Chapter 12 · Verse 7·Spoken by Krishna
तेषामहं समुद्धर्ता मृत्युसंसारसागरात्।भवामि नचिरात्पार्थ मय्यावेशितचेतसाम्
teṣhām ahaṁ samuddhartā mṛityu-saṁsāra-sāgarāt bhavāmi na chirāt pārtha mayy āveśhita-chetasām
For those whose minds are absorbed in Me, I soon become the deliverer from the ocean of birth and death.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
Audio from the Gītā Supersite, IIT Kanpur
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Convergence
rishna here gives a direct promise. For those who fix the mind on Him, He Himself becomes their rescuer. The Sanskrit word is samuddhartā, the lifter-up, the one who draws them out. The commentators stress that this is the Lord's own doing. The seeker is not asked to climb out of the ocean by personal strength; Krishna says I become the one who lifts. Ramsukhdas calls this word the seeker's whole capital: it tells him the rescuer is the Lord, not his own effort. Vallabha and Sridhara likewise read uddhartā as the perfect uplifter who carries the devotee up.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
What He lifts them from is the ocean of death and saṃsāra (mṛityu-saṃsāra-sāgara). Saṃsāra means the wandering round of birth and rebirth; here it is joined to death and likened to a sea, hard and dangerous to cross. The commentators read this as the whole cycle, not one trouble or another. It is the form that again and again brings on a body subject to dying, the entire churning round of birth and death from which every smaller difficulty arises.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
The single condition is that the mind be set on Krishna. The phrase is mayy āveśhita-chetasām, those whose thought (chetas) has entered into and rests in Me. Krishna asks for nothing else: no other discipline, no other vow, no other guarantee. Let the mind be placed in Him and the rescue follows. Several commentators describe this fixity as total: lakshya (aim), uddeshya (intention), and dhyeya (the object meditated on) all become the Lord, with whole self-surrender and undivided love.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
The deliverance is swift. The words na chirāt mean not after long, that is, very soon. The commentators underline this: the lifting is not held back until the seeker has reached some imagined worthiness. The condition itself, the mind placed in the Lord, sets the rescue in motion at once. This swiftness is part of the promise's reassurance, addressed warmly to Pārtha (Arjuna).
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the ocean to be crossed as ignorance and its effects. One source says the worship in view is worship of the Lord in His universal, cosmic form (saguna), and that the deliverance lifts the devotee up by giving the support of knowledge. Another reads death as nescience itself, the root cause of the misery of dying, with worldly existence following as its effect; so what is escaped is finally ignorance. A further point drawn here is practical: because even those attached to the manifest, embodied form are soon made fit to rise to the supreme abode, one should not cling excessively to the unmanifest. The verse becomes encouragement for the easier devotional path over the harder formless one.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Dvaita
This commentator reads the verse as the Lord settling a doubt raised earlier: the Gita shows the great toil of those who worship the unmanifest, but does not show such toil for worshippers of the Lord, so why claim things are so? The answer is that for the Lord's own devotees, marked by utmost regard given nowhere else, deliverance comes without long delay. The verse is tied to the surrounding statements as their scriptural support, set out so this assurance enters the understanding first; it confirms that the Lord's worshippers are spared the labor laid on others.
Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the verse through the Lord's binding closeness to His devotees. One cites the saying that the Lord is subject to His devotees, as if not free, brought under their sway by devotion as a virtuous husband is won by a virtuous wife. He answers an objection: would not lifting up only come through a conditioned, saguṇa state of feeling? No, because of the devotee's fixity in the Lord the feeling is in fact nirguṇa, free of qualities. When the Lord stands as the very ground of the devotee's bhāva (state of feeling), it is the power (śakti) of that divine object itself that lifts; even desire, kāma, when absorbed in the Lord, takes His form and becomes seedless, so there is no danger of being pulled back. The other commentator adds that the lifting is done by the gift of a form fitted for transcendent worship, and that the Lord becomes manifest to the devotee in meditation or in the worshipped image.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Modern
These commentators keep the verse plain and personal. They gloss the devotee as one who has become maccitta, mind united with the Lord, and read mortal saṃsāra simply as the round of birth and death. One stresses total, unconditional, ungrudging self-surrender: the devotee offers every action to the Lord, destroys the power of actions to bear fruit, and gives up even the wish for liberation, and is then lifted to the abode of immortality. Another presses the warmth of the promise itself: the three words samuddhartā, na chirāt, and mṛityu-saṃsāra-sāgarāt are the seeker's whole capital, telling him the Lord does the lifting, that it begins now rather than after some achieved worthiness, and that what is escaped is the entire round of birth and death.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If a mind fixed on Krishna brings swift rescue from the entire ocean of birth and death, why does the path still feel so long and so difficult?
The verse does not promise an easy effort; it promises that the effort needed is one thing, not many. The single condition is mayy āveśhita-chetasām, the mind genuinely entered into and resting in the Lord. What feels long and hard is usually the work of bringing a scattered mind to that one resting place; once it truly rests there, the verse says the rescue is already underway.
Śaṅkarācārya · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī
The swiftness is the Lord's side of the promise, not the seeker's burden. The rescuer is samuddhartā, the one who lifts; the deliverance is His doing, na chirāt, without delay. It is not held back until you have earned some standing. The reassurance is precisely that you do not climb out by your own strength.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Vallabhācārya · Swami Sivananda
Part of the felt difficulty is also a matter of what you cling to. Because even those still drawn to the Lord's embodied, manifest form are soon made fit to rise, the counsel is not to make the path harder than it is by straining after the bare unmanifest; the devotional route is offered as the swifter, gentler one.
Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Contemplation
Take this verse as a promise made directly to you. Three words carry it. Samuddhartā, the lifter-up, tells you that you are not asked to haul yourself out of the ocean by your own strength; the Lord Himself does the lifting. Na chirāt, without delay, tells you the rescue will not be kept waiting until you reach some imagined worthiness; place the mind in the Lord and the deliverance begins now. Mṛityu-saṃsāra-sāgarāt names what is actually being escaped: not this trouble or that, but the whole round of birth and death whose churning makes every trouble possible. The condition is single and small: let the chitta rest in Him alone, with undivided love. For the devotee there is no other discipline, no other vow, no other guarantee needed than this.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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