Every being arises from the Lord's two natures, and he is the world's one source and one end.
It can feel as though the world stands on its own, a crowd of things that simply happen to you. Here Krishna gathers all of it back to a single root: nothing that lives or moves falls outside his higher and lower natures, and those natures are wholly his.
Know that all beings have these two as their source. I am the origin of the whole universe, and its dissolution.
In the two verses just before, Krishna set out his lower nature, the eightfold material world, and his higher nature, the conscious living being; now he joins them and says that together they are the womb from which every creature springs.
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.
Look anywhere in creation, from the highest being to a blade of grass, and you find nothing that does not spring from these same two natures working together.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 14 others’ words
All beings whatsoever spring from the two natures Krishna named in the preceding verses. In the last two verses he distinguished a lower nature (the eightfold material world) from a higher nature (the conscious living being). Here he says that these two together are the 'womb' (yoni), the source, of every creature without exception. The commentators stress how total this is: 'all beings, from Brahma down to a clump of grass'; the stationary (plants, trees) and the moving (gods, humans, animals, birds); the four kinds of birth (womb-born, egg-born, sweat-born, sprout-born). Many tie the two natures to the vocabulary Krishna will use later: the lower nature is the 'field' (kshetra, the body and world), the higher nature is the 'knower of the field' (kshetra-jna, the conscious soul). The point is that nothing in creation falls outside these two principles working together.
Do not let this pass as a mere notion; take it deeply to heart and settle it as a steady conviction, for you and all you see have one source.
Across Advaita, Śuddhādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Puruṣottama · Abhinavagupta · Ramsukhdas · ŚrīdharaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 6 others’ words
Krishna tells the listener not merely to note this but to take it deeply to heart. The verb upadharaya is read as more than passive understanding. It means grasp it well, settle it firmly in the mind, hold this conviction near the inward seat and nourish it, make it close to your own self through practice. Several commentators treat the verse as an inference: the world (the effect) is a mixture of consciousness and insentience, so its cause must also be a knot of consciousness and insentience, namely the two natures together. The instruction is to let this reasoning land as a settled conviction, not a passing thought.
The two natures give rise to beings, yet they are themselves born of the Lord and belong to him, so he alone is the arising of all and the place it returns to.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Dvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Madhva · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 15 others’ words
Because both natures are themselves derived from Krishna and belong to him, Krishna alone is the origin and the dissolution of the whole world. The commentators add a second step to the reasoning. The two natures are the immediate source of beings, but those two natures in turn arise from Krishna and are his own; they are not independent powers. Therefore he can say without exaggeration: I am the prabhava, the arising or coming-forth of the whole world, and equally the pralaya, its dissolution, the place into which everything is gathered back. Since the cause of the cause is the true cause, the Lord working through his two natures is the one source and the one end of all that is.
It is not blind matter that makes and unmakes the world on its own; the conscious Lord himself stands behind the two natures as their true and knowing cause.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, Bhedābheda, and the modern voicesĀnandagiri · Madhusūdana · Vedānta Deśika · Abhinavagupta · Bhāskara · Sivananda · RamsukhdasIn Ānandagiri, Madhusūdana, and 5 others’ words
The emphatic 'I' (aham) rules out the idea that blind nature, on its own, produces and reabsorbs the world. The cause is not unconscious matter operating by itself but the conscious, all-knowing Lord pervading and owning the two natures. Several commentators make this an explicit rejection of the rival Sankhya position, in which primal matter (prakriti) is an independent first cause. They answer: prakriti is never independent; it is the Lord's own, and the true cause of the world is the Lord who works through it. One commentator grounds this in scripture, noting that the world's first cause is named 'Existence' and 'Self', words that point to a conscious cause, and adding that mere inference can never settle so hidden a matter on its own.
