Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse as grounding the conclusion in knowledge: knowing the two courses, the yogi established in meditation is not deluded in the least. The path is something the yogi 'merely apprehends as a duty,' the work that conveys him to the bright, southern-then-northward course; and because yoga has non-return as its necessary fruit, being ever yoked follows as a duty. No one who has this knowledge takes mere desire-driven action, the procurer of the smoke path, to be worth doing. One of these voices adds that the yoga-fallen person of little effort is not really a yogi at all, and that the remainder of the verse is plain.

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

Dvaita

These commentators deliberately reject the idea that non-delusion comes from mere knowledge of the paths. Knowing the two courses must be joined with knowing their MEANS and actually PRACTISING those means; only then is one not deluded. They supply the words 'having practised the means' and argue this is required precisely because the verse calls the person a 'yogin' (one who practises) and because the Skanda Purana agrees, saying that one who knows the two courses with their means and practises the means falls into no delusion. For them the delusion in question is the nature of forgetting the Lord, and its opposite is the attaining of the Lord; one source even notes a scribal corruption that turned 'having practised' into a different reading in some manuscripts.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Here the yogi who knows the two paths is not deluded at the very hour of departure; rather than drifting by inattention into the lesser fruit, he actively goes by his own path, the way of the gods. Knowing the paths is itself a defining discipline-mark of the yogin. Though contemplating the paths, like worship (upasana), is ultimately for the supreme Person's pleasure, the candidate who knows the paths knows what to aim for, while the one who does not is liable to the lesser fruit by inattention. So 'therefore' yields the imperative to become joined, day by day, to the discipline of contemplating the path of light, since the right destination requires the right inner stance, which requires steady practice.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators insist that bare knowledge of the two courses does not by itself save, and neither does mere yoga. What lifts the devotee beyond delusion is holding that knowledge within mad-yoga, the yoga of connection with the Lord; a mere yogi apart from connection with him can still grow desire-filled and attached to yoga and its rewards. One stresses that the chapter has all along been about the moment of departure, and that this verse keeps that moment in place as the final test but lifts the discipline outward over the whole of life, since only the lifelong bond of devotion (bhakti) can secure the right last thought. The vocative 'Arjuna' is even read as naming one of the family of the liberated.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads 'knowing these two paths' as knowing them by the inner sequence, the sequence taken up through the practice of yoga, and takes 'therefore, practise the yoga' to mean: whatever times are the inner ones, practise the yoga that has those inner times for its field. He declines to unfold this at length lest it only swell the book. He then reports that 'our own teachers' read it differently: having, by way of a grace shown to all, spoken in the middle of the distinction of the upward passage wrought by inner time, Krishna gathers up again the principal matter, which concerns outer time, with the words 'therefore at all times.'

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

For these commentators the knowledge of the two paths produces discernment, and so the verse praises the one who has it; the yogi does not mistake heaven and its pleasures for happiness but becomes fixed in the supreme Lord alone, established in meditative absorption for the sake of non-return. Knowing the paths is itself renunciation of the smoke path of craving-driven action, and that renunciation is itself establishment in Bhagavan. One voice in this group, the Marathi Jnaneshwari, presses much further toward non-dual realization: for the one already absorbed in the Supreme Brahman while still in the body, there is no real question of paths at all. Like the rope that ends the snake-illusion, like water that is itself with or without ripples, like the sky in a jar that was always the one sky before and after the jar broke, such a soul is 'disembodied' even now, neither born at creation nor afraid at dissolution, and has no path to search for, no where or when to go, since place and time have merged in the Supreme.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the verse briefly as praise of the knowledge declared in the chapter, given by way of disparaging the rest, so that the faithful may here become devoted to this knowledge. The emphasis falls on the verse's function: it elevates the chapter's teaching precisely by setting it above the lower alternatives, drawing the faithful toward it.

Śrī Bhāskara

Modern

The modern commentators turn the verse toward practical orientation. One says knowledge of the two paths works like a compass or a beacon-light, guiding the yogi's steps at every moment so that he strives to stick to the path of light. Another reads it through even-mindedness: he who knows the two paths and has learned the secret of even-mindedness will not take the path of ignorance. A third frames the knower specifically as a Karma-Yogin who, essentially understanding these two paths, is not overcome by ignorance, and so should become Karma-Yoga-joined at all times. The non-sectarian devotional voice draws the clearest contrast: the bright path is full of light and the dark path full of darkness, and even those who restrain pleasures here to perform sacrifice and reach high heavens are still in darkness because they keep going and coming, turning like the bullock of an oil-press for endless time; the one who knows the result of both paths becomes a yogi, that is, desireless (nishkama) rather than a pleasure-seeker (bhogi), unmoved whether worldly enjoyments come or not, and so is never deluded.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas