Me, the unborn and the beginningless: since I am the beginning of the gods and the great seers, and there is no other beginning of Me, I am unborn and beginningless, the beginninglessness being the ground of the unborn state. He who knows Me, the unborn and the beginningless, the great Lord of the worlds, the fourth, free of ignorance and its effects, being himself undeluded, free of delusion: he, among mortals, is freed, shall be wholly freed, from all sins, from all sins committed knowingly or unknowingly. And for this reason too I am the great Lord of the worlds.

'Unborn', since he is not born. By this it is said that He is of a kind unlike the changeful insentient substance, and unlike the transmigrating conscious being joined with it; for the birth of a transmigrating conscious being is the contact with insentient matter wrought by karma. By the word 'beginningless' it is said that He is of a kind unlike the liberated self, which, though unborn, has a beginning; for the unbornness of the liberated self has a beginning, since its connection with the thing to be shunned was present before, so the fitness for that connection is there; so by the word 'beginningless' His unfitness for it, His being its very opposite, is stated, as also by the revealed text 'faultless' and the rest. Thus, the man who, undeluded, knows Me, of an own form that is the opposite of any connection with the thing to be shunned and so unfit for it, the great Lord of the worlds, the Lord even of the lords of the worlds, among mortals, he is freed of all the sins that obstruct the rise of devotion to Me. Delusion is the bewilderment that makes Me one with others of His kind; free of that, he is undeluded. This is what is said. In the world the king of men is of the same kind as other men, having gained that lordship by some action; so too the lord of the gods; so too the lord of the egg of Brahma, who is of the same kind as other transmigrators, since he too is included within the three modes of being, as the revealed text says, 'He who ordains Brahma'; and so too any others who have gained the lordship of the atomic-power and the rest. But this great Lord of the worlds is of a kind unlike all that is to be ruled, the insentient in its states as effect and cause, and the conscious, bound and freed, since His single own nature is the unsurpassed, limitless, countless host of auspicious qualities the very opposite of everything to be shunned, and since His single own nature is to be the governor. So the man who, free of the delusion that He is of the same kind as others, knows Me, is freed of all sins. Having thus, by the dwelling on His own nature, set forth the removal of the sin that obstructs the rise of devotion, and, since the rise of devotion follows of itself from the removal of the obstruction, the rise of devotion too, the Lord states the manner of the growth of devotion by the dwelling on the unfolding of His lordship and His host of auspicious qualities.

This is a brief sub-gloss. For a fuller reading of this verse, see Madhusūdana, Śaṅkara, or Rāmānuja above.

He is 'beginningless' (anadi), analysed as the impeller (ana) and the beginning (adi) of all. The qualifier 'great Lord of the worlds' sets Him apart from the other, the living being, whose unbornness alone is established.