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
For these commentators the two natures are the Lord's limiting adjuncts (upadhi), not real internal parts of him. The Lord appears as cause of the world by association with these adjuncts, much as a single reality looks varied through limiting conditions. The lower nature is insentient and the higher, though conscious, has only limited knowledge; so neither can be the cause of all on its own. The all-knowing Lord alone is fittingly the cause. One develops a striking image: the world's appearance is like the display in a dream, where the dreamer alone is at once the material out of which the dream is made, its substrate and object, and also the one who sees it. So the Lord, who possesses maya (the world-producing power), is both the stuff of the world and its witness, while remaining one. Some in this group also widen the meaning past mere world-making: the Lord is the cause of being, knowing, and enjoying for all, praised by seers as maker, protector, dissolver, ruler, and revealer, the enjoyer by his very nature of bliss.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Here the two natures, matter and the conscious person, are real and are the body of the Lord, not mere appearances or adjuncts to be explained away. The world has the two natures for its womb, and those two natures in turn have the supreme Person for their womb; so the world is the Lord's, owned by him, and he is its arising, its dissolution, and its owner. This is backed by named scriptural texts describing how the manifest dissolves stage by stage back into the supreme God, and how the primal matter and the person both arise from the form of Vishnu and dissolve into the supreme Self. The movement of the verse is read as going from the aggregate (all beings as a class) to the distributed Lord who is source and dissolver of the whole. The prabhava is taken specifically as the material cause (upadana) in respect of the two natures the Lord owns, and the pralaya as the gathering of the manifest back into the unmanifest at the end of the cosmic age.
Bhedābheda, in their fuller words
This commentator reads the two natures as genuinely both born from the Lord and genuinely real: the insentient nature transforms in the play of cause and effect, while the sentient nature persists as the enjoyer of the fruits earned by its own action. Both are related to the Lord precisely because both are originated from him. He grounds the Lord's being the root cause firmly in scripture rather than reasoning, citing 'Existence alone was this in the beginning' and 'That Self perceived', words that fix the cause as conscious. He adds a sharp epistemic point: no one can establish by mere inference the world's cause, which lies utterly beyond the senses, because such inference is open to the faults of being unproven, inconclusive, and self-contradictory.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as expanding the Lord's sovereignty rather than asserting any identity between him and the world. The point is 'not merely' that the two natures are in his power; he is the cause of their arising, their being, their perceiving, and is their enjoyer. They are careful to deny that the verse states a direct identity of the Lord with the world's properties of arising and dissolving. Just as a father enjoys the birth of a son or the fall of a foe as causes of his happiness, so the Lord is called source and dissolver by way of being the enjoyer, the one of the form of happiness. They guard the Lord against any defect: the happiness said to 'arise' through enjoyment in fact always exists, and his activities exist as ever-present potency, so he undergoes no real change and lacks nothing. On this basis they explicitly reject the reading that says merely 'because his two natures are the womb of all beings, therefore he is the arising and dissolution of the world', calling that gloss laughable.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
For these commentators the verse marks the world as nothing but a real transformation (parinama) of the Lord's own being, not an illusory appearance. Since rising and passing belong to the two natures, and those two are his, the whole world in its arising and ceasing is his alone, and no second cause is to be granted at all. One develops the language of divine play (lila): every being is fit for the Lord's play because nothing falls outside his twin power; the bringing-forth and the withdrawal are both the play of one Lord, two movements of a single sport. The instruction to 'hold this near' is read warmly as a conviction to be cherished and nourished in the depth of the heart, since the source of all is the Lord's very portion.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators stress that the higher nature, the conscious soul, is specifically a portion of the Lord (mad-amsha), and that both natures are his powers (shakti) arisen from him. The insentient nature transforms into the body; the conscious nature, being a portion of the Lord, enters bodies as the enjoyer and bears them up by its own karma. Because both powers have come to be from the Lord, he alone is the supreme cause (parama-karana) of the entire world along with its nature, and equally that into which it dissolves, in whom those powers reside. One identifies the two as the power of illusion and the power that is the living being. One develops a vivid Marathi image of creation as a mint: subtle nature joins the gross elements and strikes out the countless coins of individual beings, four stamps and eighty-four lakh classes, all of equal worth though differently classed; the same nature later melts them back, turning the wheel of action by each one's karma, and this whole nature is an appearance grounded in the Lord's divine being.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator reads 'bear it home' as an experiential instruction: through sustained practice, let the truth that the Lord (Vasudeva) is the origin and dissolution of all become a lived nearness to one's own self, not just an idea. The emphatic 'I' shows that the Lord, though distinct from nature, from the individual person, and from the supreme Person, nonetheless runs through all of them in every way; so there is no real doctrinal split between the Sankhya and Yoga accounts. He offers the image of gems strung on a thread: just as the thread, its own form unnoticed, stands hidden within and holds all the gems together, so the Lord is present everywhere while remaining unseen.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators keep close to the plain sense while drawing in supporting scripture. One aligns the verse with the Brahma Sutra's definition of Brahman as that from which the origin, sustenance, and dissolution of the world proceed, and uses the dream analogy: as the mind is both the material cause and the seer of dream-objects, so the Lord is both the material cause of the world and its witness, and also its instrumental cause. One renders it simply: from both natures all beings are created, and the Lord is the origin (prabhava) and end (pralaya) of the entire cosmos. One stresses that existence and stirring come to all things from the supreme Self alone; reading prabhava chiefly as the instrumental cause (nimitta-karana), since the whole creation came about by the Lord's will, just as a potter is the maker of a pot and a goldsmith of ornaments, and grounding this in 'May I become many' from the Upanishad.
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
Take this verse not as cosmic information but as a conviction to settle deep in the heart. The instruction 'upadharaya' is read as: hold this near, in the depth of the inward seat, and nourish it within. The truth to nourish is that every being, the still and the moving alike, springs from the Lord's own twin power, and that this very source is his own portion. From this one conclusion something steadying follows: nothing in your experience falls outside that play, because nothing falls outside his power. Both the arising of things and their passing away are the single play of one Lord, two movements of the same sport. Held in the heart, this can loosen the grip of seeing the world as a set of accidents pressing on you from outside, and let you meet both what comes and what goes as belonging to one source.
Hold this near as you go: nothing that comes to you and nothing that passes away falls outside the one source, so meet both as belonging to him, and let the world stop pressing on you as a crowd of accidents.
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Convergence
ll beings whatsoever spring from the two natures Krishna named in the preceding verses. In the last two verses he distinguished a lower nature (the eightfold material world) from a higher nature (the conscious living being). Here he says that these two together are the 'womb' (yoni), the source, of every creature without exception. The commentators stress how total this is: 'all beings, from Brahma down to a clump of grass'; the stationary (plants, trees) and the moving (gods, humans, animals, birds); the four kinds of birth (womb-born, egg-born, sweat-born, sprout-born). Many tie the two natures to the vocabulary Krishna will use later: the lower nature is the 'field' (kshetra, the body and world), the higher nature is the 'knower of the field' (kshetra-jna, the conscious soul). The point is that nothing in creation falls outside these two principles working together.
Braided from 16 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
Krishna tells the listener not merely to note this but to take it deeply to heart. The verb upadharaya is read as more than passive understanding. It means grasp it well, settle it firmly in the mind, hold this conviction near the inward seat and nourish it, make it close to your own self through practice. Several commentators treat the verse as an inference: the world (the effect) is a mixture of consciousness and insentience, so its cause must also be a knot of consciousness and insentience, namely the two natures together. The instruction is to let this reasoning land as a settled conviction, not a passing thought.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrī Puruṣottama · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Because both natures are themselves derived from Krishna and belong to him, Krishna alone is the origin and the dissolution of the whole world. The commentators add a second step to the reasoning. The two natures are the immediate source of beings, but those two natures in turn arise from Krishna and are his own; they are not independent powers. Therefore he can say without exaggeration: I am the prabhava, the arising or coming-forth of the whole world, and equally the pralaya, its dissolution, the place into which everything is gathered back. Since the cause of the cause is the true cause, the Lord working through his two natures is the one source and the one end of all that is.
