Chapter 14 · Verse 2·Spoken by Arjuna
इदं ज्ञानमुपाश्रित्य मम साधर्म्यमागताः।सर्गेऽपि नोपजायन्ते प्रलये न व्यथन्ति च
idaṁ jñānam upāśhritya mama sādharmyam āgatāḥ sarge ’pi nopajāyante pralaye na vyathanti cha
Those who take refuge in this knowledge come to share my own nature. They are not born when creation begins, and they do not suffer when it dissolves.
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Sanskrit recitation by Swami Brahmānanda
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Convergence
rishna is naming the fruit of the knowledge he is about to teach in this chapter. He says that those who 'resort to' or take refuge in this knowledge reach it not by mere hearing but by actually practising its means: studying, reflecting, and carrying the teaching through to direct experience. The verse is a threshold promise placed at the chapter's opening, telling the seeker in advance what the whole teaching about the three gunas (the strands of nature) is for. Several commentators stress that this is the final, fruit-bearing knowledge, the realization of the very form of Brahman or of the Lord, not a preliminary or partial understanding.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
By this knowledge they come to 'mama sadharmya', a likeness or sameness of nature with Krishna, the supreme Lord. This is the heart of the verse, and every commentator marks it. The freed one becomes like the Lord: unaffected by the cosmic cycle, no longer driven by karma, established in the Lord's own nature. The exact weight of this 'likeness' is where the schools part, but all agree it is a real attainment of the Lord's state, not a faint resemblance, and that it is named here as the goal toward which the chapter's whole account of bondage and freedom is drawn.
Braided from 16 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Having reached this state, they are 'not born even at a creation' (sarge api na upajayante). The little word 'api', meaning 'even', is pointed: even at the start of a great new cosmos (a mahasarga), when Brahma and the fourteen worlds and their rulers come forth, these knowers are not born. They are no longer compelled by karma to take a body. Some commentators draw out the force of the 'even': if they are not born at the grand creation, how much less are they pulled into the lesser, ordinary births. Their freedom from rebirth is complete and is not an exception that the next world-cycle could undo.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
And 'at the dissolution they do not waver' (pralaye na vyathanti cha). When the universe is withdrawn, when the world-destroying fire consumes every creature and the worlds tremble and all beings suffer and perish, these knowers feel no pain, no agitation, no distress. They do not dissolve along with the world; they do not return to the round of birth and death. The two halves of the verse together fix them outside both ends of the cosmic process, untouched by creation and untouched by destruction, because they have been severed from prakriti (primordial nature) and from the gunas born of it, and the birth, death, sorrow, and turmoil that ride on prakriti can no longer reach them.
Braided from 16 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
The 'sameness of nature' with the Lord is non-difference, not a sharing of separate qualities. On this reading the Gita admits no real distinction between the field-knower (the individual self) and the Lord, so the knower attains the Lord's own true nature by absolute non-difference: 'the knower of Brahman becomes Brahman'. To guard against misreading 'likeness' as the resemblance between two distinct things (as a wild gavaya resembles a cow), these commentators insist the verse is spoken as praise, to glorify knowledge by stating its fruit, not to set up two similar-but-separate entities. One source warns that if the likeness were read as a mere resemblance of form, the proper fruit of right understanding would be abandoned and an off-topic 'meditation' fruit would wrongly follow. Scriptural support is cited: 'he who knows I am Brahman becomes this all', and the texts naming the knower as lord, ruler, and master of all, untouched by good or bad karma.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
The 'sadharmya' is a real likeness to the Lord but not an identity of being. The released soul becomes like the Lord precisely in being unbound by samsara: it is no longer the object of the act of creating, nor the object of the act of withdrawing. One source reads this carefully as similarity of moksha-fitness, the freed candidate becoming like the Lord in being unaffected by the cosmic cycle, while remaining ontologically distinct from him. The likeness is in the state of freedom, not in collapsing the difference between self and Lord.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
No comment is recorded for this verse, so the Dvaita reading of it is not represented in the sources on file.
Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
The 'mama sadharmya' is the likeness of the Lord's own majesty, specifically his six-fold set of qualities, and the fruit is fitness for the Lord's play (lila-yogyatva), not bare metaphysical sameness or impersonal absorption. The freed ones are not merged out of existence; the plurality of liberated souls stands always near the Lord, kept close as those fit for his play, with the Lord himself as the field of their enjoyment. One source grounds this in sayings about where the followers of Hari dwell. The promise at the chapter's threshold is therefore relational nearness, not isolation.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
The goal named is a likeness to Bhagavan himself, the having of his very form, and not a merely impersonal kaivalya (isolation). Several of these voices read the likeness as a parity with the Lord's eternally manifest eightfold set of qualities, made manifest in the freed soul through practice (here aided by service to the guru), and they take the verse to declare a real plurality of liberated selves, supported by the scriptural text 'the wise ever behold that supreme abode of Vishnu'. One of these commentaries, in a vivid image, describes the freed soul as the sky in a jar merging into the great sky when the jar breaks, or several lamp-flames merging into the one original flame, so that all duality of 'I' and 'you' ends and they become one with the Lord, eternal through his eternity and perfect through his perfection. Within this school, then, the stress on personal likeness coexists with strong language of merging.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators spell out the likeness in practical terms while guarding its limits. One says the knower attains sadharmya in this exact sense: just as in the Lord there is no doership (kartritva) and no enjoyership (bhoktritva), so in the knower these too fall away; just as the Lord is ever untouched (nirlipta) and unchanging (nirvikara), so the knower comes to experience his own untouchedness and changelessness. But that same source draws a firm line: the knower does not, like the Lord, carry out the creation, sustenance, and dissolution of the world; the Lord's power is self-established from beginningless time, while any power a yogi gains is earned through practice and is never equal to the Lord's. Other modern voices describe the state as becoming identical with the Lord, living in him with no thought of 'I' or 'thou', going beyond birth and death and attaining eternity, immortality, and perfection, while reading the whole verse as the Lord's eulogy of Self-knowledge.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak
A Seeker Asks
If the freed knower becomes 'the same as' the Lord, does he gain the Lord's power to create and destroy worlds, or is the sameness only freedom from suffering and rebirth?
The verse itself names the sameness in terms of freedom, not cosmic office: those who reach it are not born at creation and do not suffer at dissolution. The likeness it promises is being unaffected by the world-cycle, established outside both birth and destruction, no longer compelled by karma to take a body.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda
The most explicit answer in the sources draws a firm line: the knower becomes untouched and unchanging like the Lord, with doership and enjoyership fallen away, but he does not, like the Lord, carry out the creation, sustenance, and dissolution of the world. The Lord's power is self-established from beginningless time and is his alone; any power a practitioner gains is earned through effort and is never equal to it.
Swami Ramsukhdas
How deep the 'sameness' itself goes is exactly where the schools differ, so the seeker should hold the question with care. One reading takes the sameness as non-difference, the knower realizing the Lord's own true nature with no real distinction between self and Lord. Other readings take it as a genuine likeness in the state of freedom while the soul remains distinct from the Lord, becoming like him in being unbound by samsara rather than identical in being. On every reading, though, the fruit promised here is release from the cycle of birth and agitation, not appointment to the Lord's creative work.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya
Contemplation
Take this verse as a description of what is already your deepest nature, not a faraway reward. The likeness to the Lord it promises is this: that you, in your true self, have no doership and no enjoyership, and are by nature untouched and unchanging, just as he is. The work is not to manufacture this state but to let the knowledge be actually experienced, so that every doubt dissolves and you rest as that. Notice where you still take yourself to be the doer of your actions and the enjoyer of their results, and let the teaching loosen that grip. When the world around you churns and breaks, as worlds do, the part of you that knows itself untouched does not tremble, because the reality you have recognized itself knows no agitation. Hold a clear honesty here too: this freedom from being driven by karma is real and total, but it does not make you the manager of the cosmos. The peace it brings is the peace of being severed from the bondage of nature, where the birth, death, sorrow, and turmoil that ride on it can no longer reach you.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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