Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the indwelling through reflection and the removal of impurity, and they keep the Lord himself wholly free of any affection. The Lord is the same everywhere as being, awareness, and bliss, and the inner controller of all. He is like the sun's light, present uniformly, but reflected only where the medium is clear. Devotion does its work by purifying the inner organ: desireless action offered to the Lord clears away the taint of rajas and tamas, lets sattva preponderate, and the mind becomes 'exceedingly clear.' In such a clear mind the ever-present Lord is reflected and so manifests; in the dull, passion-gripped mind of the non-devotee he is simply not specially manifest. Crucially, on this reading the favor is not a passion in the Lord at all. He dwells in the devotee 'by his very nature, not by reason of any passion,' just as the sun does not delight in the mirror nor hate the pot. The result follows necessarily from the gathering of its causes, like an effect within its assemblage, so there is nothing partial to explain away. These commentators say nothing of the Lord himself loving the devotee back; the asymmetry is entirely on the side of the medium.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

For these commentators the Lord's equality means he is equally 'one to be resorted to' across every distinction of caste, shape, nature, and knowledge. No one is too low to be cast off and no one too high to be drawn in on the basis of such marks; birth and rank do not move him. But the mutual presence is read as a genuine personal relation, warmly described: those who worship the Lord because they cannot hold themselves up without his worship abide in him 'as it pleases them, as though endowed with qualities equal to his,' and the Lord too is in them 'as though they were higher than he.' These commentators insist this is not flat indifference. The Lord's ontological equality is his even standing toward all beings; the devotee's bhakti creates a specific mutual inhabiting that this equality does not preclude. The candidate draws the Lord into a special relation by his own bhakti, and the Lord, on his side, is responsive to that bhakti, not arbitrary in his favor. The qualifying word 'but' marks exactly this turn from ontological sameness to relational nearness.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Dvaita

These commentators give 'they are in me and I in them' a distinctive gloss: it means 'they are in my power, and I in theirs,' citing the Paingi supplementary hymns that the one who worships the supreme Person is in his power and he in theirs. The crucial move is a distinction the other schools do not draw. All souls are always in the Lord's power, by their very dependent nature; but there is a real difference between being under his control without deliberation and being under it deliberately, through meditation and worship. The example given is Uddhava and the rest, who came under his power consciously, set against Shishupala and the rest. The text cited says one who is first in his power without deliberation comes again into his power, by meditation, deliberately. So devotion is not pointless even though dependence is universal: it converts an unconscious belonging into a chosen, meditative one, and that is the real fruit. On this reading the first half already removes the charge of partiality, since the Lord hates none for his hatred and holds none dearer for his devotion, yet bears no unfairness or cruelty.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse through the 'pushti' lens of grace and through the Lord's play (lila). The Lord is present evenly in all beings, high and low, on the strength of 'I am the same in friend and foe.' But the greatness of devotion is precisely that it brings about the Lord's 'non-self-dependence': by placing the bond of love on him, the devotee draws him forth, and the Lord, of his own free grace, brings himself under the sway of that bond. They support this strongly from the Bhagavata, where the Lord himself says the good are his heart and he is theirs, that he is dependent on his devotee like one not self-dependent, and that the good bring him under their sway as good wives bring a good husband. One commentator adds the dimension of play: all beings were brought forth for the Lord's lila, so he is equal in all; those who do not know this purpose and act otherwise set unevenness toward him and so, by their own fault, fall into bondage, while those who know him as the form of play and worship him with love and affection stand in him, and he, well-pleased by their service, stands in them. The wish-tree image holds only so far: there is no abiding fault in the Lord's selective activity, just as none in the kalpataru that withholds from those who never approach.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as the very glory of devotion, and one of them pushes furthest of all toward mutual love. The Lord's equal vision (sama-darshana) is metaphysical and ever-present; the favor toward devotees is operational, dependent on the devotee's own movement toward him, like fire and the wishing-tree that are open to all yet active for those who turn near. But one commentator argues that the indwelling is reciprocal devotion: the devotees abide in the Lord through the attachment of devotion, and the Lord too, though Lord of all, abides in them through devotion, 'by the principle of the gem and the gold.' He cites Shri Shuka's words that the Lord has devotion to his devotees, showing a special mutual conduct through love, for otherwise there would be no real distinction at all. He defends this against the charge that such affection is just the product of an action: devotion, he says, is the operation of the Lord's essential potency, other than ordinary action, and resting in being, consciousness, and bliss, so it cannot be faulted as a mere passion but is praised as the foremost of qualities. Another commentator, in the Marathi tradition, dissolves the duality entirely: the devotee, breaking the sanctuary of egotism, lives outwardly in a body but truly abides wholly in the Lord's eternal being, as the great banyan tree is contained in its own small seed; the Lord and the devotee are 'separate only outwardly and in name,' for in truth they are one, and the body is as empty as a borrowed ornament.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Bhedabheda

This commentator reads the verse plainly and grounds the favor in the law of deeds. The Lord is the same toward all, with neither attachment nor aversion, and it is simply his nature to bestow grace on one who worships him with devotion, just as fire removes cold for one who duly resorts to it and not for another. The decisive point is that neither attachment nor aversion is the cause: rather, the Lord displays the fruit 'in accordance with the deeds of beings.' Grace is given like fire, by the structure of the case, not by preference. He then notes that the next verse goes even further, setting aside even a person's past evil conduct in order to praise taking refuge in the Lord, treating that future declaration as a praise-passage (arthavada) that brings even past conduct under the Lord's saving control.

Śrī Bhāskara

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator gives the verse a very brief treatment, reading it together with the verses that follow down to 'he does not perish.' His single point is about the weight of the Lord's word: this teaching, already sound in reasoning, becomes the firmest of all precisely because the Blessed One has promised it. The promise, not merely the argument, is what makes the matter certain.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Modern

These commentators present the verse in accessible terms and locate the whole gulf between God and creature in the creature, not in God. The Lord has an even outlook toward all; he has condemned none and favored none, is the enemy of none and the partial lover of none, and is in fact 'closer than one's own breath.' It is the egoistic person who has dug the gulf by his own wrong attitude. They use the familiar images of fire, the sun reflected only in a clean mirror, and the wish-tree to show that the grace flows without attachment on the Lord's part. One commentator draws the cleanest distinction: the Lord is equal both in pervasion (vyapakata) and in his gracious regard (kripa-drishti), citing 'I am the friend of all beings,' yet his full intimacy and self-giving are not equal in all. The Lord is never partial; the devotee has only to take the step into loving regard (priti), and at once the same Lord, already within him, manifests as 'they are in me and I in them.' The samata and the priti do not conflict, because the samata is in nature and pervasion while the priti is what the devotee himself opens to.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas