from the combined influence of the three gunas. The spiritual and eternal form of the Lord, which is pure knowledge, bliss and existence, therefore remains veiled from him. If this is so, it is because the Lord reserves the right not to reveal himself to unbelieving atheists who, even after a thorough study of writings such as the Bhagavad-gita (Words of Krishna, Christ, God, the Supreme Person), persist in retaining their impersonal views. Truthfully, this stubbornness comes from the action of the energy of illusion, a personal energy of the Lord acting as an “aide-de-camp” by veiling the vision of the obstinate impersonalist. We also qualify as grossly ignorant, a man thus misled because it is impossible for him to understand that the all spiritual form of the Lord was born and immutable. If the Lord covered in a material form the impersonality of its original aspect, it would indeed suggest that He is born and that he is transformed from the impersonal to the personnel, thus losing his immutability. But this is not the case. Nor does He have to be born as a conditioned soul does. The Lord living in the heart of each distinct being knows well the past, present and future aspirations of conditioned souls but these, in their confusion, can hardly conceive of its eternal form.

The darkness of the false ego generates ether, the first of the five elements, and sound represents its subtle form. Sound is to ether what the object of vision is to the one who sees. The five elements, ether, air, fire, water and earth are all manifestations of the darkness of the false ego. This amounts to saying that the false ego, in the aggregate of material nature, was born from the marginal energy of the Lord and that from this false ego which wants to dominate material creation come the elements necessary for illusory pleasure living beings. The latter practically reign over the material elements as masters and beneficiaries although the Supreme Lord dominates them all. Truth be told, none other than the Lord can be called a beneficiary, but in their illusion separate beings aspire to take on this role themselves. Thus is born the false ego. With these aspirations of illusioned beings are also born, by the will of the Lord, the deceptive elements which they can covet greedily, but in vain.

The sound is first created, then comes the manifestation of the ether. Sound is the subtle form of ether, from which it is distinguished just as the observer of a given object is distinguished from the object itself. Indeed, sound is the representation of the real object, and the sound produced by describing this same object gives a precise idea. Thus sound characterizes an object in a subtle way. Likewise, the sound manifestation of the Lord, like that which describes its characteristic features, is equivalent to the very form of the Lord. Nothing distinguishes the Lord from his sound manifestation because both are absolute. Lord Chaitanya taught us that in the