Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the six as plain inner defects to be defined and abandoned, the inverse of the divine endowment, and they ground the warning in scripture. One cites the Shatapatha account of the demons, offspring of Prajapati, who through excessive self-regard offered into their own mouths and so were defeated, concluding that self-regard is 'the door of defeat.' The defects are traced to rajas and tamas, the succession of inauspicious impressions manifested by sinful action at the body's beginning, so that for such a person the defects alone arise and not the qualities of fearlessness and the rest.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators define the demonic by transgression of God's command: the demons are those whose very nature is to overstep the command of the Blessed One. Ignorance here is specifically the want of discernment of the higher and lower truth as well as of what is to be done. One notes that against the long divine list, the demonic list is short and brutal, six traits that are all gross expressions of self-aggrandisement and ignorance, naming the inverse condition into which the demonic candidate is born.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the six not as a loose list of moral failings but as a structural false-self. The six are mapped onto kama, krodha, lobha and the rest in their pretence-arrogance-conceit shape, and their very nature (svabhava) belongs to the demonic jiva. The distinguishing mark is the refusal of the Lord's word; one cites Brihadaranyaka and Pancaratra texts dividing creatures into gods, men, and demons, and the shruti that 'those who reverence sambhuti as maya are asuras,' so that the doctrine calling the world a mere maya without reality is itself diagnosed as a demonic teaching. The demonic person is even said to be 'born by the Lord's own wish,' a structural condition in which the inward turn toward God (the God-facing orientation of the previous verse) has not been opened; this is set down with restraint, not softening the demonic state but naming it a configuration the next verse will call binding.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators read the six as the binding fruits and the inverse of the divine portrait: where fearlessness, purity, truth and goodness crown the divine list, pretence, harshness, ignorance and arrogance head the demonic one. The asuri condition is the self-presentation of the false-self that the next verses will unfold. One offers an extended Marathi meditation: dharma itself, like a mother, a teacher's secret teaching, a rescuing boat, or nourishing food, becomes harmful when made a public display, so that religion broadcast in eloquent words turns to sin, and that is hypocrisy; arrogance is illustrated by the small fish that scorns the sea and the grass-fire that reaches for the sky; the conceited demon cannot bear even to hear God praised and treats his own father as a rival; wrath is the inner burning kindled at the sight of others' happiness; and ignorance is the stone that feels neither heat nor cold and the child that puts anything into its mouth, unable to taste the difference between merit and sin.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators turn the verse into self-examination rather than a description of other people. One explains that pretence has two shapes: a non-virtuous person dressing up as virtuous to gather honor and fame, a 'bhogi parading as a yogi'; and a naturally pure person imitating impure company to win their favour, the common root being that body, wealth, status and reputation are given first place. Arrogance swells the self with what one calls one's own (wealth, family, followers, sect, guru), conceit swells the self with what one identifies with (the bodies, caste, class, station). The crucial counsel is that the seeker should not hate the demonic person but should fear even the smallest sign of these traits rising in his own heart and uproot it before it spreads; the other adds that even a learned, titled man is a veritable demon if endowed with evil tendencies, and that esoterically the war of gods and demons is the ongoing inner fight between pure and impure tendencies, between sattva and rajas-tamas.

Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas