The Puruṣa, so named from His lying in the city or from His fullness, is the supreme, O Pārtha, the one beyond whom there is nothing higher. He is to be won by devotion, by a devotion marked as knowledge, undivided, having the Self for its object. Within that Puruṣa, in His midst, are the beings, His effects; for an effect abides within its cause. By that Puruṣa all this world is pervaded, spread through, as a pot and the like are pervaded by space. For the yogins under discussion, those who have settled the thought of Brahman by entering into the praṇava and who share in liberation in due time, the further path is to be told, for their realisation of Brahman; so the passage beginning 'in what time' is spoken, to convey the matter meant. The setting-forth of the path of return is for the sake of praising the other path.

He of whom, indicated in 'there is nothing higher than Me, Dhananjaya; all this is strung on Me, like clusters of gems on a thread' and 'Me, higher than these, imperishable' and the rest, all beings are the inner contents, and by whom, the supreme Person, all this is pervaded, that supreme Person is to be gained by undivided devotion, the devotion that goes to nothing else, 'ever, with mind on nothing else'. Now the Lord states the path of light and the rest, common both to the knower of the truth of the self and to the one settled in the supreme Person; for both of them the path of light and the rest is heard in revelation, and it has the mark of no-return. As in the doctrine of the five fires, in 'those who know thus, and those who in the forest worship with faith, holding it to be austerity, they come to the flame, from the flame to the day', and the rest, of one who has gone by the path of light and the rest, the attaining of the supreme Brahman and the no-return are stated: 'He leads them to Brahman'; 'those who proceed by this do not return to this human round'. And this revealed text of the path, 'those who know thus', is not, in the word of Prajapati and the rest, one that has for its object the attaining of the self that is an auxiliary to the higher knowledge; for then the separate revealed text of the higher knowledge, 'and those who in the forest worship with faith, holding it to be austerity', would be without purpose. And in the doctrine of the five fires, having, in 'thus at the fifth oblation the waters come to be called man' and 'those of pleasant conduct, those of foul conduct', stated the distinction of the conscious and the unconscious, namely that the state of being a man and the rest, caused by merit and demerit, belongs only to the waters mixed with the other elements, while of the self there is only a kind of embrace; and then, in 'those who know thus come to the flame' and 'they do not return to this human round', it is understood that, with regard to the conscious and the unconscious things kept distinct, as things to be given up and things to be attained, those who know thus go by the path of light and the rest and do not return. And of the knower of the truth of the self and the one settled in the supreme Person, since the text says 'He leads them to Brahman', it is to be dwelt on that the self-substance freed of the unconscious, having Brahman for its self, has being subordinate to Brahman as its single savour. And by the principle of 'the intention of that', the having of being-subordinate-to-the-Supreme as one's single savour is established by such revealed texts as 'he who, abiding in the self, of whom the self is the body'.

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

Krishna states the supreme means, with 'the Person'.