Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'man of knowledge' (jnani) as one who has only learning, that is, mediate or theoretical knowledge of the meaning of scripture, an indirect grasp of the Self. The yogi is higher because he has direct, immediate realization. One source draws an even finer line: higher than those with merely mediate knowledge stands the yogi with immediate knowledge; and higher still, even among those with immediate knowledge, stands the yogi who is liberated-while-living because he has brought about the destruction of the mind and the wearing-away of latent impressions (the residues that keep the mind turning). On this reading the yogi is the consummated knower, the one in whom knowledge has matured into the actual quenching of the restless mind, and scripture is cited that the unknowing ascetics do not reach the place attained by knowledge.

Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Swami Sivananda

Modern

This commentator reads 'yogi' throughout as Karma-Yogi, the man of action done in the spirit of yoga, and reads the three rivals as distinct paths: the tapasvin who retires to the forest for fasts and body-tiring practices, the jnanin meaning specifically the Samkhya-path renouncer who abandons action to gain release, and the karmin meaning the orthodox Mimamsaka who performs desire-prompted ritual aspiring to heaven. The verse, on this view, declares Karma-Yoga superior to all three, and the word 'therefore' would lose its force if any other path were held best. This commentator openly attacks the rival reading of 'jnanin' as merely book-learned, calling it doctrine-supporting and a perversion driven by the wish not to admit that the Gita ranks the knowledge-path, which gives up action, as inferior.

Lokmanya Tilak

Bhakti

These commentators read the yogi as the worshipper of the supreme Self or of Bhagavan, and so set even the 'men of knowledge,' understood as worshippers of the impersonal Brahman, below him. One states it as Krishna's own settled view that the worshipper of the supreme Self outranks the worshipper of Brahman, and reasons that if the yogi is above the knowers, he is the more so above the men of action. One source is explicit that the yoga here being preached is not an outward discipline at all but is bhakti-formed: the holding-in of one's own mind upon Sri Vasudeva, with nothing forbidden, is itself devotion. Another renders the goal as the supreme Brahman that is the very object bowed to by the ritualists, known by the knowers, and worshipped by the ascetics, so that the yogi who attains it becomes worthy of all their reverence.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators name a clear ascending hierarchy of inwardness: tapas, then karma, then jnana, then yoga, each cradling a deeper interiority, with yoga as union with Bhagavan standing at the head. The tapasvis are read as mere bearers of bodily hardship who lack the knowledge of yoga's true form and even the wish for it; the jnanins are those yoked through knowledge to the dharma of renunciation; the karmins are those bound to fire-sacrifice and daily ritual. Krishna holds the yogi higher than the jnanin, and the jnanin in turn higher than the karmin. Arjuna, called fit for Bhagavan's affection alone, is told to become 'yukta,' established in yoga's firm standing.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Dvaita

These commentators restrict the claim carefully. 'Men of knowledge' is taken to mean those who know yoga, and the objection is faced head-on: since knowledge is the very fruit of yoga, how can the yogi be ranked above the knowers? The answer is that the superiority asserted concerns only the knowledge of yoga, not the knowledge of Brahman, over which superiority would be impossible; so the standing of yoga-knowledge is stated separately. These commentators support the ranking with Puranic authority: the Garuda is cited that meditative yoga excels harsh penance, sacrifice and the rest, and that meditation on Hari is declared vastly greater than meditation on lesser deities for those seeking release; and the Naradiya is cited for a graded sequence ending in devotion as the highest means, with worship of the Lord with the inner self directed to him as the most engaged of all.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read each rival path as effective only 'alone,' that is, taken by itself: austerities alone, the knowledges other than knowledge of the Self, and the rites alone such as the horse-sacrifice. Yoga is the means to a higher human goal than any of these can reach unaided, and so it makes the yogi higher than all three. Crucially, the yoga praised here is not the final summit but an auxiliary to the higher knowledge: this beholding of the inner self, declared by the word of Prajapati, has now been told, and the Lord is about to open the higher knowledge that follows. The verse fixes the relative standing of the four named disciplines and grounds Arjuna's whole engagement, calling him into the company of yogins.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the three superiorities each its own brief ground. The yogi is greater than the men of austerity, a point hinted earlier in the chapter. He is greater than the men of knowledge because knowledge is itself the fruit of yoga, so the cause is honored above its product. And he excels the men of action because the yogi alone truly knows how to perform actions.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhedabheda

This commentator dwells less on the ranking and more on the yogi's gradual perfecting. Even the knowers of the science of yoga affirm that the striving yogi, whose sins are thoroughly purified by surpassing effort, advances by means of yoga; and if even his sins fall away, how much more do petty faults. The yogi is not released in a single birth alone; perfected through yoga generated over many births, he reaches from there the supreme goal.

Śrī Bhāskara

Modern

This commentator draws the line between the ascetic and the yogi by their aim, not their hardship. The tapasvis bear hunger and thirst, cold and heat and the like, but they do so for riddhi-siddhi, for powers and attainments; theirs is a desire-driven austerity. The yogi, by contrast, has a taste for the highest and a single aim that is the highest reality (paramarthika). It is this orientation toward the ultimate, rather than the severity of the practice, that makes the yogi the superior of the desire-bound ascetic.

Swami Ramsukhdas

Bhakti

This commentator places the verse as praise following the teaching that desireless karma-yoga, pregnant with knowledge and crowned by the eightfold yoga, is the cause of liberation, and that even one fallen from such yoga eventually gains its fruit. The 'wise' here are read specifically as those learned in the science of practical affairs, and the karmis as performers of both obligatory and optional desire-prompted rites. Because ascetics, the worldly-wise, and ritualists all lack knowledge of the Self and so are unfit for liberation, the yogi who practices the yoga taught by Krishna, made fit by his arisen Self-knowledge, stands above them.

Śrīla Baladeva