Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'ekatvam' as strict non-difference: the yogi realizes the absolute identity of his own self with the Lord, the bare being threaded through all, by removing the difference of adjuncts, just as the space inside a pot is seen to be the one great space. Madhusudana frames the whole verse as the determination of the great sentence 'that thou art' (tat tvam asi): 'that' is the Lord abiding as substrate in all beings, 'thou' is the worshiper's own self, and worship here means making their non-difference directly evident through the realization 'I am Brahman.' Such a knower becomes liberated-in-life (jivanmukta); his outer career continues only by the momentum of action already begun to bear fruit (prarabdha), in whatever mode (renunciation like Yajnavalkya, enjoined action like Janaka, or even forbidden action like Dattatreya), yet he never falls from his identity with the supreme Self. The concession of free conduct is granted only provisionally, to praise knowledge.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators deny that 'ekatvam' means a monist merger that erases distinction. The oneness is the unity of inner ground that holds many beings together in one Lord; the yogi gives up only the difference that belongs to matter, not his own distinctness from God. Even when he rises from discipline and goes about in the world, he sees in his own self and in all beings, at all times, only the likeness to the Lord. Crucially, the equality with the Lord is narrow and exact: the candidate is equated with the Lord only in not being bound by action (since, like the Lord, he has no fruit-bound resolves left), and never in lordship itself. The freedom of outer conduct is the freedom from anxiety about external behavior that follows once the inner stance is secured.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators read 'ekatvam' as the settled view that everywhere there is but one Lord, not as identity of the self with God. For one who sees thus directly, the fruit of knowledge, liberation, is sure and unobstructed. But they insist on a real difference even in the liberated: a decrease of bliss and the like does indeed exist, so the worship of righteousness is never simply 'of no avail.' They press the question of why, if liberation is unobstructed even amid unrighteousness, such a knower would do unrighteousness at all, and answer that for the most part he does none; when a lapse occurs by the force of prarabdha, even a great unrighteousness in such a one is only an indicator of a great suffering still to be undergone, not a cancellation of his liberation. A slight sin done through heedlessness is burnt to ashes.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse through the lens of loving service (bhajana). Vallabha holds that even the jnani who has already reached 'ekatva' is carried further by the act of worship: he gives up even the bare unity-stand in favor of a serving-relation with the Blessed One as his master (svami), becoming His servant like Suka and Uddhava, on the authority that 'if the jnani worships Krishna there is none higher than he.' Purushottama reads the yogi as established in belonging to the Lord (sajatiya-bhava) and as one whose outward conduct toward all beings, undertaken for the teaching of servitude (dasya) and the like, is itself his inward standing in the Lord: the work done for others' awakening is itself the dwelling of the worker in God.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhedabheda

Bhaskara reads the abiding in God through the image of water and its forms: everything that is seen, when seen as having Brahman for its self, becomes Brahman alone, just as foam and waves, when seen as having water for their substance, are comprehended within that very water. So even while the yogi exists through his mind in the Lord's modification, the manifold world of speech, he exists in God alone. He explicitly rejects the reading of others that 'sarvatha vartamano 'pi' permits acting as one pleases: that is not right, for one of this kind does not in fact act according to his own pleasure.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

Abhinavagupta gives the most compressed reading: the one who is pervaded by knowledge, knowing the Blessed One as all-pervading in His oneness, is necessarily not stained, even though he has come to be in every state. The stress falls on the non-staining: existence in any and every condition cannot defile one whose knowledge has thus pervaded him.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators stress that such a yogi is no longer the servant of injunction (vidhi): the verse releases him from bondage to ritual command. Sridhara turns the doubter's fear on its head, the very letting go of karma in such a one is no falling away but abidance in the Lord. Vishvanatha and Baladeva note that the worship here can belong even to the stage prior to direct experience of God, worship by hearing and remembering. Baladeva adds a distinctly Gaudiya note: the Lord dwells distinctly in the hearts of all beings in His four-armed form, and the yogi who realizes the non-difference of these many forms of the one body, by the greatness of experiencing the Lord's inconceivable power, has his will-to-act burnt away and finds liberation marked by nearness to God, citing 'though one, He appears as many.' Jnaneshwar develops a chain of images, cloth and yarn, gold and ornaments, one tree with many leaves, for the seeing of the one in the many, and stresses that such a yogi becomes all-pervading through the greatness of his experience of the Lord's power.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

Sivananda and Tilak give the verse in a broadly non-dual key: the one who has dissolved all duality in the underlying unity, realizing God as the Self of all, dwells always in God whatever his mode of living, and is ever liberated; Sivananda offers the butcher Sadana, who lived in God because his mind was ever fixed at the Lord's feet. Gandhi-Desai reads it as the extinction of the ego: so long as 'self' subsists the Supreme Self is absent, and when 'self' is extinguished the Supreme Self is seen everywhere. Ramsukhdas, distinctively, reads 'ekatvam' not as identity of essence (svarupa-ekata) as in Advaita, but as a non-difference (abhinnata) born of supreme love: as husband and wife of two bodies, or two friends, count themselves one through utter affection, so the devotee, through utmost love (atyanta sneha), becomes inseparable from God while remaining, in appearance, two; the worship of God present in all is the seeing that the whole moving and unmoving world is God alone, 'vasudevah sarvam.'

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas