Advaita Vedānta

For these commentators the path-teaching is carefully limited so as not to contradict the doctrine that the true knower has no journey. They raise the objection directly: the attainment of the supreme is by knowledge, and for the knower scripture denies any course or passing-out, so why teach a path at all? Their answer is that the path is taught only for those who take refuge in the qualified Brahman, the worshippers who reach the goal by gradual liberation, step by step, not for the right-seers who need no route. One of these commentators is precise about who does and does not come back: those who go by the path of the fathers return for certain, while of those who go by the path of light some do return, such as certain symbol-worshippers, but the worshippers of the inner-heart meditation and the like are gradually liberated and do not return; so the path of light still rightly has non-return as its fruit, and the praise of it still holds even though not every traveler on it is exempt. The return-route is mentioned mainly to praise the non-return-route by contrast.

Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse with the soul's onward travel to the Lord clearly in view. The word time indicates the path because the path is accompanied by the deities who preside over the time-divisions from the day up to the year. One of them develops this at length, reading the verse as the opening of a single connected passage that runs through the chapter's close: the two routes are the smoke-and-the-rest path and the flame-and-the-rest path, and the white and dark fortnights and the northern and southern courses name the conveyer-deities by their association with the time-periods, not the time-periods themselves. The candidate is taken in hand by these conveyer-deities at the moment of departure, and the destination follows the conveyer. So the two paths are not two ritual options but two destinations on offer: the supreme abode for the knower who has the Lord as his goal, and the return-route for the lesser yogin whose practice has not reached its consummation. The death-time travel is the outer complement of the death-time remembrance the chapter has been teaching, and the chapter closes by directing the candidate to be yoga-joined at all times so that the moment of departure finds him ready and the path of light open.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads time as indicating the path, and assigns the two routes to two kinds of follower: the path of the gods and the path of the fathers, marked by flame and the rest, belong respectively to the follower of the discipline of action and to the follower of the discipline of knowledge. He cites the scriptural verse that names the path of light, fire, light, day, the bright fortnight, the six months of the northern course, by which the departed knowers of Brahman reach Brahman.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators take time to mean the presiding deities of time, by whose passing the departed go to return or to non-return; the word time stands for more than itself, since fire and the rest are also to be named. One of them is careful about the grammar: the route is the route over which those time-presiding deities preside, and the word and-the-rest is brought in precisely because fire and smoke must be included alongside the time-divisions, fire being the lord of the flame and the smoke. The reading sets aside any inference that the verse is merely about telling a literal time of death.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse as answering the implicit question, by what time and path do the non-returning go, and by what path the returning. One of them is explicit that the word time, through the deities presiding over the stretches from the day up to the year, marks the conducting-deities of the conveyer kind, and so indirectly marks the path; the distribution of who goes by which path follows the traveler's inner bond, not the calendar alone. He distinguishes three classes of departing person: the knowers of the Lord's greatness, the devotees, and the wealth-seekers, who go to non-return and return in their proper order. Even fire and luminosity, which have no natural time-presidency, are spoken of as deities of evening and morning, supported by mantra. The other of these commentators dwells on the verse's address, bull of the Bharatas: only one of noble birth, fitted by lineage for the discipline of knowledge, is the proper hearer of this doctrine of the two courses.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse briefly as introducing a distinguishing matter for those who, by the upward passage, desire either release or enjoyment. He gives the outcomes their plainest spiritual sense: non-return is liberation, and return is for the sake of enjoyment. The way of those who reach the Blessed One effortlessly through constant practice has already been told; now this further distinction is added.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse against the chapter's prior teaching that the Lord's devotees, having attained him, do not return. One of them grounds the time-means-path reading in the relevant scriptural maxim and explains that the path reached by way of the time-presiding conveyer-deities is what time designates, with the worshippers and the men of action attaining non-return and return in order. Another of them raises a pointed distinction: since the Lord's devotees are beyond the qualities of nature, their path too must be beyond those qualities, and so it is not the bright path of light at all; the path being discussed here is rather the path of the yogi, the man of knowledge, and the man of action, and it is that path Arjuna wishes to know. A third of these commentators takes a markedly different line, reading time more literally: the Yogin who happens to leave the body at an unseasonable time has to be reborn, while one who departs at the proper, scripturally prescribed time becomes one with the Supreme at once; he ties this to the body's inner heat and the steadiness of memory at death, holding that the support of knowledge at the final moment is the warmth maintained in the body, and that liberation or rebirth turns on the condition of departure.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators give the verse plainly. One states simply that Krishna will declare the time at which the Yogis, if they leave the body, will not be born again, and the time at which, if they die, they will be born again, glossing return as being born again. Another renders it as the time of death, dying when, the Karma-yogins do not come back, and dying when, they come again. The third places the verse within a larger map of three destinies: instant liberation for those who have already reached the Lord and pure devotion here in this very life; gradual liberation for those who, on account of some subtle latent tendency, go to the world of Brahma and are freed by stages along with Brahma; and mere coming-back for those who go only to enjoy pleasure in such higher worlds and then return. He notes that instant liberation was described earlier, and that this verse begins the section that will describe the remaining two, gradual liberation and coming-back.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas