The relationship between the Lord and other living beings is comparable to that between a father and his sons. Father and son are qualitatively equal, but the Father is not the son, and conversely, the son is not the Father who begets.

The Lord, in His form as Garbhodakasayi Visnu, or Hiranyagarbha, the Supreme Soul, pervades each galaxy and animates it by impregnating material nature with living beings.

After each annihilation or “end of the world” of the galaxy, all living beings merge into the Lord's body, and when creation is manifested again, they are once again deposited within the material energy.

For souls conditioned by matter in this world, material energy serves as mother and the Lord as Father. But as soon as the whole is animated by the power of Krishna, living beings regain their proper activities under the influence of time and energy, and thus the variety of beings is manifested.

Lord Krishna is therefore truly the original prime cause of animation throughout the material galaxy.

How does the Lord place the individual beings within creation, at the moment when the manifestation of creation has come?

In His purely spiritual manifestation as the Supreme Avatar, a plenary emanation of His Person, the Supreme Being impregnates the material nature characterized by the three gunas (the three attributes and modes of influence of material nature: virtue, passion, and ignorance), and thus, under the influence of eternal time, living beings appear.

The offspring of any living being manifests only after the impregnation of the mother by the father, and the individual being, thus borne by the father's seed, receives a body similar to that of the mother. Similarly, mother nature (material energy) cannot produce any being from its material elements unless that individual being is already placed within it by the Lord Himself. This act of fertilization is performed by the first purusa-avatara, Karanarnavasayi Visnu, who, to do so, simply gazes upon material nature.

We should certainly not view this act of conception by the Supreme Lord as a sexual intervention. The almighty Lord can, in fact, fertilize material nature with His gaze alone, and this is precisely why He is called almighty. Each part of His spiritual and absolute Body can fulfill the functions of all the others.

When the time comes to manifest material creation, living beings are placed there directly by the Lord; they never arise from material nature. This is why no scientific discovery will ever produce a living being. And this is the whole mystery of material creation.