Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the Highest Person as pure non-dual consciousness, the witnessing Self that is the inner reality of all. The perishable and the imperishable are both treated as 'heaps' belonging to the insentient or to ignorance, and the supreme Self is the third reality, the illuminer of both, the conscious one untouched by the defects of those two limiting adjuncts, and of an eternally pure, awake, and free nature. One source presses the point furthest: the words 'highest' and 'other' are meant to show that, in truth, there is no real perishable-and-imperishable nature at all, so the distinction itself dissolves under examination. The māyā or power by which He enters and bears the worlds is taken as His own power of consciousness, not a second real agent; and being avyaya is glossed as not increasing or decreasing whether viewed as the all-knowing Lord or as the little-knowing individual soul, since in essence they are one. He upholds by the sheer fact of His own true being.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the two earlier principles as the bound soul and the freed soul (the perishable being the bound person, the imperishable the liberated person), and the Highest Person as a reality other than both. They expand the 'three worlds' into a metaphysical triad apprehended by valid knowledge: the insentient matter, the conscious soul joined to it, and the freed conscious soul. The Highest Person enters this triad as its inner Self and upholds it, and is therefore other than the pervaded and upheld triad. He is further other for two reasons given in the text: He is undecaying, unlike the decaying insentient and unlike the soul that follows the body it is fit to be joined with; and He is the Lord, distinct from all that is to be ruled. The relation here is real and abiding, the supporting Self over the souls and matter it sustains and governs.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

This commentator is careful to block a wrong reading: 'perishable' (kshara) and 'imperishable' (akshara) must not be taken simply as insentient matter and the soul. He argues from the verse's own words. The word 'being' does not apply to mere insentient matter alone but to souls too, and the word 'person' points the same way; even material nature is treated as conscious here. Likewise the term 'fixed at the summit' (kutastha) used of the imperishable cannot mean the soul, since souls do change by gaining happiness and the like and so are not truly fixed. He then explains, by an etymology, why even something seemingly within the perishable (such as the Wind, Matarishvan) can be called imperishable by a special intent: the 'net' (jala) is the bondage of transmigration; one caught in it is 'netted', and one free of it, free of the false sense of 'I', is 'unnetted'. The Highest Person, 'the other', is the Supreme Self standing free of that net.

Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the Highest Person as the Purushottama who is the chief and foundational being, of measureless sat-cit-ananda (being, consciousness, bliss), the cause of every cause, and the substrate in whom even the perishable and the imperishable subsist. They stress that He is not a third type set beside the other two but the Lord himself who takes on the kshara and stands as the akshara without ever losing his being as the Highest Person; entering the worlds as the antaryamin (the inner controller), He bears and nourishes them by his own play. Bound and freed are described as conditions belonging to Him by his own quality or will, not in ultimate truth, so that for Him there is neither bondage nor release. This reading is explicitly devotional in aim: the verse names the chapter's crown, and the seeker's adoration is to be set upon this very person.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators emphasize the Highest Person as the supreme Lord, distinct from both, and as the proper object of devotion. One draws the distinction sharply by the name itself: as atman He is distinct from the perishable insentient, and as parama (supreme) He is distinct from the imperishable conscious enjoyer, so He is neither the perishing object nor the unchanging knower but the One who, above both, holds both. Another notes that this Supreme Self is worshipped by the yogis as Brahman is worshipped by the men of knowledge, and reasons that since the worshipper is superior the worshipped is shown superior too. A third argues that the work of upholding and protecting the world cannot belong to the bound soul, for whom such action is impossible, nor to the liberated soul, which scripture says is without activity in the world, so the Lord alone fits this verse. The Marathi commentary, in a long meditation, places the Highest Person as the third reality that remains when waking, dream, and deep sleep all dissolve, the substrate that gives reality and light to the apparent universe as gold gives form to ornaments, never disappearing with the world and comparable only to Himself.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators present the Highest Person in accessible terms as the Supreme Being, beyond the universe yet pervading the three worlds, untainted by the world he upholds, comparable only to himself. One develops the image that the secondary selves (physical, astral, and causal bodies) are called 'self' only by courtesy, while the Paramatma is the primary Self, the inner Ruler, the support of everything who sustains the worlds by His mere existence. Another gives a brief, direct gloss: the super-excellent Person is different from both, known as the Paramatman, the inexhaustible Lord who pervades and maintains the three spheres. A third draws out the bearing of 'bibharti': in truth the Paramatma alone bears every creature, while the individual soul, imagining a tie with the world, wrongly takes on the burden of supporting those it calls its own and suffers for it; and 'avyaya' means the Lord undergoes no loss or fatigue in upholding all the worlds. The same voice stresses that nirguna (without qualities) and saguna (with qualities) are one and the same Highest Person, and that in feeding and sustaining all He shows no partiality, supporting devotee and non-devotee, sinner and saint alike, as the sun gives light evenly to all.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas