Advaita Vedānta

Akshara is the unconditioned, attributeless Brahman, pure consciousness free of every limiting adjunct, the ruler and upholder of the whole display up to unmanifest space. The argument is built carefully: 'akshara' could by convention mean the syllable Om, but the mark stated in scripture (ruling over and holding up everything) is possible only in the unconditioned consciousness, and when scripture's surface convention is thus overruled, the etymological sense ('that which does not perish' or 'that which pervades all') is taken as primary. On adhyatma, svabhava is Brahman's very own nature as the inmost self that, taking the body as its base, abides in each body as the experiencer; one of these voices reads it as the array of instruments (hearing and the rest) present in the body as the object of 'I'-cognition, while another insists it is the very nature of Brahman itself, not something merely related to Brahman. One Advaitin voice further offers an alternative that 'akshara' as jiva (the kutastha, the unchanging witness), once its conditioning falls away, is itself the whole supreme Brahman, the sense of the great saying 'thou art that.'

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

Akshara is the supreme imperishable understood as the self (the field-knower) in its liberated, matter-free own-form; scripture supports this with 'the unmanifest is dissolved into the imperishable.' Strikingly, on this reading svabhava/adhyatma is matter, not spirit: one's own 'being' here is prakriti, the subtle elements and their impresses, the not-self that becomes connected with the self and is set forth in the doctrine of the five fires. The seeker must know both, but differently: the imperishable self as a thing to be attained, and this material svabhava as a thing to be given up. Consistent with this, karma/visarga is read as biological emission: the procreative act, born of the union with a woman, by which a being comes to be a man, established by the text 'at the fifth oblation the waters come to be called man.' This karma too the seeker must know as a thing to be shunned and recoiled from, as the next verse will confirm with 'wishing for which they practise continence.'

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

Akshara is the supreme Brahman. Adhyatma/svabhava is the individual soul (jiva), understood as the being or portion belonging to the Supreme Self denoted by 'imperishable'; with reference to the body it functions as the experiencer. This source gives two readings of karma. Primarily, the becoming or bringing-into-being of the souls is action: at dissolution this being lies dormant, and its coming-forth, its being given the capacity to bear fruit, is brought about by the creative emission, the sending-forth of Hiranyagarbha and the rest; this activity of the Lord, the inner controller, is termed action, supported by the verse 'In the beginning he brought Hiranyagarbha into being.' Secondarily it reports the view of others that the sacrificer's offering of oblation-cakes with a deity in view is the emission that, through the intellect, brings beings into being.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

Akshara is Brahman, the qualifier 'supreme' added precisely to ward off the doubt that the word might mean the Veda or prakriti. Adhyatma is read in two compatible ways, 'that which exists with reference to the self' and the name of a textual section ('atma-adhikara'), and svabhava answers both. Svabhava is the own-being belonging to the living being, which always exists in one constant manner; the word 'bhava' (existing, becoming) is added to exclude the inner organ and the rest, which are not constant but undergo modification, and the word 'sva' (own) is added to exclude the Lord, since the Lord is not the 'own' of the living beings (that would conflict with the proofs of real difference between soul and Lord). Karma/visarga is firmly the Lord's own activity: the action of the Lord that brings about the arising of beings (living beings) and states (insentient things) is the special creative sending-forth, and naming it as the Lord's activity is what makes it one in meaning with 'karma,' not the action of a potter and the like. This voice explicitly rejects the reading that ties karma to the unseen potency of sacrificial cake-offering, holding that this is already covered by 'adhyatma.'

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

Drawing on the Bhagavata's teaching that the one non-dual reality is named Brahman, Paramatman and Bhagavan, this school reads akshara-Brahman as the unmanifest, uncounted-bliss aspect, the field-knower and kutastha that is the root of the aggregate and the individual, a form not different from Bhagavan yet spoken of apart because it serves as Bhagavan's own abode (dhama). Svabhava/adhyatma is the becoming of the Self, that is, of Bhagavan himself, in the form of jiva for the perfecting of servitude; it is the sixteenfold subtle (senses and mind) reached within the self, the disposition of the jiva taken with reference to a body fit for service. Distinctively, karma/visarga is here devotional: the outflow that produces the rasa-bearing state of jivas, accomplished by offering food and other articles fit for the Lord, taking the form of service; karma names this outward-projecting function by which the body is sent forth.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

Brahman is so called from being vast (brhattva) and from making things grow (brmhakatva). It is what 'adhyatma' names: the being called consciousness (caitanya), one's own self, whose nature never lapses. Having no bounding outer mark, this consciousness holds the power of the whole universe within itself, and from its sovereign freedom there arises the out-flowing (visarga), which is at once a shining-forth of outward being and of further beings become outward. This out-flowing brings into being the conscious knowers (Brahma and the rest) and the insentient things, and makes the variety of sentient and insentient appear; it also brings about the true being of beings, the being in which the whole false expanse has dissolved away. This entire luminous self-projection is what is called action. Here visarga is neither ritual nor biology but the universe-creating self-expansion of free consciousness.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

Akshara is the supreme imperishable that is the root cause of the worlds, distinguished from the jiva (which is also called akshara) precisely by the qualifier 'supreme.' On adhyatma these voices differ in emphasis. One reads svabhava as Brahman's own being appearing, by way of a portion, in the form of the jiva, with Brahman standing as the body's enjoyer named adhyatma. Another reads svabhava as the individual soul that through superimposition of the body conceives its own self, or alternatively the pure soul that attains the Supreme Self. A Gaudiya voice reads svabhava as the substance of subtle elements with their latent impressions, taught in the five-fires doctrine and connected with the self. On karma they also split: some take visarga as the Vedic sacrifice that is a representative naming for all action, producing the coming-into-being and raising-up of beings; one Gaudiya voice instead reads karma as the soul's worldly existence (samsara) itself, arising from action, and develops the five-fires sacrifice at length as the soul's transit through heaven, cloud, earth, food and seed back to a human body, the karmic residue (anushaya) that drives rebirth. The Marathi voice renders the whole verse as a vision of the formless Brahman from which prakriti, ego-sense and the elements suddenly spring like clouds in a clear sky, the universe germinating from a primeval desire 'I am many,' all of it overfull with Brahman and seeming to unfold as a kind of effortless pastime; this uncaused yet rapidly appearing manifestation is what is called karma.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices restate the core in accessible terms. Brahman is the imperishable, immutable, eternal, self-luminous and all-pervading source, root and womb of everything, in which all beings live, move and have their being; it is supreme (paramam) and imperishable (akshara), and emphatically not the holy word Om nor the unmanifest Nature, since Om has absorption (laya) and unmanifest Nature has destruction, whereas Brahman alone is undying. Svabhava, Brahman's essential nature, is adhyatma: Brahman dwelling in each body as the innermost Self (Pratyagatma). One voice frames the verse as naming the goal at the very chapter's opening in its highest, most unconditioned form, the sat-chit-ananda, nirguna-nirakara Paramatma, so that no seeker may mistake what 'brahma' means in the questions and answers that follow. Karma is the sacrificial act of offering cooked rice and cakes to the gods, which causes the genesis and support of beings, since the oblations reach the sun, return as rain, become grains and food, and so sustain all living beings; one voice names karma simply as the creative activity that produces the moving and unmoving from the immutable Brahman.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas