Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read the verse through superimposition: the world is not ultimately separate from the Lord but is imagined upon him by ignorance, the way a snake, a stream of water, or silver is mistakenly seen on a rope, on the ground, or in mother-of-pearl. The Lord, as pure non-dual consciousness, being, and bliss, is the real substrate; the world only seems to exist and shine by borrowing his reality. On this view 'beings abide in me' means they have no being of their own at all apart from the Self, exactly as imagined silver has no existence outside the shell. And 'I am not in them' follows strictly: there can be no real relation between the imagined and the real substrate, since the substrate is never actually touched by what is falsely projected on it. One of these voices develops the verse as a deliberate teaching device, comparing it to pointing out a faint star by first pointing to a bright one nearby: the world (the 'gross' pointer) is used to point the seeker toward the subtle, causeless, pure Self, identified here with supreme bliss. When ignorance ends, the very appearance of separate beings vanishes and only the Self remains.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators read the verse as describing the Lord as the inner ruler (antaryamin) of a world that is fully real. The world, both conscious and unconscious, is pervaded by him not as illusion but as that which he owns, upholds, and governs from within. Their scriptural anchor is the 'inner ruler' passage of the Upanishad: 'he who, standing in the earth, whom the earth does not know... whose body the earth is, who governs it from within.' So beings stand in the Lord as a body stands in relation to the self that rules it; they are real, dependent, and governed. 'I do not abide in them' here means the Lord's own standing does not depend on them and he draws no support or benefit from them; the dependence is wholly theirs. One of these voices reads 9.4 together with 9.5 and insists the two are not contradictory but two complementary statements of one 'lordly yoga' (aishvaram yogam): the Lord's way of containing and supporting is sui generis, pervading without being exhausted, supporting without being supported, bringing forth without being affected.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator gives a spare reading that keeps both the pervasion and the asymmetry without resolving them into illusion. The Lord pervades all by his unmanifest form, the Self that is beyond the senses and subtle; beings therefore stand in him. The reason he does not abide in them is stated directly and almost as a self-grounding fact: 'because I stand in my own greatness.' His footing is in himself, not in the beings he upholds.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators are mainly concerned with placing the verse correctly in the chapter's argument rather than expounding its metaphysics at length. The point of 'avyakta-murti,' in the unmanifest form, is to answer why the all-pervading Lord is nonetheless not seen everywhere: he pervades by a form beyond the senses, so universal pervasion and invisibility are consistent. One of these voices clarifies that the 'knowledge' being declared here is what was earlier promised in the chapter, and that the qualifying word 'unmanifest' is not idle: it removes precisely the objection that if he pervades all, he ought to be visible everywhere.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the verse as the Lord's own self-becoming. The 'avyakta,' the imperishable (akshara), is the Lord's own greatness, in whom prakriti and purusha rest as non-conflicting attributes; he is also the indweller. By his own embodiment as the inner controller he has spread out the entire universe of conscious and non-conscious being in its material form. Their scriptural support includes the 'inner ruler' passage and the Brahma-sutra teaching that Brahman is both the efficient and the material cause, becoming the world by real transformation as earth becomes a pot or milk becomes curds. So the pervaded world is nothing other than the Lord's own self-becoming through his indwelling form. One of these voices adds the inner sense that the Lord stands in each thing in the form proper to that thing, from a tuft of grass up to Brahma, and that this presence, brought forth for his own play (lila), is not perceived by all because it is unmanifest.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads the verse as a statement about awareness and its self-veiling. 'All beings rest in me' because, however far one searches, no other ground of support can ever be found than the Lord. The denial 'I do not abide in them' is explained psychologically: when beings come forward presenting their familiar insentient, knowable, object-like form, that very appearance veils the abiding reality, which is awareness, its exact opposite. The Lord is not 'in' beings because to find him there would mean to find awareness where only the veiling object-form is being put forward.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators read the verse as the Lord disclosing the majesty his devotees should know. The world is pervaded by him as its causal ground; one cites the Shruti, 'having created it, he entered into it.' Beings therefore rest in him as effects rest in their cause, the way pots rest on clay; yet he does not rest in them, because he is by nature unattached (asanga), like space, which holds forms but is touched by none. The point is that containment requires the very attachment the unattached ground lacks, so the Lord is at once omnipresent and untouched. One Gaudiya voice stresses that he enters as the inner controller by his own portion to support and govern. The Marathi voice develops the self-becoming images warmly: as milk thickens into curds, a seed grows into a tree, or gold is worked into ornaments, so the Lord's congealed unmanifest essence thins out into the visible universe; beings appear reflected in him like foam on water, while he is not reflected in them, just as dream-objects are not found in waking and water is not found in the foam.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These commentators present the verse as a paradox that dissolves under careful thought rather than a real contradiction. One states it plainly: all beings dwell in the Lord and yet do not dwell in him, and he does not dwell in them; just as space holds all beings without being touched by them, so the Supreme holds everything untouched, and even the root-substance of the world (mulaprakriti) rests on it while it rests only in its own glory. One frames the whole as the Lord pervading the universe by his imperceptible form, beings being in him while he is not in them. The most expansive modern voice works it as two reciprocal pairs seen from two standpoints: from the everyday view the world is in the Supreme and the Supreme in the world; from the standpoint of truth, since beings have no independent reality apart from him, only the Supreme is, appearing as the many, like water appearing as a wave or clay appearing as a pot. He grounds 'I am not in them' in changelessness: if the Lord were lodged in beings, their birth, decay, and limitation would become his; but in him there is not the slightest modification, so 'I am in them' can only mean that by his being alone is their being.

Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas