Without proper spiritual guidance, one may misunderstand the Vedas’ description of the living entities emanating from the Lord to mean that they have come into being in this process and will eventually pass again into nonexistence. But if the living entities were to thus have only temporary existence, then when one of them would die his remaining karma would simply vanish without being used up, and when a soul would be born he would appear with unaccountable karma he had done nothing to earn. Furthermore, a living being’s liberation would amount to the total eradication of his identity and being.

The truth is, however, that the soul’s essence is one with Brahman’s, just as the small portion of space contained within the walls of a clay pot is one in essence with the all-expanding sky. And like the making and breaking of a pot, the “birth” of an individual soul consists of his first becoming covered by a material body, and his “death,” or liberation, consists of the destruction of his gross and subtle bodies once and for all. Certainly such “birth” and “death” take place only by the mercy of the Supreme Lord.

The combination of material nature and her controller that produces the numerous conditioned beings in material creation is likened here to the combination of water and air that produces countless bubbles of foam on the surface of the sea. Just as the efficient cause, air, impels the ingredient cause, water, to form itself into bubbles, so by His glance the Supreme Puruṣa inspires prakṛti to transform herself into the array of material elements and the innumerable material forms manifest from those elements. Prakṛti thus serves as the upādāna-kāraṇa, or ingredient cause, of creation. In the ultimate issue, however, since she is also an expansion of the Supreme Lord, it is the Lord alone who is the ingredient cause as well as the efficient cause. This is as stated in the Taittirīya Upaniṣad (2.2.1), tasmād vā etasmād ātmana ākāśaḥ sambhūtaḥ: “From this Supreme Soul the ether evolved,” and so ’kāmayata bahu syāṁ prajāyeya: “He desired, ‘Let Me become many by expanding into progeny.’”

The individual jīva souls are not created when “born” from the Supreme Lord and prakṛti, nor are they destroyed when they “merge” back into the Lord, rejoining Him in the pleasure pastimes of His eternal kingdom. And in the same way as the infinitesimal jīvas can appear to undergo birth and death without any factual change, the Supreme Lord can send forth and withdraw His emanations without Himself undergoing any transformation. Thus the Bṛhad-āraṇyaka Upaniṣad (4.5.14) affirms, avināśi vāre ’yam ātmā: “This ātmā is indeed indestructible” — a statement that can be applied to both the Supreme Soul and the subordinate jīva soul.

As explained by Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī, the dissolution of the living being’s material condition occurs in two ways, partial and complete. Partial dissolution occurs when the soul experiences dreamless sleep, when he leaves his body and when all souls reenter the body of Mahā-Viṣṇu at the time of universal annihilation. These different types of dissolution are like the mixing of nectar brought by bees from different kinds of flowers. The different flavors of nectar represent the dormant individual karmic reactions of each living entity, which still exist but cannot easily be distinguished from one another. In contrast, the ultimate dissolution of the soul’s material condition is his liberation from saṁsāra, which is like the flowing of rivers into the ocean. As the waters from different rivers merge together after entering the ocean and become indistinguishable from one another, so the false material designations of the jīvas are given up at the time of liberation and all the liberated jīvas once again become equally situated as servants of the Supreme Lord.

The Upaniṣads describe these dissolutions as follows: yathā saumya madhu madhu-kṛto nistiṣṭhanti nānātyayānāṁ vṛkṣānāṁ rasān samavahāram ekatāṁ saṅgayanti; te yathā tatra na vivekaṁ labhante amuṣyāhaṁ vṛkṣasya raso ’smy amuṣyāham raso ’smīty evam eva khalu saumyemāḥ sarvāḥ prajāḥ sati sampadya na viduḥ sati sampadyāmahe: “My dear boy this [partial dissolution] resembles what happens when honeybees collect honey by extracting the nectar from the flowers of various kinds of trees and merge it all into a single mixture. Just as the mixed nectars cannot distinguish, ‘I am the juice of such-and-such a flower,’ or ‘I am the juice of another flower,’ so, dear boy, when all these living entities merge together they cannot consciously think, ‘Now we have merged together.’” (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.9.1-2)

yathā nadyaḥ syandamānāḥ samudre
 ’staṁ gacchanti nāma-rūpe vihāya
tathā vidvān nāma-rūpād vimuktaḥ
 parāt-paraṁ puruṣam upaiti divyam

“As rivers flow to their dissolution in the sea, giving up their names and forms at their destination, so the wise man who becomes free from material names and forms attains to the Supreme Absolute, the wonderful Personality of Godhead.” (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.2.8)

Śrīla Śrīdhara Svāmī prays:

yasminn udyad-vilayam api yad bhāti viśvaṁ layādau
 jīvopetaṁ guru-karuṇayā kevalātmāvabodhe
atyantāntaṁ vrajati sahasā sindhu-vat sindhu-madhye
 madhye cittaṁ tri-bhuvana-guruṁ bhāvaye taṁ nṛ-siṁham

“The Supreme Lord is self-effulgently omniscient. By His great mercy, this universe, which is subject to repeated creation and destruction, remains present within Him after merging back into Him along with the living entities at the time of cosmic dissolution. This total withdrawal of the universal manifestation occurs suddenly, like the flowing of a river into the ocean. Within the core of my heart I meditate upon that master of the three worlds, Lord Nṛsiṁha.”