SRIMAD-BHAGAVATAM 8 CHAPTER 1 TEXT 9
śrī-manur uvāca
yena cetayate viśvaṁ
viśvaṁ cetayate na yam
yo jāgarti śayāne ’smin
nāyaṁ taṁ veda veda saḥ
TRANSLATION
Lord Manu said: The supreme living being has created this material world of animation; it is not that He was created by this material world. When everything is silent, the Supreme Being stays awake as a witness. The living entity does not know Him, but He knows everything.
PURPORT
Here is a distinction between the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the living entities. Nityo nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānām. According to the Vedic version, the Lord is the supreme eternal, the supreme living being. The difference between the Supreme Being and the ordinary living being is that when this material world is annihilated, all the living entities remain silent in oblivion, in a dreaming or unconscious condition, whereas the Supreme Being stays awake as the witness of everything. This material world is created, it stays for some time, and then it is annihilated. Throughout these changes, however, the Supreme Being remains awake. In the material condition of all living entities, there are three stages of dreaming. When the material world is awake and put in working order, this is a kind of dream, a waking dream. When the living entities go to sleep, they dream again. And when unconscious at the time of annihilation, when this material world is unmanifested, they enter another stage of dreaming. At any stage in the material world, therefore, they are all dreaming. In the spiritual world, however, everything is awake.