Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the two paths as worship of the qualified (saguna) Brahman with form, and worship of the unqualified (nirguna) Brahman without form. The 'imperishable, unmanifest' is the attributeless Brahman from which every limiting adjunct has been removed: not gross, not subtle, not short, not long, as the scripture says. They locate the very root of Arjuna's question in a doubt about the word 'Me' at the close of the previous chapter: when Krishna said worshippers reach 'Me,' did He mean the formless reality that is the nature of all, or the reality with form? Both usages occur in the Gita, so the doubt is real, and Arjuna asks which science is his own qualification, the with-attributes or the without-attributes. One among them notes that the long preamble defends reading 'thus' as pointing to the whole prior teaching on both worships, not merely the immediately preceding line, since only that lets the question fit both sides.

Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the personal object of worship as the full Lord Himself, joined with all glory: an ocean of blissful qualities, of unsurpassed beauty, gracious accessibility, all-knowingness, and true resolve. The 'imperishable, unmanifest' here is not a separate impersonal absolute but the own-form of the inmost self, which is unmanifest because it is not made plain by the eye and the other organs. They take the question to bear specifically on swiftness: the 'best knower of yoga' is the swift-goer toward what each is to accomplish, and this is confirmed right after when the Lord says He soon becomes the deliverer of those whose minds enter Him. One of them frames the question with care: it is not which worship is acceptable but which is supreme, a request for the ranking.

Yāmunācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators give a distinctive reading: the 'unmanifest' (avyakta) is not impersonal Brahman but a real being, Shri or Lakshmi, the imperishable principle whose worship the Veda declares to be a genuine means to liberation, citing texts on her great glory. On this reading the two worshippers are not personal-versus-impersonal but worshippers of the Lord and worshippers of Shri. They argue strongly that taking both objects as one and the same Lord would reduce the verse to saying 'those who worship you, and those who worship you,' which would be like the babbling of a madman; the question only makes sense if two distinct beings are named. They also insist that the Lord's form is to be taken as real, not figurative, and that worship of Him is to be done with form alone, since the worship of the unmanifest is a means only by virtue of its being established as a real path. The superiority of the worship of the Lord over worship of the unmanifest is, for them, the settled background against which Arjuna, though he already knows the answer, asks in order to draw out the subtle reasoning.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the manifest object of worship as the Purushottama, the supreme Person of gentle, blissful form, the very embodiment of grace toward devotees, root of all glories, treasury of boundless beauty and sweetness, who of His own will became manifest on earth and by His own power took a human shape. The worshippers are single-pointed devotees who have offered up their very self and sit close beside Him, intent on Him alone, setting aside every other worship. Against them stand those who worship the imperishable unmanifest. The question is which of the two classes is the more thoroughly joined, and the implied teaching is that devotion itself is the measure and the Person is the one measured, so it is Hari who is to be served and no other.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators read the chapter as undertaken to settle the superiority of devotion. The personal object is the beautiful dark Lord, Shyamasundara, worshipped through the offering of all action; the impersonal object is the attributeless imperishable Brahman of the scriptures. They ground the question in the Gita's own earlier verse that of all yogis the one absorbed in the Lord with faith is held most united (6.47), so that scripture already crowns devotion, and Arjuna asks at the chapter's close in order to hear that supremacy confirmed. One traces two whole paths from earlier chapters, knowing the self then meditating on Hari, versus devotion through hearing and the rest, and reports two views of the contrast: that meditation on Hari rooted in the bond of love is free of obstacles, while the formless, subtle self is hard to meditate upon, so devotion to Hari alone crushes every obstacle. Another, in his Marathi telling, has Arjuna confess that he already holds manifest and unmanifest to be of equal value, like gold weighed large or small, and asks only to learn whether the omniform Krishna had shown was real or an assumed guise.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the briefest reading: the question is asked to mark the distinction between two kinds of worshipper, those who worship Brahman together with the Lord, and those who worship the bare self alone. The contrast is drawn as worship that includes the Lord against worship of the self by itself.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators emphasize the practical, seeker-facing weight of the question. One reads the chapter as showing that the yoga of devotion is easier than the yoga of knowledge, since in devotion the seeker forms a near and dear relationship with the Lord through definite attitudes of love; the unmanifest is the Brahman incomprehensible to the senses and beyond all limiting adjuncts, worshipped by the wise sages. One frames it plainly as a question about who is the better knower of yoga, those who worship Krishna or those who worship the imperishable Brahman. One stresses that both kinds of seeker walk the same road and reach the same goal, yet for a seeker setting out today the practical question of which path suits him is decisive, so Arjuna makes it explicit for every aspirant who comes after him. One reads the question against the backdrop of an integral knowledge in which the Divine is at once the supracosmic Absolute, the Self of all, the supreme Person, and the Lord of the cosmos: Arjuna asks because the current Vedantic view prized union with the relationless unmanifest Immutable as the whole of liberation, and he wants to know how worship that admits the manifest could possibly be the greater yoga.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Sri Aurobindo · Swami Ramsukhdas