Braided from 17 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Madhvācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
The emphatic 'I' (aham) rules out the idea that blind nature, on its own, produces and reabsorbs the world. The cause is not unconscious matter operating by itself but the conscious, all-knowing Lord pervading and owning the two natures. Several commentators make this an explicit rejection of the rival Sankhya position, in which primal matter (prakriti) is an independent first cause. They answer: prakriti is never independent; it is the Lord's own, and the true cause of the world is the Lord who works through it. One commentator grounds this in scripture, noting that the world's first cause is named 'Existence' and 'Self', words that point to a conscious cause, and adding that mere inference can never settle so hidden a matter on its own.
Braided from 7 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Vedānta Deśika · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrī Bhāskara · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
For these commentators the two natures are the Lord's limiting adjuncts (upadhi), not real internal parts of him. The Lord appears as cause of the world by association with these adjuncts, much as a single reality looks varied through limiting conditions. The lower nature is insentient and the higher, though conscious, has only limited knowledge; so neither can be the cause of all on its own. The all-knowing Lord alone is fittingly the cause. One develops a striking image: the world's appearance is like the display in a dream, where the dreamer alone is at once the material out of which the dream is made, its substrate and object, and also the one who sees it. So the Lord, who possesses maya (the world-producing power), is both the stuff of the world and its witness, while remaining one. Some in this group also widen the meaning past mere world-making: the Lord is the cause of being, knowing, and enjoying for all, praised by seers as maker, protector, dissolver, ruler, and revealer, the enjoyer by his very nature of bliss.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the two natures, matter and the conscious person, are real and are the body of the Lord, not mere appearances or adjuncts to be explained away. The world has the two natures for its womb, and those two natures in turn have the supreme Person for their womb; so the world is the Lord's, owned by him, and he is its arising, its dissolution, and its owner. This is backed by named scriptural texts describing how the manifest dissolves stage by stage back into the supreme God, and how the primal matter and the person both arise from the form of Vishnu and dissolve into the supreme Self. The movement of the verse is read as going from the aggregate (all beings as a class) to the distributed Lord who is source and dissolver of the whole. The prabhava is taken specifically as the material cause (upadana) in respect of the two natures the Lord owns, and the pralaya as the gathering of the manifest back into the unmanifest at the end of the cosmic age.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Bhedabheda
This commentator reads the two natures as genuinely both born from the Lord and genuinely real: the insentient nature transforms in the play of cause and effect, while the sentient nature persists as the enjoyer of the fruits earned by its own action. Both are related to the Lord precisely because both are originated from him. He grounds the Lord's being the root cause firmly in scripture rather than reasoning, citing 'Existence alone was this in the beginning' and 'That Self perceived', words that fix the cause as conscious. He adds a sharp epistemic point: no one can establish by mere inference the world's cause, which lies utterly beyond the senses, because such inference is open to the faults of being unproven, inconclusive, and self-contradictory.
Śrī Bhāskara
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse as expanding the Lord's sovereignty rather than asserting any identity between him and the world. The point is 'not merely' that the two natures are in his power; he is the cause of their arising, their being, their perceiving, and is their enjoyer. They are careful to deny that the verse states a direct identity of the Lord with the world's properties of arising and dissolving. Just as a father enjoys the birth of a son or the fall of a foe as causes of his happiness, so the Lord is called source and dissolver by way of being the enjoyer, the one of the form of happiness. They guard the Lord against any defect: the happiness said to 'arise' through enjoyment in fact always exists, and his activities exist as ever-present potency, so he undergoes no real change and lacks nothing. On this basis they explicitly reject the reading that says merely 'because his two natures are the womb of all beings, therefore he is the arising and dissolution of the world', calling that gloss laughable.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
For these commentators the verse marks the world as nothing but a real transformation (parinama) of the Lord's own being, not an illusory appearance. Since rising and passing belong to the two natures, and those two are his, the whole world in its arising and ceasing is his alone, and no second cause is to be granted at all. One develops the language of divine play (lila): every being is fit for the Lord's play because nothing falls outside his twin power; the bringing-forth and the withdrawal are both the play of one Lord, two movements of a single sport. The instruction to 'hold this near' is read warmly as a conviction to be cherished and nourished in the depth of the heart, since the source of all is the Lord's very portion.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
