Beings pass into his own nature at the age's end, and he sends them forth again.
When the long age closes, all beings sink back into the nature Krishna names his own and rest there unmanifest, not yet divided into name and form. At the next dawn he sends them forth again; the whole rhythm of dissolving and sending belongs to him, and through it all nothing of them is lost.
All beings pass into my nature at the end of a cycle, Arjuna. At the beginning of the next, I send them forth again.
Krishna has just said that all beings rest in him as the wind rests in space, and this verse answers the question that follows: what becomes of those beings when the world itself ends.
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.
When the long age closes, every being returns into his nature and rests there unmanifest; when the new age dawns, he sends them all forth again.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhedābheda, Bhakti, Dvaita, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Puruṣottama · Bhāskara · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Baladeva · Jñāneśvar · Sivananda · Tilak · Ramsukhdas · MadhvaIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 15 others’ words
This verse answers a question that naturally follows from the earlier teaching. Krishna has just said that all beings rest in Him while He stays unattached, like the wind resting in space. So a seeker asks: what becomes of all these beings when the world ends? Krishna here turns to the cosmic cycle of dissolution and creation. At the close of a kalpa, a vast cosmic age, all beings without exception, the moving and the unmoving alike, return into His prakriti. 'Prakriti' here means His material nature, the realm of cause-and-effect that He owns. They do not vanish; they merge back into that nature and rest there in unmanifest, subtle form. Then again, at the dawn of the next kalpa, Krishna sends them all forth once more into manifest, distinct existence. The whole rhythm of dissolution and emission belongs to Him.
The nature they sink into is the lower one, woven of three strands; there they lie latent, not yet split into name and form.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesŚaṅkara · Madhusūdana · Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Śrīdhara · Viśvanātha · Sivananda · JñāneśvarIn Śaṅkara, Madhusūdana, and 9 others’ words
The 'prakriti' the beings return to is specifically the lower or inferior nature, the one made of the three gunas, the three basic qualities or strands (sattva, rajas, tamas) out of which all material existence is woven. Several commentators are careful to mark this as the apara, the lower nature that was distinguished from the higher nature earlier in this chapter, so the reader does not confuse it with Krishna's own essence. At dissolution the beings collapse back into this three-gunaed material substrate and lie there as latent potential, undivided, not yet split into name and form.
He calls that nature his own, māmikām; it runs on no power of its own, and the beings resting in it never leave his keeping.
Across Advaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, and the modern voicesĀnandagiri · Rāmānuja · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabha · Baladeva · Dhanapati · Puruṣottama · RamsukhdasIn Ānandagiri, Rāmānuja, and 6 others’ words
The word 'mamikam', My own, is doing important work, and many commentators stress it. The prakriti is not an independent power running on its own. It is the Lord's, it depends on Him, it belongs to Him. Therefore the entire cosmic process is His doing from start to finish: He gathers the beings back at dissolution, He holds them in His nature, and He sends them out again at creation. The verb 'visrijami', I send forth, underscores His direct agency in the renewed manifestation. The beings never escape His ownership and never act apart from His will; the cycle is the Lord's own work, and they remain mat-sthani, established in Him, throughout.
And through all this immense work he stays untouched; the new creation rises from his bare resolve, while he remains the unattached cause behind it.
Across Śuddhādvaita, Bhakti, Viśiṣṭādvaita, Advaita, Bhedābheda, and the modern voicesVallabha · Baladeva · Rāmānuja · Madhusūdana · Ramsukhdas · BhāskaraIn Vallabha, Baladeva, and 4 others’ words
Even while He performs this immense work of dissolving and recreating all beings, Krishna Himself remains untouched and unattached. The commentators who developed the earlier 'wind in space' image carry it forward here: the beings belong wholly to prakriti, so the Lord, who is beyond prakriti, has no real contact or entanglement with them. The recreation happens by His mere will or resolve. Some render that will as the Vedic resolve 'May I become many', a sankalpa that arises and sets the new creation in motion, while the Lord stays the unattached, all-knowing, all-powerful cause behind it.
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 prakriti the beings return to as maya, the Lord's power of appearance, marked by ignorance. The whole display of beings is an imagined or magic-like projection, and the self is in truth unattached to it. Several here lean on the image of the Lord as a magician (mayin): beings rest in His prakriti at dissolution like impressions or sleepers, gone to oneness, and the magician releases them again in manifold form. Two distinct concerns surface within this school. One source frames the verse as defending the Lord's role against an objection: if at dissolution the beings stand elsewhere than in Him, or if their re-origination comes from nature alone, then their being would not depend on the Lord; the verse answers that both their merging and their re-emergence are His. Another source poses the verse as resolving what becomes of the conditioned beings (those still bound by limiting adjuncts) as opposed to the liberated who dissolve in Brahman: the conditioned ones enter the lower three-gunaed nature, not Brahman itself.
Viśiṣṭādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the prakriti as the Lord's own body. At dissolution the beings, by the Lord's resolve, pass into this nature which is denoted in scripture by the word 'darkness' (tamas), a state unfit for the division of name and form. The reading is anchored in cited authority: the Manu verse 'this was darkness-become' and 'He, having pondered, from His own body', and revelation describing the Lord 'whose body the unmanifest is', with the unmanifest dissolving into the imperishable, the imperishable into darkness, and darkness becoming one with the supreme God. Throughout the cycle the beings remain the Lord's body and remain established in Him; the cycle is wholly His own work, accomplished by His prakriti, His withdrawal, and His renewal.
Dvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the verse as standing apart from the surrounding sentences in its purpose. Where the neighboring verses serve to establish the earlier teaching 'pervaded by Me', this verse is independent: it simply sets forth knowledge for its own sake. On this reading Krishna unfolds the dissolution and the rest precisely to display this knowledge, and the statements about dissolution indicate the Lord's being the cause of it, by the force of His taking hold of His own material nature.
Śuddhādvaita, in their fuller words
These commentators read the prakriti as the threefold portion of the Lord's own creative shakti, His 'shadow' as it were, dependent on Him, the very thatness of the separated principles, heard of in scripture as tamas and unfit for division into name and form. One source gives a precise reckoning of the timing, the end of a hundred kalpas of years of Brahma along with the end of the intermediate kalpas, and says the Lord, in the form of the imperishable (akshara), sends the beings forth again through prakriti and purusha, with no contact in Himself since the beings belong wholly to prakriti. The other source frames the whole movement as the Lord's lila, His will-of-pleasure and cosmic play: He emits the beings with distinction, in high and low fashion, for the sake of variety, addressing Arjuna as the sole vessel of grace.
Kashmir Śaiva, in their fuller words
This commentator gives only a brief gloss, noting that the prakriti spoken of here is of unmanifest form. That is, the nature the beings return to at dissolution is the unmanifest condition of material existence, not its manifest display.
Bhakti, in their fuller words
These commentators read the prakriti as the Lord's own maya, His threefold power of the gunas, and stress that creation and dissolution alike proceed from that same yoga-maya by which He upholds the standing world. One source describes the maya as splitting into two, an eight-fold lower variety and a higher one that manifests as the individual soul (jiva), and offers a chain of homely images for how beings merge back and re-emerge: grass dissolving into the earth in summer's heat, clouds melting into the autumn sky, wind growing calm into the vault of space, ripples vanishing into water, dream-scenes dissolving into the mind on waking. Another source grounds the recreation in the Lord's will, 'May I become many', by which He creates the beings anew in all their variety. Across this school the emphasis is that the beings merge into and emerge from the Lord's own personal power, sent forth by Him distinctly.
A modern reading, in their fuller words
These commentators present the cycle in accessible, often everyday terms. One offers natural analogies, grass that grows from the earth and dries back into it, ripples and waves that rise from the ocean and sink back into it, dreams that proceed from the mind and melt back into it, to show how beings arise from nature and merge into it at dissolution (pralaya), with creation (called maha-utpatti) as the reverse. Another gives a plain identification of the kalpa's beginning with the beginning of the day of Brahma. The most developed modern reading explains that all beings are the Lord's amsha (portion) and always abide in Him, but through tadatmya, a false identification with prakriti and the body, their karmas bind them to repeated birth and death; at the great dissolution they dissolve into prakriti carrying their own karmas and the very svabhava (innate disposition) with which they were born, and when those karmas ripen toward fruit, the Lord's resolve 'May I become many' arises and begins the new creation, at which He places the jivas back into particular wombs and bodies according to their karmas, the same act called elsewhere His apportioning of the four orders by quality and work.
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
Sit with the thought that you are the Lord's own portion and have always abided in Him. What binds you to the wheel of birth and death is not the Lord but tadatmya, your false identification with prakriti and the body, by which your own karmas attach to you. Notice that even through the greatest dissolution nothing of you is lost: the very innate disposition, the svabhava, with which you were born is the one that carries you down at the great dissolution and the one you rise with again. So the work is not to escape the cycle by force but to loosen that identification, to recognize yourself as the abiding portion of the Lord rather than as the karma-bound body, and to live now in that recognition.
If the end of a whole age cannot carry you out of his keeping, what loss in this one day can?
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Convergence
his verse answers a question that naturally follows from the earlier teaching. Krishna has just said that all beings rest in Him while He stays unattached, like the wind resting in space. So a seeker asks: what becomes of all these beings when the world ends? Krishna here turns to the cosmic cycle of dissolution and creation. At the close of a kalpa, a vast cosmic age, all beings without exception, the moving and the unmoving alike, return into His prakriti. 'Prakriti' here means His material nature, the realm of cause-and-effect that He owns. They do not vanish; they merge back into that nature and rest there in unmanifest, subtle form. Then again, at the dawn of the next kalpa, Krishna sends them all forth once more into manifest, distinct existence. The whole rhythm of dissolution and emission belongs to Him.
Braided from 17 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama · Śrī Bhāskara · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar · Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhvācārya
The 'prakriti' the beings return to is specifically the lower or inferior nature, the one made of the three gunas, the three basic qualities or strands (sattva, rajas, tamas) out of which all material existence is woven. Several commentators are careful to mark this as the apara, the lower nature that was distinguished from the higher nature earlier in this chapter, so the reader does not confuse it with Krishna's own essence. At dissolution the beings collapse back into this three-gunaed material substrate and lie there as latent potential, undivided, not yet split into name and form.
Braided from 11 commentators
Śaṅkarācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Swami Sivananda · Sant Jñāneśvar
The word 'mamikam', My own, is doing important work, and many commentators stress it. The prakriti is not an independent power running on its own. It is the Lord's, it depends on Him, it belongs to Him. Therefore the entire cosmic process is His doing from start to finish: He gathers the beings back at dissolution, He holds them in His nature, and He sends them out again at creation. The verb 'visrijami', I send forth, underscores His direct agency in the renewed manifestation. The beings never escape His ownership and never act apart from His will; the cycle is the Lord's own work, and they remain mat-sthani, established in Him, throughout.
Braided from 8 commentators
Śrī Ānandagiri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Dhanapati Sūri · Śrī Puruṣottama · Swami Ramsukhdas
Even while He performs this immense work of dissolving and recreating all beings, Krishna Himself remains untouched and unattached. The commentators who developed the earlier 'wind in space' image carry it forward here: the beings belong wholly to prakriti, so the Lord, who is beyond prakriti, has no real contact or entanglement with them. The recreation happens by His mere will or resolve. Some render that will as the Vedic resolve 'May I become many', a sankalpa that arises and sets the new creation in motion, while the Lord stays the unattached, all-knowing, all-powerful cause behind it.
Braided from 6 commentators
Vallabhācārya · Śrīla Baladeva · Rāmānujācārya · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Swami Ramsukhdas · Śrī Bhāskara
Divergence
Advaita Vedānta
These commentators read the prakriti the beings return to as maya, the Lord's power of appearance, marked by ignorance. The whole display of beings is an imagined or magic-like projection, and the self is in truth unattached to it. Several here lean on the image of the Lord as a magician (mayin): beings rest in His prakriti at dissolution like impressions or sleepers, gone to oneness, and the magician releases them again in manifold form. Two distinct concerns surface within this school. One source frames the verse as defending the Lord's role against an objection: if at dissolution the beings stand elsewhere than in Him, or if their re-origination comes from nature alone, then their being would not depend on the Lord; the verse answers that both their merging and their re-emergence are His. Another source poses the verse as resolving what becomes of the conditioned beings (those still bound by limiting adjuncts) as opposed to the liberated who dissolve in Brahman: the conditioned ones enter the lower three-gunaed nature, not Brahman itself.
Śaṅkarācārya · Śrī Ānandagiri · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha · Dhanapati Sūri
Viśiṣṭādvaita
These commentators read the prakriti as the Lord's own body. At dissolution the beings, by the Lord's resolve, pass into this nature which is denoted in scripture by the word 'darkness' (tamas), a state unfit for the division of name and form. The reading is anchored in cited authority: the Manu verse 'this was darkness-become' and 'He, having pondered, from His own body', and revelation describing the Lord 'whose body the unmanifest is', with the unmanifest dissolving into the imperishable, the imperishable into darkness, and darkness becoming one with the supreme God. Throughout the cycle the beings remain the Lord's body and remain established in Him; the cycle is wholly His own work, accomplished by His prakriti, His withdrawal, and His renewal.
Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika
Dvaita
These commentators read the verse as standing apart from the surrounding sentences in its purpose. Where the neighboring verses serve to establish the earlier teaching 'pervaded by Me', this verse is independent: it simply sets forth knowledge for its own sake. On this reading Krishna unfolds the dissolution and the rest precisely to display this knowledge, and the statements about dissolution indicate the Lord's being the cause of it, by the force of His taking hold of His own material nature.
Madhvācārya · Śrī Jayatīrtha
Śuddhādvaita
These commentators read the prakriti as the threefold portion of the Lord's own creative shakti, His 'shadow' as it were, dependent on Him, the very thatness of the separated principles, heard of in scripture as tamas and unfit for division into name and form. One source gives a precise reckoning of the timing, the end of a hundred kalpas of years of Brahma along with the end of the intermediate kalpas, and says the Lord, in the form of the imperishable (akshara), sends the beings forth again through prakriti and purusha, with no contact in Himself since the beings belong wholly to prakriti. The other source frames the whole movement as the Lord's lila, His will-of-pleasure and cosmic play: He emits the beings with distinction, in high and low fashion, for the sake of variety, addressing Arjuna as the sole vessel of grace.
Vallabhācārya · Śrī Puruṣottama
Kashmir Shaivism
This commentator gives only a brief gloss, noting that the prakriti spoken of here is of unmanifest form. That is, the nature the beings return to at dissolution is the unmanifest condition of material existence, not its manifest display.
Ācārya Abhinavagupta
Bhakti
These commentators read the prakriti as the Lord's own maya, His threefold power of the gunas, and stress that creation and dissolution alike proceed from that same yoga-maya by which He upholds the standing world. One source describes the maya as splitting into two, an eight-fold lower variety and a higher one that manifests as the individual soul (jiva), and offers a chain of homely images for how beings merge back and re-emerge: grass dissolving into the earth in summer's heat, clouds melting into the autumn sky, wind growing calm into the vault of space, ripples vanishing into water, dream-scenes dissolving into the mind on waking. Another source grounds the recreation in the Lord's will, 'May I become many', by which He creates the beings anew in all their variety. Across this school the emphasis is that the beings merge into and emerge from the Lord's own personal power, sent forth by Him distinctly.
Śrīdhara Svāmī · Śrīla Viśvanātha · Śrīla Baladeva · Sant Jñāneśvar
Modern
These commentators present the cycle in accessible, often everyday terms. One offers natural analogies, grass that grows from the earth and dries back into it, ripples and waves that rise from the ocean and sink back into it, dreams that proceed from the mind and melt back into it, to show how beings arise from nature and merge into it at dissolution (pralaya), with creation (called maha-utpatti) as the reverse. Another gives a plain identification of the kalpa's beginning with the beginning of the day of Brahma. The most developed modern reading explains that all beings are the Lord's amsha (portion) and always abide in Him, but through tadatmya, a false identification with prakriti and the body, their karmas bind them to repeated birth and death; at the great dissolution they dissolve into prakriti carrying their own karmas and the very svabhava (innate disposition) with which they were born, and when those karmas ripen toward fruit, the Lord's resolve 'May I become many' arises and begins the new creation, at which He places the jivas back into particular wombs and bodies according to their karmas, the same act called elsewhere His apportioning of the four orders by quality and work.
Swami Sivananda · Lokmanya Tilak · Swami Ramsukhdas
A Seeker Asks
If all beings dissolve back into nature at the end of each cosmic age and are sent out again, what carries over, and is the new birth a fresh start or a continuation of who I was?
It is a continuation, not a wiping clean. At the great dissolution the beings do not vanish; they sink back into the Lord's prakriti in subtle, unmanifest form, carrying their own karmas with them. The very innate disposition, the svabhava, that you were born with is the one you carry down, and it is the same one you rise with when the next cycle begins.
Swami Ramsukhdas · Madhusūdana Sarasvatī · Śrī Nīlakaṇṭha
What carries you forward is your accumulated karma. When the latent karmas ripen toward yielding fruit, the Lord's resolve to become many arises and the new creation begins, and He then places each jiva back into a particular womb and body according to its karmas. The re-emergence is therefore patterned by what you were, not a random fresh deal.
Swami Ramsukhdas
And throughout, nothing of you falls outside the Lord. The prakriti you merge into is His own, you remain established in Him at every stage, and it is by His will alone that you both dissolve and are sent forth again. So the continuity across cycles is held not by some independent thread of your own but by the Lord who owns the nature in which you rest.
Śrī Ānandagiri · Rāmānujācārya · Vedānta Deśika · Śrīla Baladeva
Contemplation
Sit with the thought that you are the Lord's own portion and have always abided in Him. What binds you to the wheel of birth and death is not the Lord but tadatmya, your false identification with prakriti and the body, by which your own karmas attach to you. Notice that even through the greatest dissolution nothing of you is lost: the very innate disposition, the svabhava, with which you were born is the one that carries you down at the great dissolution and the one you rise with again. So the work is not to escape the cycle by force but to loosen that identification, to recognize yourself as the abiding portion of the Lord rather than as the karma-bound body, and to live now in that recognition.
Sit with this · Swami Ramsukhdas
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