गोविन्द भाष्य (श्रील बलदेव विद्याभूषण - अचिन्त्यभेदाभेद वेदान्त ब्रह्मसूत्र भाष्य सटीक)

Pada 3 Adhikaraṇa 1 Ether Is Created Introduction by Śrīla Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa vyomādi-viṣayaṁ gobhir bibharti vijaghāna yaḥ sa tāṁ mad-viṣayāṁ bhāsvān kṛṣṇaḥ praṇīhaniṣyati May the brilliant sun of Lord Kṛṣṇa, who with rays of logic destroys a host of misconceptions about ether and the other elements, destroy the misconceptions in my heart. In the Second Pāda were revealed the fallacies present in the theories of they who say pradhāna is the the first cause and they who claim something other than the Supreme Personality of Godhead is the first cause. In the Third Pāda will be shown the truth that the various elements of the material world are manifested from the Supreme Personality of Godhead, that they merge into Him at the end, that the individual spirit souls always existed, there not being a point in time when they were created, that the individual spirit souls have spiritual bodies full of knowledge, that the individual spirit souls are atomic in size although by their consciousness they are all-pervading within the material body, that the individual spirit souls are part-and-parcel of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, that Matsya-avatāra and the other avatāras are directly the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and that the variety of situations into which the conditioned souls are placed is caused by the previous karma. These will all be proved by refuting the ideas of they who claim that these statements are not true. The various aspects of the material world are created in the following sequence:

1. pradhāna, 2. mahat-tattva, 3. false-ego, 4. the tan-mātras, 5. the senses, and 6. the gross elements, beginning with ether. This sequence is given in the Subala- śruti and other scriptures. The sequence found in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad and other scriptures will also be discussed in order to show that sequence does not contradict what has already been said. Chāndogya Upaniṣad (6.2.1) explains: