Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the worship as fastening on Vasudeva, the Lord, whether thought of with attributes or without. The yogin abandons the error that takes Krishna for a mere man or one deity like other lords, and dwells on Narayana, the Lord of lords. This is the chapter that completes the determination of the meaning of 'thou' in the great Vedantic sentence; the worship taught here loosens the doubt about the yoga-fallen and points beyond, so that liberation is reached through knowledge of the sentence-meaning. Devotion here is the high path that ripens into and serves that knowledge of the one Self.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the worshipped Lord is described at length as a distinct, supremely perfect personal being: of divine form, the treasure-house of auspicious qualities, the ocean of compassion who came down in the house of Vasudeva without giving up His own nature. The 'gone to Me' is an excess of love so great that the mind cannot bear even a moment's separation. These commentators take the grammar carefully: the genitive 'of yogins' really means 'more than even all yogins'; compared to this loving worshipper, the austere and the wise differ no more than mustard seeds differ beside Mount Meru. One source reads the verse as the seventh-chapter preface that fixes the loving-worship route as the highest within yoga itself, not a separate path, with the Lord's own ranking foreclosing any debate that would set knowledge above love.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator stresses that the yogin is superior even to those given to harsh penances, the lunar fast, fasting, and the mere performers of ritual, because the mention of action implies the knowledge belonging to its sphere, and what was meant earlier was knowledge of the Self. He adds a pointed argument that since this yoga is taught to Arjuna, a householder, those who claim the sixth chapter teaches yoga to renouncers alone contradict the conclusion. The verse therefore ends with a plain charge: become a yogi, O Arjuna.

Śrī Bhāskara

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the best yogin specifically through their own devotional categories. For one, the highest is the one whose leaning has gone to 'pusti-bhakti', the grace-given devotion, with faith grounded in the teaching of the great teachers of Sri, and the chapter's close becomes the hinge into the second group of six chapters where such devotion upon Vasudeva will unfold. For the other, the yogins are of three kinds, and the highest is the one who serves through the bhava of 'dasya', the servant's love, his inner self gone into the Lord by the very form of loving emotion. Both sign the chapter with their own verse and read the dhyana-yoga of the chapter, in its highest reach, as bhakti-yoga: the path of inward sitting opens straight into the relish of the Lord's feet.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator's accent is that a merely painful yoga, without the Lord, does not give perfection. The best yogin sets the Lord in his inner organ, is given over to devotion and faith, and worships Him alone and nothing else, following the order of tradition gained through service at a teacher's feet. He is the most joined to the Lord, pervaded by the supreme Lord. The verse thus states the complete pre-eminence of the knowledge that is joined with the Lord.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

For these commentators the verse is the aphorism of the whole bhakti teaching, an ornament for the throats of devotees. They carefully grade the ascent: the man of action, the ascetic, and the man of knowledge are each a yogin; the practitioner of the eightfold yoga is more of a yogin; but the one possessed of devotion of hearing, glorifying and the rest is the most of a yogin, more even than those in cognitive and supracognitive samadhi. They cite the Bhagavata that a soul devoted to Narayana is exceedingly rare even among millions of the liberated and perfected. One reads bhakti as service itself, supported by Shruti on the yoga of faith, devotion and meditation, and describes the Lord's beauty in loving detail. Another declares that the Lord is at once the object of devotion, the devotion, and the devotee, and that the bond between such a person and Himself is like that between body and soul, indescribable in words.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices keep the plain teaching that worship of the Absolute Lord, with the inner self merged in Him, stands above worship of lesser gods, and that the yogi who forms a relationship with the Lord is supreme even among yogis. One develops a careful caution: when devotion is added to desireless karma-yoga the yogin becomes most beloved of the Lord, as sugar added to milk, but this does not mean devotion is superior to desireless action itself; the Gita teaches that the mixture is valuable, not that desireless action is useless, and he sets this apart from the Bhagavata's stronger claim. For him the whole exposition remains part of the justification of karma-yoga, and the threefold division of the Gita into karma, devotion and knowledge is not strictly correct. Another reads the supreme yogin as the bhakti-yogi who forms a relationship with the Lord, set above even those yogins who, by the various disciplines, are bent only on the experience of their own true nature.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas