What you remember at the last breath is where you arrive.

Advaita Vedānta

These commentators read 'reaching My being' as the realization of Brahman, the reality that is the Lord, with the self's non-difference from Brahman as the deep teaching. They draw a careful distinction between two kinds of worshipper. One who meditates on Brahman-with-attributes departs by the path of the gods (fire, light, day, the bright fortnight) and reaches the Lord's being by stages, after the enjoyment of the world of the creator. But for the knower of Brahman-without-attributes, the language of 'releasing the body and departing' is only how things look from the worldly point of view; in truth, as scripture says, his breaths do not depart but are merged right here, so there is no going at all. He reaches the Lord's being directly and at once, for 'being Brahman, he attains Brahman.' On this reading the doubt that 'there is no doubt' cuts is precisely whether the self is distinct from the body and whether, so distinct, it is other than the Lord; both are denied. One of these voices works the distinction out at length across the chapter's question-and-answer scheme, sorting which kinds of knowers need a firm death-time cognition and which (the realized) do not, even mapping different classes onto the scriptural account of the channels of the heart by which the soul departs.

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

Viśiṣṭādvaita

These commentators take 'Mad-bhava' as the Lord's own being, the specific nature He bestows, and they make the governing principle that the final cognition by its very nature brings the rememberer to a form akin to its object. They illustrate this with the well-known story of an ancient king who, dwelling at death on a deer he was remembering, took a deer's form. They are careful to insist this answer is general, not restricted to the realized knower alone, since the question and the answer were stated generally; it applies to every kind of qualified candidate whose final remembrance is fixed on the Lord, the destination matching the particular candidate. 'No doubt in this' is read as the formal closure of Arjuna's question, warded off by the Lord's authority.

Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika

Bhedabheda

This commentator gives a plain reading of the verse itself, that whoever leaves the body at the close of life and departs goes to the Lord's state of being, beyond doubt. He then immediately widens the principle: it is not only by remembering the Lord that one attains the Lord. Whatever state of being one dwells on as one gives up the body, to that very state one goes, having been absorbed in the thought of it throughout. He thus treats this verse as one instance of a more general law of death-time thought, which the next verse states outright.

Śrī Bhāskara

Dvaita

These commentators read 'Mad-bhava' as a being in the Lord, of the nature of bliss free of all pain and unsurpassed, citing the Mahabharata that the goal of the released is Brahman conceived as the knower of the field, the supreme Self. They are pointedly careful to rule out the reading that 'My being' means 'having Me as one's essence' or merely a resemblance to the Lord. Their reasoning: a standing in the Lord, and the soul's resemblance to the Lord as His reflection, exist always; if 'My being' meant only that, it could not be something newly attained as a fruit. So the word must be qualified by 'free of pain,' marking the released state as a genuine attainment. And the released, being always dependent on the Lord, cannot be identical with Him; the goal is the supreme Self, the knower of the field, in whom the released soul finds its support.

Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha

Śuddhādvaita

These commentators read the remembrance as devotion-colored, the act of the 'bhaktiman yogi,' the devotee who is also a yogi, not bare mental recall. The object remembered is not the imperishable formless absolute but the playful supreme person, the 'lila-purushottama,' whose bliss is complete and over whom no partial worship-form or incantation has any further claim. They take the fruit, 'he comes to My very being,' as immediate liberation rather than liberation by stages, in the sense of grace, since the Lord is at once both the means and the end. 'Mad-bhava' is read as the Lord's own form, the very form fit for service; the corpse is left because the dead body is now unfit for worship and service. One of these voices calls this single verse load-bearing for the whole chapter: the sole condition is exclusive remembrance of the Lord, and the destination is service in the Lord's own form, untouched by doubt.

Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama

Kashmir Shaivism

This commentator reads 'Me' as the Lord with every limiting condition cut away, and he turns the verse into a careful argument about how death-time remembrance works. The binding point, he insists, is not the bare memory at the last instant. It is that the inner organ has at all times been steeped in a given reality; that same reality is what is reached after departure, whether or not it is also remembered. The word 'also' marks the remembering as a subordinate addition, and the word 'or' shows the remembering does not hold without exception. His proof is a counter-case: if mere last memory decided the outcome, then even a man of true knowledge, whose mind has been disabled by the disorders of a failing body and has lapsed into insentience, would meet the fate of one sunk in dark inertia, which contradicts scripture (he cites the Paramarthasara that one released at the very moment of knowledge goes to absoluteness even if his memory has failed, whether in a holy place or an outcaste's house). He further distinguishes the 'final moment' that ordinary people notice (remembering kin or cool water, while the body is still plainly present) from the true final moment, unnoticed, in which the latent impression of the very form one is to assume rouses into a waking by the force of lifelong contemplation, and, the impressions of time and of 'this and that' having ceased, the very nature of the supreme Lord, whose sole reality is pure awareness, comes to be. He grounds this in the yoga principle that memory and latent impression are of one form, and that the impression born of long contemplation obstructs impressions of another kind.

Ācārya Abhinavagupta

Bhakti

These commentators take remembrance of the Lord as itself the death-time knowing of Him, the inward act, with the path of light (beginning with the flame, the 'archiradi' route) as the outward journey and 'becoming of one form with the Lord' as the terminal fruit. The Lord remembered is the indwelling 'antaryamin' form just described in the chapter. One voice notes pointedly that the Lord cannot be known like a pot or cloth by anyone; remembrance is the only mode of knowing, and the manner of that remembrance is refined later in the chapter. Another specifies the attained nature concretely: just as the Lord is distinguished by the eightfold qualities such as freedom from sin, of such a nature does the rememberer become, the fruit being one the Lord Himself bestows. The Marathi voice in this tradition develops the same point through vivid images: the realized soul treats the body as a mere outer cover, like a jar of water sunk in deep water whose contents are unharmed if it breaks, or a serpent casting off worn skin; the experience of Brahman is not disturbed in the least when the body drops, so such a soul, mindful of the Lord, simply merges into Him.

Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar

Modern

These voices give the plain sense and, in one case, a wide-hearted pastoral reading. The verse plainly says that one who leaves the body thinking of the Lord at death is merged in the Lord's form. One of them expands 'Mad-bhava' to mean that in whatever form the seeker has accepted the Lord (with or without attributes, with or without form, two-armed or four-armed) and through whatever name, play, abode or form he has worshipped, he attains that very aspect of the Lord according to his death-time remembrance; yet ultimately all these become one, because the Lord's full nature is one. This voice reads the verse above all as a great concession: whatever a person's conduct or way of life has been, if at the end he remembers the Lord, his welfare comes about, because the Lord gave the human body precisely so the soul could attain its welfare. Even one who never worshipped, if by some grace, a saint's presence, a holy place, a fearful turn, or the dropping of attachment, he happens to remember the Lord at the end, attains the Lord's being just like a lifelong worshipper.

Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas