Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as a direct refutation of any real plurality of selves. The reality is one only, undivided, like all-pervading space; the appearance of a separate self per body is adjunct-made (caused by the limiting body, senses, mind) and therefore non-real, exactly like the false appearance of many spaces in many pots. They explicitly target those who hold that there is a different self in each body, calling that view mistaken. The illustration of the rope and the imagined snake is pressed hard: just as the snake is wholly conjured upon the rope and devoured and produced only within the spell of ignorance, so the many beings are produced by the one reality only as long as ignorance lasts, and devoured when knowledge dawns. One source frames it sharply as 'the known Brahman devours all beings, the unknown Brahman produces them,' meaning that knowing the one ends the apparent multiplicity. Scripture is cited: 'one only, without a second; he who sees here as if plurality goes from death to death.'

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators keep the supreme genuinely one while granting the many beings real standing as distinct loci of its indwelling. The supreme is undivided because the same supreme self indwells all beings; it appears as if divided because the many beings are real distinct seats in which that one indwells. The division is not dismissed as a mere superimposed error; the many beings are the actual places where the one is present in a special way. One source dwells on the supreme as the light of all lights and as that which abides, present in a special way, in the heart of every person, reached by knowledge through freedom from conceit and the other disciplines; it reads 'beyond darkness' as higher than primal matter (prakriti) in its subtle state.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhakti

These commentators read the undivided-yet-divided through a cause-and-effect relation rather than pure illusion. One puts it plainly: in its causal aspect the reality is undivided, non-different; in its effect aspect it stands as if divided. The image offered is foam born of the ocean, which is itself not other than the ocean: the world of separate beings is the reality's own effect, not simply a mistaken projection. Others extend the portrait into the light verses, gathering many scriptures (Katha, Shvetashvatara, Taittiriya) to establish that this is Brahman, the light of lights, of the single savor of consciousness and bliss, beyond primordial matter, the object worthy to be known by the seeker of liberation as a refuge, and seated as controller in every heart. One Gaudiya source even argues from the scriptural sequence that these verses speak of the Lord, not the individual living being alone.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators make this verse the key of their reading: the world's appearance of division is the Lord's own self-willed self-display, not an error to be cancelled. The Lord is undivided among his endless forms; the apparent division arises only by his own will, for the manifesting of just that much, and for the sake of rasa, the savor of his play (lila). The word 'iva' (as if) signifies that of his own wish he makes it so appear. One source develops a threefold portion-distinction in which the same single being-consciousness-bliss comes to dwell as the inert, the conscious, and the inner controller alike, the differences being by name and by which portion is veiled, not by any essential split. The three cosmic roles are read with affection: as protector he bears beings out of his loving nature, as destroyer he draws them back within himself at the time of separation, and as lord of creatures he brings them forth in manifold forms as the giving of the rasa of his play.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Modern

These commentators present the verse in accessible terms while leaning toward its non-dual sense. One restates the space-in-pots and fire-hidden-in-wood images and reads the three roles through the familiar trinity of Brahma the creator, Vishnu the sustainer, and Rudra the destroyer, all as forms of the one Brahman. Another, citing a chain of Upanishadic phrases, argues that the word 'iva' (as if) is used precisely to mark the diversity of names and forms as illusory and unity as the only truth, so that the Gita here supports the non-dualist position that Maya is unreal and the indivisible Brahman alone is real. A third gives the verse a devotional and practical turn: creation, maintenance, and dissolution are all the Lord's play (lila), and the seeker who grasps this stops treating any one of the three, especially loss and death, as a problem, seeing in the world's coming, staying, and going only the breath of the supreme.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas