Advaita Vedānta

The peace that abides 'in Me' is liberation understood as resting in the very nature of Brahman, which is not different from one's own true Self. To rest in Me is to be 'dependent on Me, of My own nature'; the final freedom is the ending of ignorance and the false identification of the conscious Self with the mind. Several of these commentators read the verse through the framework of Patanjali's yoga, mapping its phrases onto stages of absorption (samadhi): 'ever yoking the self' is the absorption-with-cognition on a one-pointed ground; 'restrained mind' is the further absorption-without-cognition; 'peace' is the calm flow that grows ever quieter like a fuel-less fire; 'culminating in nirvana' is the highest absorption (the cloud of dharma) that, through knowledge of reality, brings the cessation of all affliction and action; and 'abiding in Me' is the isolation and freedom taught in the Upanishads. On this reading the verse deliberately excludes the lesser fruits of yoga, the mystic powers (siddhis), as obstacles to be set aside by the seeker of release. Because yoga has so great a fruit, it should be pursued with great effort.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

The mind is made unmoving and pure 'through the touch of Me,' the supreme Brahman, the highest Person, who is the auspicious resort of the mind. The mind's very purity comes from its abiding on the Lord, so the practice and its fruit are God-centered from the start. The peace 'abides in Me' and has nirvana for its summit, the peace that is the very edge of nirvana. One commentator presses the point that although this chapter treats the discipline of the individual self (jivatma-yoga), the meditation on the supreme Self (paramatma) is rightly enjoined here because the supreme Self is the inner self of the individual: the self-vision is never a vision of the individual self in isolation but of the individual self as held within the supreme. Nirvana here is the steady extinction of outer disturbance, not the annihilation of any self. The fruit is a single composite: the inner self is not steady unless it is held in the supreme, and the supreme rest is no rest unless the inner self is truly seen.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators take 'whose highest point is nirvana' precisely, refusing to let peace and nirvana collapse into one thing. The peace spoken of here is the peace that comes 'in the time after the giving up of the body,' that is, full liberation after death, not merely liberation while still living. One of them raises the objection directly: if 'peace' and 'nirvana' are both just synonyms for liberation, how can peace 'culminate' in nirvana? The answer is that the verse must mean something more than liberation-while-living; and since calm is the cause of yoga, it would be unfitting to make that same calm merely the fruit of yoga. So 'nirvana' marks the final, post-mortem freedom as the true summit.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

The rest the yogi wins is not the bare absorption into the unconditioned, imperishable Brahman (aksara) but a higher entry into the Lord himself, Purushottama. One commentator says plainly that the 'dissolution' or settling (samstha) the yogi gains surpasses even the liberation that is identity with the imperishable; the true fruit is the Lord, not the mere Brahman. The other transposes the word 'peace' (shanti) inward: it is not the cessation of activity but the unbroken rest in the relish (rasa) of the Lord's form, the loving mood (bhava) that separation can no longer wound. The yogi here is one whose mind is given over wholly to loving service (dasya), and the peace he attains is the very taste of the Lord, beyond the pain of separation.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators will not let 'peace' fall away into a merely negative quiet; its substance is positive, to stand in the very form (svarupa) of Bhagavan, and that very standing is what is here called nirvana. The cessation of worldly existence and the abiding in Vasudeva are not two events but one and the same moment; so every condition the chapter has laid down, the clean spot, the steady seat, the upright spine, the gathered mind, finds its proper end here in the peace that is Bhagavan himself. One of them notes that the mind is made motionless 'through the purity gained by contact with Me,' and that 'culminating in nirvana' (having liberation as its limit) also implies that even the mystic powers are real fruits of yoga, though not its summit. The Marathi voice in this group renders the goal as a self-effacement that has its home in the Lord, and describes in vivid detail the dissolution of the elements and the merging of the individual soul into the Supreme, like a river rushing into the sea, until even the sense of duality is gone.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators draw out the practical and devotional point. One says the Supreme Self is itself an embodiment of peace, an ocean of peace; by controlling the mind's modifications and keeping it balanced, one attains that supreme peace and so liberation. Another cautions that 'continually' does not mean twenty-four hours a day but a steady practice of a few hours daily, and insists that Patanjali's yoga is only one device for controlling the mind: the controlled, concentrated mind must then be turned toward knowledge of the Lord, for if mere mind-control is pursued without devotion to the Supreme, it produces only harmful powers and useless trouble. A third locates the whole secret in the sense of identity (ahanta): the mind can become truly restrained only when the Supreme alone is one's aim and one stops thinking of oneself as a householder, monk, or member of any caste or stage of life, taking instead the single self-view, 'I am only one who meditates, and gaining the Supreme is my only work'; by that change of self-sense the mind grows steady of itself.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas