The great soul shelters in the divine nature and worships with a mind on no other.
Krishna now names the one who truly worships him: a soul whose greatness is a settled inward character, sheltered in his own divine nature. That soul's love is single, and it is a knowing love; it holds him as the imperishable source of all beings.
But the great souls take shelter in my divine nature, Arjuna. They worship me with an unwavering mind, knowing me as the imperishable source of all beings.
It answers the verses just before, where the deluded scorn Krishna in the human form he has taken; the chapter turns here from the failed seeker to the true one.
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.
Against those who mock the Lord's human form stands their opposite, the great soul, great not in outward show but in the mind's own largeness.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Puruṣottama · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 6 others’ words
This verse is Krishna's direct answer to a question left open by the verses before it. Those earlier verses described the deluded who mock Krishna in his human form; here he names the opposite kind of person, the one who actually worships him. So the verse functions as a turn from the failed seeker to the true one. The Sanskrit word for that true seeker is mahatma, literally 'great soul,' and several commentators explain the greatness as an inner, not an outer, largeness: a mind that is not small or petty, not overpowered by craving and the lesser drives. The 'tu' (the small word 'but') at the start is read as marking a sharp distinction from the deluded ones just described.
They shelter in the divine nature: the clear, calm quality of mind that shows itself as restraint, compassion, and faith, a settled character, not a status.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Kashmir Śaiva, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Sivananda · Vallabha · Rāmānuja · Abhinavagupta · Puruṣottama · RamsukhdasIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 9 others’ words
What makes these souls great is that they have 'taken refuge in the divine nature,' daivi prakriti. The commentators read this divine nature as the sattvic disposition, sattva being the clear, calm, luminous quality of mind, and many of them point ahead to the catalog of divine qualities the Gita will give later (at 'fearlessness, purity of being,' Gita 16.1). On the ground this nature shows up as concrete virtues: calmness (shama), self-restraint (dama), compassion (daya), faith (shraddha) and the like. So the 'divine nature' is not an abstract status but a settled character. Some add that this character is itself a refinement won over time, the inner organ purified by good deeds done across many lifetimes.
Their mind rests on no other; the worship flows from love and conviction, not habit or show, and nothing apart from him holds their attention.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Bhakti, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhusūdana · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Ramsukhdas · Puruṣottama · VallabhaIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 10 others’ words
Their worship is single-minded. The Sanskrit is ananya-manas, 'with mind on no other,' which the commentators unpack as a one-pointedness in which nothing apart from Krishna holds the attention. Several stress that this is not worship by habit or for show but worship that flows from love and conviction; for some this love is so full that the mind, the sense of self, and the outer organs cannot hold themselves up at all without the worship of Krishna, so that worshipping him becomes their single purpose. One modern voice puts it that for such a devotee constant praise of God is the very breath of life, something he never has to drag himself toward.
No one can truly serve what he has not known; so their devotion rests on knowledge, on Krishna as the imperishable source of all beings.
Across Advaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana · Dhanapati · Śrīdhara · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Tilak · Sivananda · Puruṣottama · Vallabha · Baladeva · Nīlakaṇṭha · JñāneśvarIn Śaṅkara, Ānandagiri, and 12 others’ words
Crucially, this worship rests on knowledge, not blind feeling. The great souls worship 'having known' (jnatva) Krishna as bhutadi, the source or origin of all beings, and as avyaya, the imperishable, the unchanging, the undecaying. The commentators tie the two together: because real service of an unknown object is impossible, the devotee first knows and then serves. So the verse fuses devotion and understanding. Some read the knowledge specifically as recognizing Krishna as the cause of the whole world, the cause behind every cause, who is himself the changeless ground and not a product of change.
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 the verse as collapsing the path of knowledge and the path of devotion into one. Krishna is known as both the cause of the world (bhutadi) and the imperishable, changeless reality (avyaya), and one of them is glad to read the single-minded devotee (ekanta-bhakta) and the knower of Brahman (brahma-jnani) as the very same person, precisely because the one Krishna is both the cause of the world and the undecaying ground. The 'imperishable' is given a striking gloss: as the shell is the substrate that appears as the silver that is mistakenly seen in it, Krishna is the substrate of all forms while himself never undergoing the modification, so he is ever changeless. The greatness of the soul is understood mainly as a purified inner organ no longer driven by petty desire, refined over many births.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
Here the stress falls on grace and on a personal Lord whose true being is beyond speech and mind. These souls become great by heaps of merit they have made, and then, coming to Krishna for refuge, have every bond of sin shattered; the divine nature is something they enter through that surrender. The Lord they know has descended into human form out of supreme compassion, to protect the good, and his name, deeds, and own form lie beyond speech and thought. Their love is so excessive that mind, self, and outer organs cannot stand up at all apart from his worship, which becomes their single purpose. One of these voices reads the verse structurally, as naming in four phrases (great soul, refuge in divine nature, single mind, knowledge of the imperishable source) the very candidate the rest of the chapter will go on to describe.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse within a tightly argued context about who hates the Lord and who does not. The point of describing 'the gods,' the highest order of souls, is to show that, unlike the demons and their kind, these others do not hate Krishna. One of them takes 'the gods' as illustrative of the highest order of souls in general, and presses the logical question of why the words 'they worship' are even needed: it would have been enough to say the others do not hate. The answer is that the verse means to set forth the very nature of the gods, and that nature in turn is meant to establish the absence of hatred in them. So for this school the verse is doing careful work in a graded scheme of souls, not flattening all worshippers into one.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read mahatma in a strong, almost mystical sense and tie the verse to liberation. For one, the great soul is born in a final birth, his sins shattered by the accumulated good deeds of birth upon birth and by his refuge in the Lord, and from that point he is fit for liberation because his purity of being is now set; he worships the purushottama, the supreme person, whose very form is bliss in hands, feet, face and the rest, following the teaching handed down by the feet of the acharyas, and his mind rests on no other, not even on the imperishable (akshara) as a separate goal. The other gives mahatma a bold reading: these are the ones for whom 'aham eva,' 'I myself,' is the great Self, those for whom the Lord himself is their very atman; and the divine nature they take refuge in is the play-formed nature, or the nature whose very form is the gods.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
The devotional commentators dwell on the human form of Krishna and on the texture of the love itself. One insists that these souls, though human, fix their hearts on Krishna precisely in his human form, knowing him to be the imperishable and eternal cause of all, including Brahma, Rudra and the others; their minds have become broad and fathomless through the company of the good, so that they take no pleasure even in his thousand-headed cosmic form, preferring the intimate human one. Another paints the great souls at length: their pure hearts are holy places where the Lord dwells, renunciation waits on them even in sleep, the ecstasy of God's love makes them spurn even the treasure of liberation, and they become one with the essence of divine life and yet still worship, with a devotion free from every touch of duality.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator reads the verse as the opening of a span that runs down to a later phrase about being 'facing every way,' and uses it to mark two legitimate modes of worship. The divine nature is the sattvic one. Worshipping here means worship with outer substances, that is, with sacrifices using material offerings; but others worship the Lord by the sacrifice of knowledge alone. So some worship in oneness, through knowledge, and some in manifold ways, through the yoga of action. The point he draws out is that these are not rival paths: all of them alike have the Lord for their one goal.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
The modern voices keep the verse plain and practical. One renders it simply: the noble souls who have taken shelter in a godly nature recognize Krishna as the supreme inexhaustible source of all created beings, and, believing there is no one else, worship him. Another highlights an alternate reading of mahatma in which the great souls are those whose pure minds the Lord has made into his own special abode; he dwells in their pure minds, and they have sincere devotion, divine sattvic nature, and knowledge of the Self. A third stresses the lived steadiness of such a devotee: he has firmly accepted the Lord as his own, his worship is single (ananya) and continuous, and from that his whole conduct, speech and deeds fall naturally into place, so that constant praise of God is for him the very breath of life and never a thing he must force.
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 what changes when the Lord becomes genuinely your own. The devotee in this verse does not have to push himself toward devotion. Because he has firmly accepted God as his very own, his worship is single-pointed and continuous, and from that one settled relationship his whole life falls into order on its own: his conduct, his speech, his actions arrange themselves naturally, without strain. Constant remembrance of God becomes for him like breathing, something he never has to drag himself into. So the practice the verse points to is not first to manufacture more effort, but to let the relationship itself become real and firm; the steadiness of conduct then follows from that, rather than being forced ahead of it.
For the one who has truly made the Lord his own, remembrance comes like breath, unforced, and the day's conduct, speech, and action settle into place of themselves.
Read deeper
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Word by word
All the commentary, woven together
The commentary, woven together
machine-assisted draft, pending review
Convergence
his verse is Krishna's direct answer to a question left open by the verses before it. Those earlier verses described the deluded who mock Krishna in his human form; here he names the opposite kind of person, the one who actually worships him. So the verse functions as a turn from the failed seeker to the true one. The Sanskrit word for that true seeker is mahatma, literally 'great soul,' and several commentators explain the greatness as an inner, not an outer, largeness: a mind that is not small or petty, not overpowered by craving and the lesser drives. The 'tu' (the small word 'but') at the start is read as marking a sharp distinction from the deluded ones just described.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
What makes these souls great is that they have 'taken refuge in the divine nature,' daivi prakriti. The commentators read this divine nature as the sattvic disposition, sattva being the clear, calm, luminous quality of mind, and many of them point ahead to the catalog of divine qualities the Gita will give later (at 'fearlessness, purity of being,' Gita 16.1). On the ground this nature shows up as concrete virtues: calmness (shama), self-restraint (dama), compassion (daya), faith (shraddha) and the like. So the 'divine nature' is not an abstract status but a settled character. Some add that this character is itself a refinement won over time, the inner organ purified by good deeds done across many lifetimes.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Swami Sivananda · Vallabhācārya · Rāmānujācārya · Ācārya Abhinavagupta · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
Their worship is single-minded. The Sanskrit is ananya-manas, 'with mind on no other,' which the commentators unpack as a one-pointedness in which nothing apart from Krishna holds the attention. Several stress that this is not worship by habit or for show but worship that flows from love and conviction; for some this love is so full that the mind, the sense of self, and the outer organs cannot hold themselves up at all without the worship of Krishna, so that worshipping him becomes their single purpose. One modern voice puts it that for such a devotee constant praise of God is the very breath of life, something he never has to drag himself toward.
Braided from 12 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya
Crucially, this worship rests on knowledge, not blind feeling. The great souls worship 'having known' (jnatva) Krishna as bhutadi, the source or origin of all beings, and as avyaya, the imperishable, the unchanging, the undecaying. The commentators tie the two together: because real service of an unknown object is impossible, the devotee first knows and then serves. So the verse fuses devotion and understanding. Some read the knowledge specifically as recognizing Krishna as the cause of the whole world, the cause behind every cause, who is himself the changeless ground and not a product of change.
Braided from 14 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Śrī Puruṣottama · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Sant Jñāneśvar
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the verse as collapsing the path of knowledge and the path of devotion into one. Krishna is known as both the cause of the world (bhutadi) and the imperishable, changeless reality (avyaya), and one of them is glad to read the single-minded devotee (ekanta-bhakta) and the knower of Brahman (brahma-jnani) as the very same person, precisely because the one Krishna is both the cause of the world and the undecaying ground. The 'imperishable' is given a striking gloss: as the shell is the substrate that appears as the silver that is mistakenly seen in it, Krishna is the substrate of all forms while himself never undergoing the modification, so he is ever changeless. The greatness of the soul is understood mainly as a purified inner organ no longer driven by petty desire, refined over many births.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Viśiṣṭādvaita
Here the stress falls on grace and on a personal Lord whose true being is beyond speech and mind. These souls become great by heaps of merit they have made, and then, coming to Krishna for refuge, have every bond of sin shattered; the divine nature is something they enter through that surrender. The Lord they know has descended into human form out of supreme compassion, to protect the good, and his name, deeds, and own form lie beyond speech and thought. Their love is so excessive that mind, self, and outer organs cannot stand up at all apart from his worship, which becomes their single purpose. One of these voices reads the verse structurally, as naming in four phrases (great soul, refuge in divine nature, single mind, knowledge of the imperishable source) the very candidate the rest of the chapter will go on to describe.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse within a tightly argued context about who hates the Lord and who does not. The point of describing 'the gods,' the highest order of souls, is to show that, unlike the demons and their kind, these others do not hate Krishna. One of them takes 'the gods' as illustrative of the highest order of souls in general, and presses the logical question of why the words 'they worship' are even needed: it would have been enough to say the others do not hate. The answer is that the verse means to set forth the very nature of the gods, and that nature in turn is meant to establish the absence of hatred in them. So for this school the verse is doing careful work in a graded scheme of souls, not flattening all worshippers into one.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read mahatma in a strong, almost mystical sense and tie the verse to liberation. For one, the great soul is born in a final birth, his sins shattered by the accumulated good deeds of birth upon birth and by his refuge in the Lord, and from that point he is fit for liberation because his purity of being is now set; he worships the purushottama, the supreme person, whose very form is bliss in hands, feet, face and the rest, following the teaching handed down by the feet of the acharyas, and his mind rests on no other, not even on the imperishable (akshara) as a separate goal. The other gives mahatma a bold reading: these are the ones for whom 'aham eva,' 'I myself,' is the great Self, those for whom the Lord himself is their very atman; and the divine nature they take refuge in is the play-formed nature, or the nature whose very form is the gods.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Bhakti
The devotional commentators dwell on the human form of Krishna and on the texture of the love itself. One insists that these souls, though human, fix their hearts on Krishna precisely in his human form, knowing him to be the imperishable and eternal cause of all, including Brahma, Rudra and the others; their minds have become broad and fathomless through the company of the good, so that they take no pleasure even in his thousand-headed cosmic form, preferring the intimate human one. Another paints the great souls at length: their pure hearts are holy places where the Lord dwells, renunciation waits on them even in sleep, the ecstasy of God's love makes them spurn even the treasure of liberation, and they become one with the essence of divine life and yet still worship, with a devotion free from every touch of duality.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator reads the verse as the opening of a span that runs down to a later phrase about being 'facing every way,' and uses it to mark two legitimate modes of worship. The divine nature is the sattvic one. Worshipping here means worship with outer substances, that is, with sacrifices using material offerings; but others worship the Lord by the sacrifice of knowledge alone. So some worship in oneness, through knowledge, and some in manifold ways, through the yoga of action. The point he draws out is that these are not rival paths: all of them alike have the Lord for their one goal.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Modern
The modern voices keep the verse plain and practical. One renders it simply: the noble souls who have taken shelter in a godly nature recognize Krishna as the supreme inexhaustible source of all created beings, and, believing there is no one else, worship him. Another highlights an alternate reading of mahatma in which the great souls are those whose pure minds the Lord has made into his own special abode; he dwells in their pure minds, and they have sincere devotion, divine sattvic nature, and knowledge of the Self. A third stresses the lived steadiness of such a devotee: he has firmly accepted the Lord as his own, his worship is single (ananya) and continuous, and from that his whole conduct, speech and deeds fall naturally into place, so that constant praise of God is for him the very breath of life and never a thing he must force.
Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Sivananda · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If true worship of Krishna depends on first knowing him as the imperishable source of all beings, where does an ordinary seeker, who feels devotion but does not yet have that knowledge, even begin?
The verse does join knowing and serving on purpose: the great souls worship 'having known,' because service of something wholly unknown is not really possible, so one first knows and then serves. But that knowledge is not presented as a remote scholarly achievement. It is the recognition that Krishna is the source of all beings and the one imperishable, unchanging ground, and the verse treats this recognition and wholehearted devotion as belonging to the same person rather than to two separate types of seeker.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Śaṅkarācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī
Just as importantly, the beginning is not the seeker's own unaided cleverness. The greatness of these souls is described as a refuge taken and a purity received: a mind cleansed over time, sins shattered by surrender, and for some the pure mind made by the Lord himself into his own dwelling. So the door in is not first to master a doctrine but to take refuge in the divine nature, to lean toward calmness, self-restraint, compassion and faith, and to let the relationship become firm; the clearer knowing matures within that turning rather than being demanded before it.
Rāmānujācārya · Swami Sivananda · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas
Contemplation
Notice what changes when the Lord becomes genuinely your own. The devotee in this verse does not have to push himself toward devotion. Because he has firmly accepted God as his very own, his worship is single-pointed and continuous, and from that one settled relationship his whole life falls into order on its own: his conduct, his speech, his actions arrange themselves naturally, without strain. Constant remembrance of God becomes for him like breathing, something he never has to drag himself into. So the practice the verse points to is not first to manufacture more effort, but to let the relationship itself become real and firm; the steadiness of conduct then follows from that, rather than being forced ahead of it.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
All the translations and commentary
Pull up a chair.
You have come to sit with this verse. When you are ready to hear the translators and the commentators in full, tap a name in The seating.