These commentators stress that the higher nature, the conscious soul, is specifically a portion of the Lord (mad-amsha), and that both natures are his powers (shakti) arisen from him. The insentient nature transforms into the body; the conscious nature, being a portion of the Lord, enters bodies as the enjoyer and bears them up by its own karma. Because both powers have come to be from the Lord, he alone is the supreme cause (parama-karana) of the entire world along with its nature, and equally that into which it dissolves, in whom those powers reside. One identifies the two as the power of illusion and the power that is the living being. One develops a vivid Marathi image of creation as a mint: subtle nature joins the gross elements and strikes out the countless coins of individual beings, four stamps and eighty-four lakh classes, all of equal worth though differently classed; the same nature later melts them back, turning the wheel of action by each one's karma, and this whole nature is an appearance grounded in the Lord's divine being.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads 'bear it home' as an experiential instruction: through sustained practice, let the truth that the Lord (Vasudeva) is the origin and dissolution of all become a lived nearness to one's own self, not just an idea. The emphatic 'I' shows that the Lord, though distinct from nature, from the individual person, and from the supreme Person, nonetheless runs through all of them in every way; so there is no real doctrinal split between the Sankhya and Yoga accounts. He offers the image of gems strung on a thread: just as the thread, its own form unnoticed, stands hidden within and holds all the gems together, so the Lord is present everywhere while remaining unseen.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
These commentators keep close to the plain sense while drawing in supporting scripture. One aligns the verse with the Brahma Sutra's definition of Brahman as that from which the origin, sustenance, and dissolution of the world proceed, and uses the dream analogy: as the mind is both the material cause and the seer of dream-objects, so the Lord is both the material cause of the world and its witness, and also its instrumental cause. One renders it simply: from both natures all beings are created, and the Lord is the origin (prabhava) and end (pralaya) of the entire cosmos. One stresses that existence and stirring come to all things from the supreme Self alone; reading prabhava chiefly as the instrumental cause (nimitta-karana), since the whole creation came about by the Lord's will, just as a potter is the maker of a pot and a goldsmith of ornaments, and grounding this in 'May I become many' from the Upanishad.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If the world arises from God and dissolves back into God, does the world have any reality of its own, or is it just an appearance with no standing?
The verse and its commentators agree on one thing: the world is not self-standing. Whatever it is, it comes from the Lord's two natures, and those natures themselves come from the Lord; so he is the single origin and the single end. There is no second, independent cause to grant alongside him.
Braided from 6 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrīla Baladeva
But on what the world's reality amounts to, the commentators genuinely part ways, and a thoughtful reader should know this rather than be handed one answer. One stream treats the world's appearance as like a dream the Lord both projects and witnesses, the natures functioning as his limiting adjuncts. Another treats matter and the conscious person as fully real, the very body of the Lord, dissolving stage by stage back into him at scripture's word. Another treats the world as a real transformation of the Lord's own being, no mere appearance.
Braided from 6 commentators
Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śaṅkarācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
What the verse asks of the reader is narrower and shared by all of them: to grasp well, and settle in the mind, that you and everything around you have a single source and a single end in the Lord. Whether you read the world as dream, as the Lord's body, or as his real self-unfolding, its standing is wholly his, never its own.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas · Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Contemplation
Take this verse not as cosmic information but as a conviction to settle deep in the heart. The instruction 'upadharaya' is read as: hold this near, in the depth of the inward seat, and nourish it within. The truth to nourish is that every being, the still and the moving alike, springs from the Lord's own twin power, and that this very source is his own portion. From this one conclusion something steadying follows: nothing in your experience falls outside that play, because nothing falls outside his power. Both the arising of things and their passing away are the single play of one Lord, two movements of the same sport. Held in the heart, this can loosen the grip of seeing the world as a set of accidents pressing on you from outside, and let you meet both what comes and what goes as belonging to one source.
Sit with this · Śrī Puruṣottama
All the translations and commentary
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