1) Antaranga shakti – internal potency (yoga-maya)
sat – samvit – external potency
chit – sandhini – knowledge potency
ananda – hladini – pleasure potency
vishnu shaktih para prokta
kshetre-jnakhya tatha para
avidya-karma samjnaya
tritiya shaktir ishyate
The Supreme Lord has diverse and innumerable energies which are beyond our conception; however, great learned sages or liberated souls have studied these energies and have analyzed them into three parts. All of the energies are of vishnu-shakti, that is to say they are different potencies of Lord Vishnu. The first energy is para, transcendental. Living entities also belong to the superior energy. The other energies, or material energies, are in the mode of ignorance.
2) Bahiranga shakti – external energy (maha-maya)
a) bhumir – earth
b) apah – water
c) analah – fire
d) vayuh – air
e) kham – ether
f) manah – mind
g) buddhi – intelligence
h) ahankara – false ego
(Bhagavad-gita 7.4)
3) Tatastha shakti – marginal potency (living entities)
(Bhagavad-gita 7.5, 15.7)
Krishna is the shaktimana, or the source of all energy
(Bhagavad-gita 7.6)
a) The spiritual energy is eternal, full of knowledge and bliss. It is transcendental and beyond all changes of material nature.
b) The external energy is the exact opposite and is therefore temporary, full of ignorance and misery. It is mundane and always changing.
c) The marginal energy (jiva) also belongs to the spiritual energy, but because he has the independence to be either in the spiritual world or the material world, he is called marginal.
The whole manifestation is the Lord Himself by diffusion of His different energies only, namely the internal, external and marginal. Such energy is simultaneously one with and different from the Lord (acintya-bheda-abheda-tattva).
