How the freed reach the Lord's state: emptied of passion, fear and anger, refuged in Him alone, made pure by knowledge.
It is easy to think such freedom is a matter of fighting fear and anger head on, or of some rare new discipline. The verse points elsewhere: loosen the attachment beneath them, rest the whole mind on the Lord, and let true knowing do the cleansing, as countless seekers already have.
Freed from attachment, fear, and anger, absorbed in me, taking refuge in me, purified by the austerity of knowledge, many have attained my state.
Having just spoken of His own birth and deeds, the Lord turns to those who have grasped them rightly, and describes the inner shape of the person who, by that knowing, comes to His state.
Where they agreethe convergence
Across schools and centuries the commentators come to the same ground. These are the points they share, and the voices that hold each one.
See first the person made ready: no pull of passion toward things, no dread of loss or harm, no anger flaring when something blocks the way; with these gone, the mind has nothing left to scatter it.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara · Sivananda · Ramsukhdas · Tilak · Viśvanātha · BaladevaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 9 others’ words
The verse opens with a portrait of the qualified person: free of raga, bhaya and krodha, that is, free of passion or attachment, free of fear, and free of anger. Nearly every commentator unpacks these three the same way at root: raga is the pull toward objects or the fondness for them, bhaya is dread (of loss, of one's own destruction, or of some future harm), and krodha is the aversion or hostility that flares when something blocks one's wants. The point is not random virtue. These three are named because they are precisely the inner movements that disturb and scatter the mind; when they leave, the ground for distraction (viksepa) is gone, and that is why such a person becomes fit for what the verse promises.
Such a one rests on the Lord alone, made of Him and taking refuge in Him, the heart turned to a single point and leaning on no second thing, so that fondness for lesser objects simply falls away.
Across Advaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Kashmir Śaiva, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Ramsukhdas · AbhinavaguptaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 8 others’ words
These freed persons are described as 'made of Me' (manmaya) and as 'having taken refuge in Me' (mam upashritah). Across the schools this means the mind rests on Krishna alone, with no second support. He is the sole chief, the one refuge, and the heart is single-pointed toward Him. Several commentators stress the 'alone' and the 'only': not leaning partly on Him and partly elsewhere, but exclusively turned to Him. This single-hearted dependence is what makes the freedom from passion, fear and anger possible in the first place, since attachment to objects falls away when the whole mind has found its one true object.
What purifies here is knowing itself, the austerity of true knowledge, a refining heat that burns through ignorance and the cravings, sins and old tendencies bound up with it.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Sivananda · Tilak · Rāmānuja · Viśvanātha · BaladevaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 8 others’ words
The instrument of purification is jnana-tapas, knowledge that is itself the austerity. Most commentators read the compound as identifying the two: knowledge is the tapas, the heat that burns away impurity. What it burns is ignorance and the karma, sins, and latent tendencies (vasanas) bound up with ignorance. As one commentator notes, the Gita itself will later say there is no purifier here equal to knowledge. So the 'austerity' here is not bodily penance for its own sake; it is the demanding, refining work of true knowing, which scours the mind clean.
And take heart: this is no untested path begun today. Many have already crossed by it in ages past, so the way before you is a proven succession, not a guess.
Across Advaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, ViśiṣṭādvaitaMadhusūdana · Ānandagiri · Dhanapati · Jayatīrtha · Vallabha · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · RāmānujaIn Madhusūdana, Ānandagiri, and 7 others’ words
The verse closes by saying many (bahavah) have already reached this. The word 'many' is doctrinally weighty: it shows that this path is not new and did not begin today. Krishna is answering an unspoken worry that the way he is teaching is some recent, untested innovation. By saying many have already crossed over by it in ages past, he establishes the path as a beginningless, proven succession. Whatever 'My state' (mad-bhavam) finally means, the assurance is that countless seekers before this one have actually arrived there.
This is the shared ground; it can be carried as it is. Below is where they differ.
Where they differthe divergence
Advaita Vedānta, in their fuller words
These commentators read 'made of Me' and 'My state' as actual identity with the supreme Self. To be 'made of Me' is to be a knower of Brahman who sees no difference whatever from the Lord; the 'thou' and the 'That' are realised as non-different. 'Knowledge as austerity' is steadfastness in knowledge alone, deliberately independent of any other austerity or works; one source treats the phrase as the very mark that the discipline here is pure knowledge and nothing else. The fruit, 'come to My state,' is liberation itself, the supreme purity, the being-consciousness-bliss nature of the Lord, reached by the mere removal of ignorance, since nothing was ever truly separate. One of them carefully rules out the rival options of knowing Brahman as different, or as both different and non-different, and of combining works with the vision of non-difference.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Here 'knowledge as austerity' is specifically the true knowledge of the Lord's birth and deeds, the avatara-mystery, which is itself hard-won and so counts as a tapas; the cited scripture 'the steady know rightly His origin' shows that only the foremost among the wise grasp how He takes birth. Crucially, these commentators reject the identity reading: 'My state' (mad-bhavam) does not mean becoming one and the same as the Lord. Even in liberation, sameness-of-identity is opposed by scripture; the text's own grammar ('he attains Me') keeps the soul as the agent attaining and the Lord as what is attained, and the Gita will later promise only 'likeness to Me' (sadharmya). So mad-bhavam means attaining a nature like the Lord's, marked by the freedom from sin and the other auspicious traits, by extreme similarity, not by merger. 'Free of passion, fear and anger' is glossed as loving Him alone: there is no passion for other objects, no anger rooted in such passion, and no fear, since one neither likes nor dislikes any rival object.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator (working from a damaged critical text) reads 'made of Me' and 'taken refuge in Me' as two qualifications used together precisely to show that the devotee has no other refuge at all: ever resorting to the Lord alone, with the mind fixed on Him in this form. He draws a sharp contrast with merely worldly dependence: just as a person may feel great affection for a king yet only resort to him for security and welfare without truly taking refuge, here the meaning is genuine refuge, not such interested reliance. On the key compound he insists that 'knowledge and austerity' be taken together as a single unit, jnana-tapas, the two fused into one, on the principle that 'every pair becomes as one.'
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators flatly deny that 'made of Me' (manmaya) means having the Lord as one's self or being identical with Him. It means 'abounding in Me,' that is, having the Lord as one's inner ruler. The liberated see nothing anywhere apart from Him, but this is explained carefully: in every object there is some existence, and the knower sees that all of it is dependent on the Lord alone. So the realisation is of total dependence on Him, not of merger into Him. One of them also notes that the verse points ahead: since the next verse adds something more, this verse is stating the purport partly to produce faith, and is not meant to say this much and no more.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
For these commentators the verse answers an objection: if the Lord's birth and action were ordinary, material (prakritic), no one taking refuge in Him could ever be released; yet many plainly were. So this avatara itself is the liberating power. One reads 'vita' (free of) in a special Sankhya sense of 'not pervaded by': even souls who still carried passion or fear or wrath, those very condition-coloured moods, were made pure of the faults belonging to such states by the direct power of the avatara itself, by the kita-bhrnga ('wasp-and-grub') transformation into 'I am That.' The Gopis, Kamsa, and Caidya are given as those released by this very descent. The other commentator distinguishes this knowledge-route from service-laden devotion: refuge through knowledge is real and yields liberation, but it is austere and lacks the rasa-tinged sweetness of bhakti full of service; such ones do only the bare act of taking refuge, not loving service. The shared Pustimarg note is that by whatever path they came, it is finally the grace of the avatara, the universal solvent of every form of bondage, that opens them.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This terse reading ties freedom to fullness: knowing the Lord thus and being 'made of Me,' the freed are wholly full, and because they are full they are free of anger and the rest. Their mark is that they perform the action that is to be done as fruitless, that is, acting without grasping at any result; and so many have attained the Lord's own form.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse through love and the avatara's compassion. One stays close to the non-dual sense, glossing 'My state' as union (sayujya) and reading the jiva as attaining oneness with the Lord through its conscious aspect; the jnana-tapas here is Self-knowledge attainable by the Lord's grace, together with one's own duty (svadharma) as its ripening cause, the two taken as a single seat of practice. But the Gaudiya commentators redirect 'My state' (mad-bhavam) away from merger and toward love for the Lord, or His real presence, or direct vision of Him. For them the freedom from passion, fear and anger is specifically detachment from people given to false doctrine: the devotee feels no fondness, fear, or anger toward such prattlers. 'Made of Me' is being absorbed in hearing, chanting, reflecting and meditating on the Lord's birth and deeds, and 'taking refuge' is serving Him well. One offers a second sense of the austerity: it is the burning endurance, like swallowing serpent-venom, of refuting the many false doctrines and sophistical arguments against the eternal reality of the Lord's birth and deeds.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These voices read the verse psychologically and practically. One traces the inner mechanics: when one knows the Self, attachment to sense-objects ceases; realising oneself as the changeless eternal Self, one becomes fearless; desireless and selfless, seeing the Self everywhere, one can no longer feel anger; and jnana-tapas is the fire of wisdom that burns vasanas, cravings, impressions, sins and all karma. Another emphasises that the whole content of the required knowledge is simply the Lord's transcendental births and deeds: grasp those fully and one has grasped both spiritual knowledge and the secret of unattached action, which is all that is needed for release, so nothing further must be separately studied. A third gives a fine-grained chain of causation: from raga for perishable things spring mamata, kamana, lobha, then krodha at whatever obstructs, then bhaya of a stronger obstructor; remove raga and the whole crop falls; raga is removed by ceasing to treat things as one's own and instead placing them in the service of others, since we truly have no relation to objects or actions at all, and by trusting that the Lord, who needs nothing for Himself, takes the avatara purely for our welfare as the perfect friend of every being.
A few questions to carry
These ask for understanding, not recall; each answer is settled by the commentary itself.
For a second sitting
Carry this with youwhat stays
Notice how the verse makes anger and fear the children of passion, not separate enemies to fight one by one. Passion (raga) is the root: from clinging to perishable things grow craving, possessiveness, greed, then anger at whatever blocks you, then fear of whoever is stronger than you. So do not battle the anger and the fear directly. Loosen the root. The practical move offered here is simple and humbling: stop treating things as yours or for yourself. Take them as belonging to others and meant for the service of others, and place them there. In truth, you have no real relationship with any object or any action at all. And there is a gentler way in: trust that the Lord, who needs nothing for himself, takes every step purely for your welfare, as the truest friend of every being. As that trust deepens, attraction naturally turns toward him, and the pull of the world grows insipid on its own, the way a grown person quietly loses interest in the pebbles a child once fought over. When passion fades like that, fear and anger have nothing left to stand on, and they leave with it.
Do not wrestle the fear and the anger one by one; loosen instead the holding underneath them, treat nothing as yours to keep, and trust that the Lord moves for your good alone, and the world's pull will quietly grow faint.
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Convergence
he verse opens with a portrait of the qualified person: free of raga, bhaya and krodha, that is, free of passion or attachment, free of fear, and free of anger. Nearly every commentator unpacks these three the same way at root: raga is the pull toward objects or the fondness for them, bhaya is dread (of loss, of one's own destruction, or of some future harm), and krodha is the aversion or hostility that flares when something blocks one's wants. The point is not random virtue. These three are named because they are precisely the inner movements that disturb and scatter the mind; when they leave, the ground for distraction (viksepa) is gone, and that is why such a person becomes fit for what the verse promises.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas · Lokmanya Tilak · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
These freed persons are described as 'made of Me' (manmaya) and as 'having taken refuge in Me' (mam upashritah). Across the schools this means the mind rests on Krishna alone, with no second support. He is the sole chief, the one refuge, and the heart is single-pointed toward Him. Several commentators stress the 'alone' and the 'only': not leaning partly on Him and partly elsewhere, but exclusively turned to Him. This single-hearted dependence is what makes the freedom from passion, fear and anger possible in the first place, since attachment to objects falls away when the whole mind has found its one true object.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Swami Ramsukhdas · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
The instrument of purification is jnana-tapas, knowledge that is itself the austerity. Most commentators read the compound as identifying the two: knowledge is the tapas, the heat that burns away impurity. What it burns is ignorance and the karma, sins, and latent tendencies (vasanas) bound up with ignorance. As one commentator notes, the Gita itself will later say there is no purifier here equal to knowledge. So the 'austerity' here is not bodily penance for its own sake; it is the demanding, refining work of true knowing, which scours the mind clean.
Braided from 10 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
The verse closes by saying many (bahavah) have already reached this. The word 'many' is doctrinally weighty: it shows that this path is not new and did not begin today. Krishna is answering an unspoken worry that the way he is teaching is some recent, untested innovation. By saying many have already crossed over by it in ages past, he establishes the path as a beginningless, proven succession. Whatever 'My state' (mad-bhavam) finally means, the assurance is that countless seekers before this one have actually arrived there.
Braided from 9 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Ānandagiri · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Jayatīrtha · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Rāmānujācārya
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read 'made of Me' and 'My state' as actual identity with the supreme Self. To be 'made of Me' is to be a knower of Brahman who sees no difference whatever from the Lord; the 'thou' and the 'That' are realised as non-different. 'Knowledge as austerity' is steadfastness in knowledge alone, deliberately independent of any other austerity or works; one source treats the phrase as the very mark that the discipline here is pure knowledge and nothing else. The fruit, 'come to My state,' is liberation itself, the supreme purity, the being-consciousness-bliss nature of the Lord, reached by the mere removal of ignorance, since nothing was ever truly separate. One of them carefully rules out the rival options of knowing Brahman as different, or as both different and non-different, and of combining works with the vision of non-difference.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here 'knowledge as austerity' is specifically the true knowledge of the Lord's birth and deeds, the avatara-mystery, which is itself hard-won and so counts as a tapas; the cited scripture 'the steady know rightly His origin' shows that only the foremost among the wise grasp how He takes birth. Crucially, these commentators reject the identity reading: 'My state' (mad-bhavam) does not mean becoming one and the same as the Lord. Even in liberation, sameness-of-identity is opposed by scripture; the text's own grammar ('he attains Me') keeps the soul as the agent attaining and the Lord as what is attained, and the Gita will later promise only 'likeness to Me' (sadharmya). So mad-bhavam means attaining a nature like the Lord's, marked by the freedom from sin and the other auspicious traits, by extreme similarity, not by merger. 'Free of passion, fear and anger' is glossed as loving Him alone: there is no passion for other objects, no anger rooted in such passion, and no fear, since one neither likes nor dislikes any rival object.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator (working from a damaged critical text) reads 'made of Me' and 'taken refuge in Me' as two qualifications used together precisely to show that the devotee has no other refuge at all: ever resorting to the Lord alone, with the mind fixed on Him in this form. He draws a sharp contrast with merely worldly dependence: just as a person may feel great affection for a king yet only resort to him for security and welfare without truly taking refuge, here the meaning is genuine refuge, not such interested reliance. On the key compound he insists that 'knowledge and austerity' be taken together as a single unit, jnana-tapas, the two fused into one, on the principle that 'every pair becomes as one.'
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators flatly deny that 'made of Me' (manmaya) means having the Lord as one's self or being identical with Him. It means 'abounding in Me,' that is, having the Lord as one's inner ruler. The liberated see nothing anywhere apart from Him, but this is explained carefully: in every object there is some existence, and the knower sees that all of it is dependent on the Lord alone. So the realisation is of total dependence on Him, not of merger into Him. One of them also notes that the verse points ahead: since the next verse adds something more, this verse is stating the purport partly to produce faith, and is not meant to say this much and no more.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
For these commentators the verse answers an objection: if the Lord's birth and action were ordinary, material (prakritic), no one taking refuge in Him could ever be released; yet many plainly were. So this avatara itself is the liberating power. One reads 'vita' (free of) in a special Sankhya sense of 'not pervaded by': even souls who still carried passion or fear or wrath, those very condition-coloured moods, were made pure of the faults belonging to such states by the direct power of the avatara itself, by the kita-bhrnga ('wasp-and-grub') transformation into 'I am That.' The Gopis, Kamsa, and Caidya are given as those released by this very descent. The other commentator distinguishes this knowledge-route from service-laden devotion: refuge through knowledge is real and yields liberation, but it is austere and lacks the rasa-tinged sweetness of bhakti full of service; such ones do only the bare act of taking refuge, not loving service. The shared Pustimarg note is that by whatever path they came, it is finally the grace of the avatara, the universal solvent of every form of bondage, that opens them.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This terse reading ties freedom to fullness: knowing the Lord thus and being 'made of Me,' the freed are wholly full, and because they are full they are free of anger and the rest. Their mark is that they perform the action that is to be done as fruitless, that is, acting without grasping at any result; and so many have attained the Lord's own form.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read the verse through love and the avatara's compassion. One stays close to the non-dual sense, glossing 'My state' as union (sayujya) and reading the jiva as attaining oneness with the Lord through its conscious aspect; the jnana-tapas here is Self-knowledge attainable by the Lord's grace, together with one's own duty (svadharma) as its ripening cause, the two taken as a single seat of practice. But the Gaudiya commentators redirect 'My state' (mad-bhavam) away from merger and toward love for the Lord, or His real presence, or direct vision of Him. For them the freedom from passion, fear and anger is specifically detachment from people given to false doctrine: the devotee feels no fondness, fear, or anger toward such prattlers. 'Made of Me' is being absorbed in hearing, chanting, reflecting and meditating on the Lord's birth and deeds, and 'taking refuge' is serving Him well. One offers a second sense of the austerity: it is the burning endurance, like swallowing serpent-venom, of refuting the many false doctrines and sophistical arguments against the eternal reality of the Lord's birth and deeds.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These voices read the verse psychologically and practically. One traces the inner mechanics: when one knows the Self, attachment to sense-objects ceases; realising oneself as the changeless eternal Self, one becomes fearless; desireless and selfless, seeing the Self everywhere, one can no longer feel anger; and jnana-tapas is the fire of wisdom that burns vasanas, cravings, impressions, sins and all karma. Another emphasises that the whole content of the required knowledge is simply the Lord's transcendental births and deeds: grasp those fully and one has grasped both spiritual knowledge and the secret of unattached action, which is all that is needed for release, so nothing further must be separately studied. A third gives a fine-grained chain of causation: from raga for perishable things spring mamata, kamana, lobha, then krodha at whatever obstructs, then bhaya of a stronger obstructor; remove raga and the whole crop falls; raga is removed by ceasing to treat things as one's own and instead placing them in the service of others, since we truly have no relation to objects or actions at all, and by trusting that the Lord, who needs nothing for Himself, takes the avatara purely for our welfare as the perfect friend of every being.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
When the verse says these freed souls 'come to My state,' does that mean they dissolve into God and lose all separateness, or that they arrive at a God-like nature and nearness while remaining themselves?
The verse genuinely supports both readings, and the schools divide here honestly rather than carelessly. The non-dual commentators read 'made of Me' and 'My state' as real identity: the knower sees no difference from the Lord at all, and 'comes to My state' means liberation as the being-consciousness-bliss reality itself, reached simply by the removal of the ignorance that made separation seem real.
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri
The Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita commentators read it the other way, on grammatical and scriptural grounds. They point out that the verse's own language keeps the soul as the one who attains and the Lord as what is attained, and that the Gita will later promise only 'likeness to Me,' not sameness of identity. So 'My state' means attaining a nature like the Lord's, marked by freedom from sin and other divine traits, by extreme similarity; 'made of Me' means having the Lord as inner ruler and seeing all things as dependent on him alone, not merging into him.
Vedānta Deśika · Rāmānujācārya · Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
The devotional commentators add a third resolution that may matter most to a seeker: 'My state' is love for the Lord, his real presence, or the direct vision of him. On this reading the question of merger versus nearness softens, because what the freed soul reaches is living relationship with God, absorbed in hearing and remembering him and serving him well.
Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva
What all sides actually agree on is more practical than the metaphysical dispute. Every reading holds that the goal is reached by giving the mind one single refuge, by being freed of the passion, fear and anger that scatter it, and by the purifying fire of true knowledge. Whether you finally call the destination merger, likeness, or love, the road is the same single-hearted turning toward the Lord, and the verse insists many have already arrived, so the path is proven, not speculative.
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Contemplation
Notice how the verse makes anger and fear the children of passion, not separate enemies to fight one by one. Passion (raga) is the root: from clinging to perishable things grow craving, possessiveness, greed, then anger at whatever blocks you, then fear of whoever is stronger than you. So do not battle the anger and the fear directly. Loosen the root. The practical move offered here is simple and humbling: stop treating things as yours or for yourself. Take them as belonging to others and meant for the service of others, and place them there. In truth, you have no real relationship with any object or any action at all. And there is a gentler way in: trust that the Lord, who needs nothing for himself, takes every step purely for your welfare, as the truest friend of every being. As that trust deepens, attraction naturally turns toward him, and the pull of the world grows insipid on its own, the way a grown person quietly loses interest in the pebbles a child once fought over. When passion fades like that, fear and anger have nothing left to stand on, and they leave with it.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
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