuted or rearranged, but not transformed.
Invocation
aum saha nāvavatu, saha nau bhunaktu, saha vīryam karavāvahai
tejasvi nāvadhītamastu mā vidviṣāvahai
aum śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ
May the mantra protect both of us. May we enjoy studying together. May we be able to study with vigor. May the knowledge we study bless us with understanding and realization, and may it not give rise to enmity due to misunderstanding. Peace, peace, peace.
Text 3.1.1
bhṛgur vai vāruṇiḥ, varuṇam pitaram upasasāra, adhīhi bhagavo brahmeti
tasmā etat provāca, annam prāṇam cakṣuḥ śrotram mano vācamiti
tam hovāca
yato vā imāni bhūtāni jāyante, yena jātāni jīvanti
yatprayantyabhisamviśanti tad vijijñāsasva, tad brahmeti
sa tapo’tapyata, sa tapas taptvā
Bhṛgu, the son of Varuṇa, approached his father and inquired: "O my Lord, my respected father, please teach me about Brahman." His father then spoke to him: "Food, prāṇa, seeing, hearing, the mind, and speech are Brahman. From Him, all beings arise. From Him, they all obtain sustenance, and unto Him, they at last return. This Brahman you should now seek." Bhṛgu then fixed himself in thought and practiced austerities, and, as a result, acquired spiritual realization.
Commentary: The third chapter of the Taittiriya Upanisad describes an ancient conversation between Varuna and his son, Bhṛgu, describing how he realized the anna-maya, prāṇa-maya, mano-maya, vijñāna-maya, and ananda-maya thanks to the instructions of his father. This chapter works thus as a supplement or purport for the explanation we studied in the second chapter.
Prabhupada comments on this verse in his purport to CC Madhya 6.144. The fact that Brahman creates everything, maintains everything, and destroys everything makes it clear that the Lord is a person.
“Śrīla Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura states in his Amṛta-pravāha-bhāṣya that according to the injunction of the Upaniṣads ("the Supreme Absolute Truth is He from whom everything emanates"), it is understood that the whole cosmic manifestation emanated from Brahman, the Supreme Absolute Truth. The creation subsists by the energy of the Supreme Brahman and, after annihilation, merges into the Supreme Brahman. From this we can understand that the Absolute Truth can be categorized in three cases—ablative, instrumental and locative. According to these three cases, the Absolute Truth is positively personified. In this connection, Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī quotes the Aitareya Upaniṣad (1.1.1): ātmā vā idam eka evāgra āsīn nānyat kiñcana miṣat sa īkṣata lokān nu sṛjā iti. Similarly, in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (4.9) it is stated:
chandāmsi yajñāḥ kratavo vratāni
bhūtam bhavyam yac ca vedā vadanti
yasmān māyī sṛjate viśvam etat
tasmimś cānyo māyayā sanniruddhaḥAnd in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (3.1): yato vā imāni bhūtāni jāyante, yena jātāni jīvanti, yat prayanty abhisamviśanti, tad vijijñāsasva tad brahma. This was the answer given by father Varuṇa when questioned by his son Vāruṇi Bhṛgu about the Absolute Truth. In this mantra, the word yataḥ, the Absolute Truth from which the cosmic manifestation has emanated, is in the ablative case; that Brahman by which this universal creation is maintained is in the instrumental case (yena); and that Brahman into which the whole cosmic manifestation merges is in the locative case (yat or yasmin). It is stated in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (SB 1.5.20):
idam hi viśvam bhagavān ivetaro
yato jagat-sthāna-nirodha-sambhavāḥ"The entire universal creation is contained in the gigantic form of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Everything emanates from Him, everything rests in His energy, and after annihilation everything merges into His person." (CC Madhya 6.144)
The meaning of the current verse is connected with the second verse of the Vedanta Sutra, and also with Bhagavad-gita 10.8 and Srimad Bhagavatam 1.1.1, emphasizing that the Lord is a person, and not a formless mass as believed by Mayavadis.
If I say that "Sergei created this car" this implies that Sergei is a person, since a rock or a lamp would not be capable of creating a car. I may not know who Sergei is, but just from the fact that he created a car, I can understand that he is a person.
Some may disagree with this simple logic, arguing that Brahman created the cosmic manifestation by transforming Himself into the material creation, but all acaryas disagree with this. Janmādy asya yataḥ (BS 1.1.2) means that the Lord created the cosmic manifestation through His inconceivable potencies. Krsna says similarly in the Bhagavad-gita (10.8) when He says aham sarvasya prabhavo mattaḥ sarvam pravartate, “I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me.”
Just like a painter paints a masterpiece, and not transforms himself into it, mattaḥ sarvam pravartate and janmādy asya yata indicate that Krsna creates the material universes through His different potencies, and not that Krsna transforms Himself into the material universes.
The idea that the material universes are a transformation of the Supreme Brahman appears due to ignorance, when one doesn’t accept that the Lord has inconceivable potencies. Sankaracarya didn’t accept the potencies of the Lord, but even he avoided claiming the Lord transforms himself into the material creation by crafting his theory of illusion, which concludes that Brahman doesn’t transform itself in the material world because the material world is illusory and therefore ultimately doesn’t exist. In this way, Vaishnavas and Sankaracarya disagree on the nature of the material creation, but all agree that the idea that Brahman transforms itself in the material universes is incorrect.
The explanations of the creation given by Sankaracarya and the Vaishnava acaryas are called, respectively, vivarta-vāda and pariṇāma-vāda, and are explained by Prabhupada in his books, like on CC Adi 7.121 and 7.122, CC Madhya 6.144 and 6.172, Teachings of Lord Caitanya ch. 20 and 21, etc.
Vaishnavas accept that the energy of the Lord gives birth to the material manifestation without being transformed. This doctrine is called pariṇāma-vāda, or doctrine of by-products. To understand how it works, we can imagine a mass of Lego blocks that are used to make many toys. Children come to play with these toys, and when they are finished, the toys are disassembled and returned into blocks. The same blocks are later used to make other toys and so on. The blocks are thus permuted, or rearranged into different forms, but there is no transformation: the blocks remain the same.
Similarly, the material energy, the external potency of the Lord, is permuted or rearranged into the material universes during the process of creation, disassembled back into its original constituents in the process of dissolution, and again permuted in the next cycle of creation. The energy is thus never transformed but just assembled into different forms and later again disassembled.
This understanding allows us to reconcile the idea that the material universes come from the energy of the Lord with the idea that the energy doesn't change.
Sankaracarya used a logical trick in his commentary on the Vedanta sutras, equating the pariṇāma-vāda with the doctrine of change, arguing that the idea that the material world is created from the energy of the Lord implies that the energy is transformed into something else. In this way, he was able to present his vivarta-vāda, or doctrine of illusory transformation of state.
In the vivarta-vāda of Sankaracarya, the existence of the material world is explained in a very simple way: There is no material world. Everything is simply an illusion. According to him, just like we may mistake a piece of rope on the road for a snake, we think this material world is real, although, in fact, it doesn't even exist. He says that when we are free from this illusion, or Maya, we see ourselves again as the eternal Brahman.
In reality, the vivarta-vāda of Sankaracarya is a less developed, and much weaker theory, conceived just to justify his general conclusion of Brahman being formless and qualitiless. Accepting that Brahman has potencies inevitably leads to the conclusion that Brahman is a person, and thus he used world jugglery to avoid it, being able thus to sustain his impersonalist philosophy and thus fulfill his mission.
Back to the pariṇāma-vāda, how does the permutation of the energy of the Lord give birth to the cosmic manifestation? The material creation starts with Lord Mahā-Viṣṇu, who lies down on the causal ocean and creates all the innumerable material universes. Due to the influence of material time (kala), everything in the material world is created and destroyed, including the universe itself. Because of the influence of time, everything here is temporary, and the material universes go through cycles of creation and destruction. When the universes are destroyed, all the souls merge back into the body of Lord Mahā-Viṣṇu and remain dormant until the next material manifestation.
The manifestation of the material universes lasts for 311.04 trillion years. That's the lifespan of Lord Brahma calculated according to our time. This equals one breath of Mahā-Viṣṇu. When He exhales, all universes come out and everything becomes active, and when He inhales, all the universes are destroyed and everything merges back into His body. This lasts for the same period as the material creation, also 311.04 trillion years. During this time all the souls stay dormant inside the body of Mahā-Viṣṇu. After this period He again exhales and all the universes become active again. The souls have thus another opportunity to perform material activities, satisfy their material desires, perform devotional service, and eventually go back to Godhead. This is a process explained in detail in the Srimad Bhagavatam, as well as in other Puranas.
According to Vyasadeva, the material world is not false, but it is illusory. This means that the way we see it is different from what it is in reality. This illusion is called Maya. We think we will live forever, but in reality, we all die, we think we are these bodies, that we belong to a certain family or country, although in reality, we are not, and so on. On the other hand, the material energy is originally one of the spiritual potencies of Lord Mahā-Viṣṇu, His external potency. This external potency is like a shadow, which stays behind the Lord. Because material energy is one of the potencies of the Lord, it can't be false.