It is higher, distinct, separate. Higher than what? Than the unmanifest mentioned before. The word 'tu', 'but', serves to mark the distinction of the Imperishable that is meant from that unmanifest. The 'bhāva' is the supreme Brahman named the Imperishable. Even though it is distinct, there might still arise the supposition of a likeness of nature; to set that aside He says 'another'. It is another, of a different nature; and that unmanifest is not within the reach of the senses. It was said to be higher than that one: higher than the unmanifest mentioned before, which is the seed of the host of beings and marked by ignorance. It is another, of a different nature. Everlasting, age-old, is that 'bhāva' which, when all beings from Brahmā downward perish, does not perish.

Higher than that unmanifest, which is of the form of insentient matter, since it is excellent as a human goal, is another state of being, distinct in kind from it through having knowledge for its single form, unmanifest, since it is not made manifest by any means of knowledge, that is, of a form to be known by self-experience and shared with nothing else; everlasting, eternal through being unfit for origination and destruction; which, when all beings, space and the rest, with their causes and effects, perish, though present in this and that one of them, does not perish.

The 'unmanifest' is the Lord, on reaching whom they do not return, by the reference back to 'having come to Me' (8.15), and by the usage in the Garuda, 'the unmanifest, the supreme Vishnu'. 'Abode' (dhaman) means His own form, of the nature of splendour, as the lexicon has it, 'what is of the nature of splendour, and a dwelling, is sung by the wise as dhaman'.