IX: 19

Chapter 9, Verse 19

"I am the heat of the Sun.
I hold back the rain and release it.
I am Death and the Deathless
And all that is and is not.

Paramahansa Yogananda:

The Lord here presents himself as the Great Paradox.  As the Creator of Maya, the Cosmic Magician, he is responsible for the pairs of opposites, the contrasting sense-data accepted by all humans under Maya's hypnotic sway: heat and cold, life and death, truth and falsity, and reality and illusion.

Swami Satchidananda:

Take some soft clay.  Because it is completely unconditioned, you can make it into anything you want:  toys, pottery, plates, and so on; but if it already had a form of its own, could you make it into something else?  No.  Only the formless can be made into form.  Only the nameless can be given a name.  Only the unconditioned can be brought into a condition.

That's why we say that God's Love is unconditional.  If we approach him lovingly, we get love.  If we worship God as Light, we get Light and become enlightened.

However, if we say to the flame on the altar of our Puja, "I don't like you here.  I'll put you up in the attic," will the same Light be blessing us?  No, it will burn down the house.

God's power is neutral, like a zero.  By breaking the circle, you can shape it into any letter or number that you want.  All the numbers and letters are a broken zero.  Originally, it was unbroken, beginningless, and endless.  That's the essence of this and the secret also.  God is above all of these things, and it is God who manifests as all these things.