The world comes and goes on Brahma's clock: it pours out at his dawn and folds back at his night.

Advaita Vedānta

The unmanifest is read as the sleeping state of Prajapati, but several go further and treat that sleep as a state of nescience in which the world is only imagined. On this view the world that dissolves in Brahma's sleep dissolves into his own ignorance, and the world that appears in his waking appears as before, with no real new substance added. One source draws the bold parallel by the 'seeing-is-creating' maxim: just as the sky and everything else that we imagine dissolves in our deep sleep and reappears unchanged on our waking, so the whole cosmos dissolves and reappears with Brahma's sleeping and waking. The cycle is thus brought close to a dream-like superimposition rather than a literal making and unmaking of stuff.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

The unmanifest is identified concretely as the body of the four-faced one (Brahma). The manifest forms, which dwell within the three worlds as bodies, senses, and the things and places of enjoyment, arise from that body of Brahma at the coming of his day and are dissolved back into that same particular state at the coming of his night. The accent here is not on imagination or nescience but on a real cosmic body out of which the worlds are projected and into which they return.

Rāmānujācārya

Bhedabheda

This school spells out a careful two-level distinction that the others leave implicit. The 'unmanifest' (the undifferentiated) covers the subtle state of the five elements, the souls together with their deeds and nescience, and the inner controller, the Lord, as their governing ground. In the intermediate dissolution that this verse chiefly describes, only the moving and unmoving beings dissolve; in the great dissolution the great elements dissolve as well. By naming both levels, this reading guards the truth that no deed already done is lost and no fruit of a deed not done can arise, so the moral order is preserved across every cycle.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

This reading lifts the verse out of the merely cosmological and ties it to the supreme Lord, Hari. It insists that the 'thousand' of the day-measure means simply 'many', not literally ten hundreds, and that the dissolution chiefly intended is the great one at the end of the two halves of Brahma's life together with the primal creation, since at the intermediate dissolutions not every effect arises and perishes. Above all, because the supreme Brahman is eternal and has no day or night of its own, the 'night' is understood as the actionless state even of Hari whose form is wholly complete, and the 'day' is established from that; the Self is thus the cause of dissolution and creation, with no prior beginning to the cycle.

Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

The unmanifest is named the 'akshara' (the imperishable), described as the realm whose form is the feet of Bhagavan and as the paramesthin-person who is the root of the aggregate. The formless conscious jivas that had rested in Brahman come forth, accompanied by his prakriti and moved by the divine will, into individual forms as bodies, wombs, and worlds at Brahma's day, and merge back at his night. This whole out-projection and in-gathering happens at the paramesthin-level, but it is all still within the conditioned field; the candidate of grace (pushti) is told to look beyond this mechanical, ordained great breath of Brahma to Bhagavan himself.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Bhakti

These commentators keep the focus on the plight of beings caught in the cycle and on the cause as Brahman in its sleeping state. Two of them stress that for those who dwell in the three worlds, below Brahma, there is a fall day after day; the unmanifest is the sleeping Prajapati or Brahman called the unmanifest, the cause in sleep, into which the realms of enjoyment dissolve and from which they re-arise. One offers two equally valid grammatical readings, taking either the unmanifest cause itself or the well-known 'knowers of day and night' as the subject, content to leave both standing since both yield the same outcome. Another, in vivid images, likens the cosmos to an ocean that swells at dawn and ebbs at the night, and to clouds that melt into the sky in autumn and re-form in summer, dissolving finally into the 'state of evenness' (samya, unitary being) as a tree returns into its seed.

Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices give the plain teaching and its moral. The coming of the day is the commencement of creation and the coming of the night the commencement of dissolution; perceptible things stream forth from the imperceptible and dissolve back into it. One draws the human lesson directly: knowing this, a person should understand that he has very little power over things, for the round of birth and death is ceaseless. One offers a striking microcosm-macrocosm parallel: just as in the individual soul's own little world of 'I' and 'mine' the world arises when one wakes and dissolves when one sleeps, so this gross collective world arises from Brahma's subtle body (prakriti) when he wakes and dissolves into it when he sleeps; and when Brahma's hundred-year life runs out, the great dissolution comes in which Brahma too is absorbed into Bhagavan, until he issues forth again and the great creation begins.

Swami Sivananda · Mahatma Gandhi · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas