Chapter 13 · Verse 14·Spoken by Arjuna
सर्वतः पाणिपादं तत्सर्वतोऽक्षिशिरोमुखम्।सर्वतः श्रुतिमल्लोके सर्वमावृत्य तिष्ठति
sarvataḥ pāṇi-pādaṁ tat sarvato ’kṣhi-śhiro-mukham sarvataḥ śhrutimal loke sarvam āvṛitya tiṣhṭhati
Its hands and feet are everywhere. Its eyes, heads, and faces are everywhere. Its ears are everywhere. It exists, pervading all things in the world.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
he verse describes the knowable, the supreme self, as having hands and feet on every side, eyes and heads and faces on every side, hearing on every side, standing in the world while covering all. The first thing to grasp is why these limbs and senses are attributed to it at all. The previous verse called this knowable neither existent nor non-existent, since it is beyond the ordinary categories of speech and thought. That can leave a reader fearing it is simply a nothing, a void. This verse answers that fear: the supreme is not a blank absence but the conscious presence behind every living being's activity. Wherever there is a working hand, a seeing eye, a hearing ear, that activity points back to it.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrī Puruṣottama
These limbs and senses are not literally the supreme's own. They belong to the bodies of countless beings and are attributed to the supreme by way of the upadhi, the limiting adjunct, the borrowed instrument. The hands, feet, eyes and ears of every body are insentient on their own; they only function because consciousness is present and presiding behind them. So the verse says the supreme has hands and feet everywhere in the sense that, through every body's instruments, its single conscious existence is made evident. The instruments are scattered and many; the conscious knower they reveal is one. This is how the verse proves its existence: not by direct quality, but by the universal sign of activity that could not occur without it.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Ānandagiri · Swami Sivananda · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Though pervading and presiding over all these instruments, the supreme is not touched, stained, or modified by them. Several commentators reach for an image to fix this: the rope is not affected by the qualities or defects of the snake falsely seen in it, and the supreme is likewise unaffected by the world, body, senses and life-force superimposed on it. It stands, having pervaded and covered everything, yet remains free of change, free of attachment, one and all-pervading. It moves the insentient body the way a driver moves an engine, or the way iron seems to live in the presence of a magnet, while itself remaining what it is.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Sant Jñāneśvar
The verse holds together two truths that seem opposed. The supreme knows through all the senses yet has no senses of its own; it supports all yet is unattached; it is beyond the gunas, the three strands of nature, yet experiences them. This paradox is resolved by the scriptural saying that it is 'without hands and feet, yet swift and grasping; it sees without eyes, it hears without ears.' Its knowing and supporting flow from its own nature and power, not from material organs. So 'hands and feet on every side' does not import limbs into it; it points to a power that needs no limbs to do what limbs do.
Braided from 6 commentators
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the whole description as a deliberate teaching device: a superimposition followed by denial. The false form made by the adjuncts (hands, feet, senses) is set forth as if it were a quality of the knowable, only so that the reader can grasp that the knowable exists; then it is to be withdrawn again. They quote the tradition: 'by superimposition and by denial the distinctionless is made plain.' The activity of the supreme is only imagined through the adjunct, not real; by its mere existence as substrate it sustains and nourishes all. The many hands and eyes are figurative marks of one conscious existence, and the multiplicity is false to that one knower, who is not divided body by body but is eternal, all-pervading, and ultimately without distinction or attribute.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the verse describes a real supreme being possessed of real powers, not a distinctionless absolute reached by denial. It shines forth by the workings of all the senses, meaning it genuinely knows all objects by its own nature even without material senses; it is by nature free of attachment to any divine or other body, yet it is the actual supporter of all such bodies, by texts like 'He becomes one, He becomes threefold'; it is by nature free of the gunas sattva and the rest, yet able to experience them. One of these commentators explicitly links this verse to the universal form Arjuna saw earlier: the all-sided pervasion named here is that same cosmic-bodied supreme, named now in a different register, the encompasser of the whole cosmic field.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators insist the verse settles a doubt in favor of form, not against it. The supreme is precisely with form (sa-akara); in every place its hands and feet really are its own limits and reach, marking its power of action; the eyes, heads and mouths everywhere mark its primacy of knowledge and enjoyment; the hearing everywhere even marks its fitness, out of compassion, to hear the praises of its devotees. These attributes become plainly visible only after the world comes into being, but the verse states them at the very outset to declare that they are eternal. The supreme is the one whose form pervades every place, the one fit to be served by all, not a bare formless neutrality.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators ground the verse in the scriptural teaching of the supreme's 'inconceivable power' (acintya-shakti): 'His supreme power is heard of as manifold, natural, of the form of knowledge, strength, and action.' The all-Selfhood described here is the working of this innate power, which reconciles the verse with srutis like 'all this is verily Brahman.' Two of them name this supreme as Vishnu or Hari, the supporter of all in his glorious form, and read his being 'enjoyer of the gunas' through the word Bhaga, the one who possesses and transcends the six excellences. Another renders the pervasion through a cascade of homely images: as sky pervades space, thread pervades cloth, liquidity dwells in water, light in the lamp, fragrance in camphor, gold in every particle of gold, so Brahman pervades all within and without, yet, like gold that stays gold through every ornament, is never really transmuted by the gunas it seems to bear.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators keep close to the older readings while making the verse plain and usable. One restates it through the rope-and-snake teaching of superimposition and its sublation by denial, identifying the knowable with the Inner Ruler and the one common, self-luminous, all-pervading consciousness, and notes that the verse is drawn from the Svetasvatara Upanishad. Another compresses the paradox cleanly: it seems to have the qualities of all the senses yet has none, it is untouched yet supports everything, it is qualityless yet enjoys all qualities. The third gives the verse a strikingly personal turn: it speaks not of one vast many-limbed form but of the truth that no body, eye, foot or ear anywhere is not his; every individual is borrowed from the whole, and the whole is rooted in him, so that he sees by every eye and walks by every foot.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the supreme has no real hands, eyes, or senses of its own, why does the Gita describe it with such vivid, bodily language at all.
The bodily language is there to rescue you from a worse misreading. The previous verse called the knowable neither existent nor non-existent, and a reader can easily slide from that into thinking it is simply nothing, a void. By saying it has hands and feet and eyes everywhere, the Gita points to the unmistakable fact that wherever any being acts, sees, or hears, a conscious presence must be there behind the act. The vivid image is a finger pointing at that presence, proving it is, not a blank.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Sivananda · Dhanapati Sūri
The limbs named are not the supreme's own but borrowed from countless bodies, attributed to it by way of the adjunct. Hands and eyes are insentient on their own; they work only because consciousness presides behind them. So 'hands on every side' really means: the one knower is evident through every body's instruments. For several commentators this is a teaching method, superimpose the form to make existence graspable, then withdraw it again, since the knower is finally one and distinctionless.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Other commentators caution that the image is not merely a crutch to be discarded; it tells you something true about the supreme's power. It knows through all senses while having none, supports all while unattached, transcends the gunas while experiencing them, just as scripture says it 'sees without eyes and hears without ears.' Whether you read the verse as a device to be sublated or as a real description of inconceivable power, both agree the language is honest, not idle: it points to a reality that does what limbs do without needing limbs.
Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Lokmanya Tilak · Sant Jñāneśvar
Contemplation
This verse can be lived, not only understood. The practice is to stop appropriating. When your eye sees, when your foot walks, when your ear hears, quietly remember that this is the supreme's eye, the supreme's foot, the supreme's ear, not your private possession. Every individual capacity is borrowed from the whole, and the whole rests in him. The instant you claim the seeing and the walking as 'mine,' the field-knower in you is bound. The instant you release the claim and let the act belong to him, that same field-knower stands free in its own true nature, which is the supreme self. So the contemplation is gentle and constant: through the ordinary day, hand over each sense back to its real owner.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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