The separate being, the soul, is alien to matter, so it cannot experience happiness unless it lives on the spiritual plane, like the Lord. Lost beings, having forgotten their original condition, vainly spend their time seeking happiness in the material universe. However, the entire Vedic system is designed to remind everyone of this essential aspect of existence. The Lord offers the conditioned soul a material body that should ensure it a supposed happiness, but if this soul does not regain its senses and does not attain spiritual consciousness, the Lord plunges it back into the unmanifested state it was in at the beginning of creation.

According to their different bodily characteristics, humans are distributed across the different planetary systems.

Material creation. The action of time, how does action arise?

Then, under the action of eternal time, the ultimate totality of matter, called the mahat-tattva, became manifest. Then, the Supreme Lord, the personification of pure and absolute virtue, introduced into it the seeds of universal manifestation, issued from His own body.

In due course, the fertilized material energy first became manifest in the aggregate form of material components. Everything develops in its own time, and this is why the words kala-coditat, “under the action of time,” are used here. The mahat-tattva is the universal consciousness, since it is represented in every being in the fragmentary form of the intellect. It is in direct contact with the supreme consciousness of the Sovereign Being, but it nonetheless appears material. It is from this mahat-tattva, the shadow of pure consciousness, that the entire creation will germinate. It is, in fact, pure virtue with a slight touch of material passion; thus, action is born.

Then, the mahat-tattva, from which all beings will be manifested, differentiates into many varied forms. It is primarily influenced by ignorance and produces the false ego. It is a plenary emanation of the Supreme Lord, possessing full awareness of the principles of creation and the time allotted for fruition.

The mahat-tattva acts as an intermediary between the pure spiritual element and material existence. It stands at the boundary between the material and the spiritual, the source of the false ego of the conditioned being. All beings are separate souls emanating from the Supreme Lord, but under the pressure of the false ego, conditioned souls, although they are an integral part of the Supreme Being, claim to be the masters and beneficiaries of material nature. This false ego is the force that binds the separate being to material existence. The Lord repeatedly offers conditioned and misguided souls the opportunity to free themselves from this false ego, and it is for this purpose that material creation occurs at regular intervals. It is true that He provides conditioned souls with all the means required to rectify the activity of the false ego, but He in no way interferes with the tiny independence they enjoy as partial emanations of His Person.