Bhaktivedanta VedaBase: Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 4.11.25

sa eva viśvaḿ sṛjati

sa evāvati hanti ca

athāpi hy anahańkārān

nājyate guṇa-karmabhiḥ

SYNONYMS

saḥ — He; eva — certainly; viśvam — the universe; sṛjati — creates; saḥ — He; eva — certainly; avati — maintains; hanti — annihilates; ca — also; atha api — moreover; hi — certainly; anahańkārāt — from being without ego; na — not; ajyate — becomes entangled; guṇa — by the modes of material nature; karmabhiḥ — by activities.

TRANSLATION

The Supreme Personality of Godhead creates this material world, maintains it, and annihilates it in due course of time, but because He is transcendental to such activities, He is never affected by ego in such action or by the modes of material nature.

PURPORT

In this verse the word anahańkāra means "without ego." The conditioned soul has a false ego, and as a result of his karma he gets different types of bodies in this material world. Sometimes he gets the body of a demigod, and he thinks that body to be his identity. Similarly, when he gets the body of a dog he identifies his self with that body. But for the Supreme Personality of Godhead there is no such distinction between the body and the soul. Bhagavad-gītā, therefore, certifies that anyone who thinks of Kṛṣṇa as an ordinary human being is without knowledge of His transcendental nature and is a great fool. The Lord says, na māḿ karmāṇi limpanti: He is not affected by anything He does, because He is never contaminated by the material modes of nature. That we have a material body proves that we are infected by the three material modes of nature. The Lord says to Arjuna, "You and I had many, many births previously, but I remember everything, whereas you do not." That is the difference between the living entity, or conditioned soul, and the Supreme Soul. The Supersoul, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, has no material body, and because He has no material body, He is not affected by any work He executes. There are many Māyāvādī philosophers who consider that Kṛṣṇa's body is the effect of a concentration of the material mode of goodness, and they distinguish Kṛṣṇa's soul from Kṛṣṇa's body. The real situation, however, is that the body of the conditioned soul, even if he has a large accumulation of material goodness, is material, whereas Kṛṣṇa's body is never material; it is transcendental. Kṛṣṇa has no false ego, for He does not identify Himself with the false and temporary body. His body is always eternal; He descends to this world in His own original, spiritual body. This is explained in Bhagavad-gītā as paraḿ bhāvam. The words paraḿ bhāvaḿ and divyam are especially significant in understanding Kṛṣṇa's personality.

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His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder Ācārya of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness