Advaita Vedānta

The Self is a wonder above all because it appears, through the contradictory limiting adjuncts (upadhis) laid over it by ignorance, as its own opposite: though real, it looks unreal; though self-luminous consciousness, it looks insentient; though pure bliss, it looks like suffering; though changeless and non-dual, it looks changing and as if having a second. Knowing the Self is a wonder, the seeing of it is a wonder (a false-seeming act that yet destroys ignorance and so cancels even itself), and the knower is a wonder (one whose ignorance has ended yet who, by the force of already-operating karma, still moves as if bound). Realization dawns only in a rare person of calm and restraint, often in his last body, when meditation ripens and the great Vedantic sentence ('That thou art') matures in the inner organ. One strand of this school also reads the verse as confirming that the perceived manifold, the whole world of difference, is itself a rope-snake-like appearance non-different from the one Self, and that this very claim is the deepest wonder, since it conflicts with all difference-grasping perception.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

The wonder lies in the Self's vailakshanya, its being of a kind utterly distinct from all things other than itself, present in the endless host of creatures yet unlike any of them. It is hard to know not because the world is unreal, but because realizing such a unique reality demands rare moral preparation: only a person whose sin has been worn away and whose merit heaped up by great austerity comes to see it. The verse, on this reading, sets out a real graded ladder, hearing, then settled conviction through reflection, then the ability to speak of it, then fitness to teach, and so on, at each rung of which the qualified person grows rarer. The little word 'and' signals that even among seers, speakers, and hearers, doing each of these *truly* is what is hard to come by.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

Here 'wonder' (ashcharya) is taken in its plain worldly sense of something hard to come by, a prize rarely won; in ordinary speech it is just such hard-won things that we call wonders, and grammatical tradition is cited to ground this usage. The Self is hard to come by because it bears the very form of the Lord and is subtle. And the one who sees the Self is himself rare and wonderful for the same reason: he is, as it were, a reflection of the Lord. The point of the whole verse is therefore to magnify the Lord's power: if even the reflection, the seer of the soul, is this rare, how much more must be said of that supreme original of which the soul is the reflection.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

The verse explains why even the wise still grieve, for instance over fear of hell from past sins. One sees the Self as a marvel because, knowing from scripture that it is ever unmanifest, one still sees in it apparent birth and the rest, like a spectacle conjured by maya; these appearances of birth in selves are arranged by the Lord's will, for his play, and that is exactly why they are called wonders. Strikingly, on this reading the seer, the speaker, and the hearer are all still under the Lord's maya: one deluded by it speaks of the Self as a marvel and instructs others, the hearer listens without insight, and the affirming particle confirms that none of these three really knows it. That is precisely why even such people grieve, out of remaining ignorance.

Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

The Self is shown to be hard to know precisely to explain why even wise people in the world still grieve: such grief can only come from remaining ignorance of the Self. One taught by scripture and teacher gazes at the all-pervading Self of eternal knowledge and bliss as at something supra-mundane, like a feat of conjuring, and is struck with amazement by the sheer want of expectation; another so struck has heard yet still does not actually know. One voice widens 'this' beyond the Self alone to include the body and the whole world that is the form of both, and even points out that the persistence of non-discernment in someone actively being instructed is itself a wonder. Another develops the Self's wondrousness through its paradoxical traits, of the nature of both knowledge and bliss yet not set over against any difference within them, atomic in size yet with a vast pervading reach, joined to many bodies yet untouched by their changes, and stresses that real seeing comes only to one who has purified his heart through his own duty, truthfulness, austerity, and recitation, and gained knowledge by a teacher's grace.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Bhedabheda

Coming off the teaching that all entities, being effects that pre-exist in their cause, are merely manifested and concealed rather than truly born or destroyed, this voice adds that the Self too is hard to know, and for a specific reason: although the Self is apprehended only when the aggregate of elements (the body) is present, that very entanglement with the body is what makes so many fall into delusion about it. The delusion takes rival shapes: some assert that consciousness simply belongs to the elements, others rightly see the Self as distinct from them, and still others reduce it to a mere momentary stream of cognitions. It is against this backdrop of competing errors that the verse declares the Self a marvel that, even when heard of, none truly knows.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This voice reads the surrounding teaching to mean that, for the one who grieves, a being is unmanifest at its beginning and unmanifest at its end, and its being manifest in the middle is only a passing modification. If anything deserves grief it is that modification, never the underlying nature. Moreover, whatever is held to be the ultimate root cause is itself eternal and of a manifold nature, displaying within its own self, in due order, the countless arisings, standings, and dissolutions of one being and another. Since the nature is of this kind, ever-present and self-unfolding, there is simply no ground for grief in it at all.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

One modern voice turns the verse's whole logic inward and gently corrects a common conclusion. The Self (dehi) seems a wonder because, unlike every other thing, it can never be made an object, grasped by 'this'; the senses, mind, and intellect cannot reach it because it is what illumines them. It is known only by oneself, from one's own self, the way a lamp needs no second lamp to be seen because it shines by itself. So 'seeing' here means knowing the Self by the Self, free of the usual triad of seer, seen, and seeing, and free of any instrument; and 'even having heard, no one knows' means only that mere hearing cannot do it, since one must finally come to stand in the Self oneself, while listening with faith remains a genuine aid. Crucially, this voice insists the Self is not really hard or rare to know at all; what is in short supply is the longing to know, the seekers who actually turn toward it from the heart. Other modern voices keep closer to the older reading, taking the man who sees, speaks of, and hears the Self to be the wonderful and very rare one, one among many thousands, and noting that although learned people do discuss the Self as a wonder, so few ever realize its true nature that most still lament over death; the call is to realize the Self after mature deliberation and so cease grieving.

Swami Ramsukhdas · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak