He is the looker-on, who, being close at hand, is the seer, Himself unengaged. As, among the officiating priests and the sacrificer engaged in the work of the sacrifice, another, standing apart, unengaged, skilled in the lore of the sacrifice, is the observer of the merits and faults of the doings of priests and sacrificer: just so, with regard to the doings of effect and instrument, another, unengaged, distinct from them, by reason of His nearness to all those doings, is their close seer, the looker-on. Or else: the body, the eye, the mind, the intellect and the Self are seers; of these the body is the outer seer, and inward from it, more and more inward, the inmost, the close, is the Self, the seer; and since there is no seer beyond Him, more inward, He, by being a seer of a surpassing nearness, is the looker-on; or, as the looker-on of a sacrifice, He is the looker-on because He makes all His object. And He is the consenter: consent is approval, a satisfaction in the doings of those who are doing the act, and the maker of that satisfaction is the consenter. Or else, the consenter is He who, though Himself unengaged in the doings of effect and instrument, is conceived to be favourable to them as if engaged; or He is the consenter because, being their witness, He never restrains those engaged in their own workings. He is the bearer: bearing is the holding of their own form by the body, senses, mind and intellect, conjoined and bearing the reflection of consciousness, by reason of the changeless consciousness-Self being their occasion; that holding, being done by the consciousness-Self, makes the Self be called the bearer. He is the enjoyer: like the heat of fire, the consciousness-Self, being by nature constant consciousness, makes the cognitions of the intellect, of the nature of pleasure, pain and delusion, having all objects for their object, appear, arising as if swallowed up by the consciousness-Self and made distinct; and so the Self is called the enjoyer. He is the great Lord: being the Self of all and independent, He is great and a Lord. He is the supreme Self: of the body and the rest, ending with the intellect, falsely imagined by ignorance as the inmost Self, He, marked as the looker-on and the rest, is the supreme Self. By the word 'this' too, 'the supreme Self within', He is told in scripture. Where is He? In this body, the Puruṣa higher than the unmanifest, the one who will be spoken of, 'but the supreme Puruṣa is another, called the supreme Self' (Gītā 15.17). That Self, of the character described, set forth at 'know the field-knower as Me' (Gītā 13.2), is now explained and rounded off.

He who knows this person, of the nature described, and nature, of the nature described, together with the qualities, sattva and the rest, of the nature about to be told, that is, rightly knows them by discernment, he, however he goes about, even in a manner exceedingly afflicted in the bodies of god, man, and the rest, is not born again, does not again deserve conjunction with nature; at the close of that body he attains the self, marked by unbounded knowledge, free of sin.

To speak of 'and from what, and what' (13.4), Krishna says 'the overseer' and so on. 'The consenter' (anumantr) is the one who, following the act, in particular determines it. 'The person, of pleasures and pains' states the living being; 'the person, prakriti' states the living being and the Lord together. Elsewhere there is a conflict with the great purport, for the great purport is the supremacy of the Lord. So the Saukarayana scripture says, 'because of the unspeakable greatness of His excellence, all words and all reasonings have Him for their highest aim, the aim being Vishnu, the endless, higher than the high; and that aim does exist, there is no doubt of it here. Therefore, whatever proof here runs counter, in perception and the rest, or whatever reasoning, that the seers do not call a means of knowledge, nor a reasoning, for it is an insight that falls short of the seen'. Hence the denial of this even by reasonings is not right. So the reasoning by which one frames a non-existence and the like of the world is itself of the nature of a mere semblance, and thus it is established that the greatness is ever spoken by the Vedas. And there is a subordinate purport there too; it is said in that same text, 'and there is a subordinate aim, in being, or in the great, by the oneness of the two, while the endless ones are higher', and from the naming of His being dark and the rest. It is fitting that a reasoning framed by the conjecture of a person should be of the nature of a semblance, since it can arise from ignorance; but the Veda, which is authoritative of itself, is not of the nature of a semblance. And a not-seeing is indeed possible for men, even for many, through ignorance; yet it is not to be said that there might therefore be a contrary conclusion in a scripture not studied by us, since that same text says, 'these words are not in conflict with that, these reasonings are not in conflict with that, so said Prajapati, said Prajapati'. And it has been said that the self-sameness of the living being with the Lord is itself in conflict with that, and a mere semblance. Janamejaya asked, 'are the persons many, O Brahman, or is there but one? who here is the best of persons, and what is said to be the womb here? this you should tell'. And Vaishampayana said, 'they do not hold the person to be one, O upholder of the Kuru line; just as one womb is spoken of for many persons, so I shall declare to you that Person, surpassing in qualities' (Moksha-dharma, Mahabharata 12.350.13). Nor is all this like a dream or a conjurer's show; it is the Lord's own word that, by its unlikeness, it is not like a dream and the rest. Nor do we see any proof that, as in a dream, it is the construction of a single living being; and the proofs of the contrary have been stated in the second chapter. The Ayasya branch says, 'this is, as it were, a dream by its unsteadiness, and yet not a dream, for there is no breaking-off of it'. This is no fault, for it is not the Lord's oneness with the living being that is spoken of; it is the living being's oneness with the Lord that is to be meditated on, and that too not without a limiting adjunct, so the oneness is not one that conflicts with the being-a-reflection. So the Madhucchandas scripture says, 'the seers declare this oneness of the living being with Vishnu to be by way of reflection'. And in the worship that grasps the I (aham-graha) there is a greatness of fruit, established by the Agniveshya scripture, 'the worshipper who grasps the I attains a likeness to Him, a nearness; there is no doubt here'. The Vamana says, 'the knowledge that I am His is what is called the grasping of the I'; and 'one is to think I am He by being in His control, by the servants alone, and not of oneself'. The contemplation is, 'I am a servant, and by way of reflection I am He'. So the Ayasya branch says, 'I am a servant, and by way of reflection I am He; thus is the supreme Person to be worshipped'. And the being-by-way-of-reflection is just that likeness to Him.