Advaita Vedānta

On this reading the akshara is the nirguna Brahman, the attributeless Absolute, which is identical with the Self. The seven qualities describe Brahman as it truly is, beyond all distinguishing marks of kind, quality, and action. The pivotal term kutastha is given a layered explanation: 'kuta' in the world names something that looks sound on the surface but is flawed within, like a counterfeit coin or false witness, and this is precisely the beginningless seed of transmigration, namely ignorance, also called maya or the unmanifest, cited from scripture ('know maya to be Nature, and the wielder of maya the great Lord'). Brahman is kutastha because it stands over this maya as its unchanging witness and substrate, while maya and all its modifications are superimposed upon it. Some of these sources add a second sense, that kutastha means standing fixed like a solid mass, hence unmoving and eternal. The worship is hearing, reflection, and unbroken meditation (nididhyasana) that removes ignorance; the worshippers, having themselves become Brahman, attain Krishna as the very Imperishable Brahman, which they already were in essence.

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

Advaita Vedānta

Within the same non-dual school, one voice develops kutastha not around maya but around the ego-sense (ahankara). The 'kuta', the false-yet-true-appearing thing, is the I-notion, which seems identical with the innermost Self but is only momentary, like a rope mistaken for a snake. Brahman is kutastha as the consciousness that stands within this ego and illumines it, while remaining other than it, as the sun that lights a pot is other than the pot. This reading uses an extended chain of objections and replies to argue that Brahman is not a mere empty 'existence-in-general' of the logicians but the self-luminous ground that even the cognition 'it exists' depends on, and that the Self must be unmoving and firm, since otherwise liberation, and even the memory 'I slept happily and knew nothing' in deep sleep, would be impossible.

Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the akshara is not the supreme Brahman but the individual inmost self, the jiva considered in its own pure form. It is indefinable because, being other than the body, it cannot be named by words like 'god' or 'man' that name bodies; it is all-pervading and yet, being unlike the gods in whose bodies it dwells, cannot be thought of in their particular forms; kutastha means common to all, free of the special shapes peculiar to each deity. Worshippers of this pure self attain not Krishna's own essence but a self made like him, free of transmigration, as scripture says 'the stainless one reaches the supreme likeness.' Crucially, this school insists the kutastha Imperishable is other than the highest Person; it cites 'the kutastha is called imperishable, but the highest Person is another.' Reading verses 3 through 5 as one passage, this view explains the lower ranking not by the object's value but by the path's unfitness for embodied beings: the unmanifest offers no form for the senses to engage, so the embodied seeker must labor against his own object-directed nature, and the toil is greater.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

This school reads the seven qualifiers as describing maya or prakriti, primordial Nature, not Brahman. It marshals scripture to show that 'indefinable', 'unmanifest', 'all-pervading', 'unthinkable', and 'fixed' all properly belong to prakriti: the Bhagavata calls maya indefinable because it is beyond reasoning; a Rigvedic hymn names the primal 'darkness hidden by darkness' as the unmanifest, unaging, indefinable Nature; the Moksha-dharma and the Manava describe a dark, markless, unknowable principle. Kutastha is explained as 'standing in the kuta', that is, in space, on the authority of supplementary Rigvedic hymns that say Nature stands set in space, all-pervading, unmoving, the womb of the worlds. The feminine gender used of this principle is taken as scriptural. Lord Krishna, by contrast, is the one denoted by the word 'God'. The point of describing maya here is to establish that even the worship of her (rightly understood as resting on the Lord) serves as a means to liberation, which answers the question of what fruit the non-devotees obtain.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

Reading verses 3 and 4 together, this school takes the akshara as the antaryamin, the indwelling aspect that is unmanifest because nameless and formless, the immeasurable bliss. The whole point is a contrast, drawn out term by term: the akshara is unmanifest, but 'I' (the manifest Lord) am manifest; he cannot be designated, but I, by my own free choice, am fit to be designated in a supra-worldly way; he is all-pervading, but I am reached only by my devotees; he is unthinkable, but I am thought upon by my devotees; he is kutastha, equal everywhere, but I am particular and uncommon; he is unmoving, but I am the very one who moves, sporting and traveling. One of these sources reads acala instead as 'identical in essence with my feet.' On this view those who worship the akshara attain Krishna only as shri or as the fixed self whose being is the bliss of Brahman, not in his full reach.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This voice grants that worshippers of the Imperishable Brahman, who is the Self, do come to Krishna alone, but explains exactly why their toil is greater. By qualifiers such as 'all-pervading' they first lay upon the bare self all the properties of the Lord, beginning with the eight qualities such as freedom from sin, and only after this imposition do they worship that self. Since the Lord already stands as one weighty with a whole host of self-established qualities, reachable without effort, these seekers take on a doubled labor: first building up the self into something Lord-like, then worshipping it.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These devotional commentators read the akshara as the imperishable Brahman that is, finally, not different from Krishna, taking 'me alone' as the proof of that non-difference. Kutastha is glossed as established in the kuta, the expanse of maya, standing as its substratum; one source instead cites the lexicon Amara that kutastha is 'that which pervades time by remaining of a single form.' Within this group one Marathi voice expands the discipline into a vivid map of yogic ascent: the seekers burn away sense-objects in the fire of asceticism, awaken the Kundalini power, raise it through the central channel (Sushumna) to the crown (Brahmarandhra), and merge in the Supreme Brahman, attaining the qualityless, formless great void. Yet even after all this, that voice insists, they attain nothing more than Krishna himself; the only thing extra to their credit is the toil.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Sant Jñāneśvar

Bhakti

A Gaudiya voice gives the akshara a distinct sense: the imperishable is the consciousness that is the seeker's own self, indefinable because, being distinct from the body, it cannot be named by words like 'god' or 'human' that name bodies, and 'constant' (dhruva) precisely in being always subordinate to the Supreme Self. Its nature is knowledge and it is the very nature of the knower. The worship here is meditation 'preceded by direct realization' of one's own self and characterized by offering all one's actions to Krishna; those who lack this direct realization reach the goal only with very great toil and after a very long time, and so rank below the personal devotees. Yet they too attain Krishna alone, in whom supreme sovereignty is foremost.

Śrīla Baladeva

Modern

This non-sectarian devotional reading focuses on the practical force of the prefixes 'sam' and 'ni' on 'niyamya': the senses must be brought under perfectly complete control, so they do not stray to any object at all. The reason is structural rather than doctrinal. In saguna worship the mind has the Lord's personal form to rest on, and the senses even find their own proper objects in him: the form for the eye, the name for the ear, the prasad for the tongue. In nirguna worship there is no such support for the mind to lean on, so without thorough restraint of the senses, lingering attachment can pull the mind back toward objects and open the door to a fall. More than outer restraint is needed; even inner liking (raga) for objects must be gone. Add even vision everywhere and delight in the welfare of all, and the picture of the formless seeker is complete. Such a one attains Krishna no less than the devotee does; the path is fully valid, only its discipline is sharper.

Swami Ramsukhdas