Verse 15.17

Verse 15.17: “But there is still another, the Highest Purusa, who is proclaimed as the Supreme Self who, permeating the world—triad, sustains it as the Eternal Lord. (526)

Commentary called Jnaneshwari by Jnaneshwar:

Now these two states of wakefulness and dream which are created in the world from perverse knowledge get extinguished in the deep nescience; when that nescience loses itself in (the sea of) knowledge (lit. when it is dissolved in knowledge) it (jñāna) secures the Supreme Self, and then it itself ceases to exist in the way the fire ceases to exist after burning out tinder. That which remains behind without knowledge (after it ceases to exist)—that state is the Best (higher) Purusha (person) who coming out as an established truth—is the third—independent of the two already mentioned (Kshara and Akshara persons). Wakefulness, O Arjuna, is entirely a different state from either the deep slumber or the dream; (Or) the magnitude of the disc of the Sun is entirely different from his rays and mirage. Similarly different from the other two is the Best Person.

The Fire (abiding latent) in dry wood is distinct from the dried wood itself; in that way the Best Person is distinct from ‘Akshara’ and ‘Kshara.’ The deluge at world-dissolution, transgresses all limits, converting all rivers and rivulets into one big mass of water (leaving no trace of the rivers or rivulets); in that way there remains no trace of dream or of deep slumber or of wakefulness, in the way day and night are devoured by the destructive heat at the time of world dissolution. All states having got extinguished, conditions like monism or duality in no way come to be experienced: such a state of things that exists should be known as (of) this Best Person. To give that name (Best Person) to the Supreme Soul without getting merged into it, is only possible by remaining in the state of living beings, Oh Son of Pandu, in the way any talk of drowning in water is only possible for one standing (safe) on its (water’s) bank (and not for one getting drowned in the water).

The Vedas can talk of matters relating to this or the yonder side only while standing on the bank of discrimination, and, therefore, placing both Kshara and Akshara persons on a lower plane, they (Vedas) call the person on the higher plane as Supreme (Form of the) Self. Therefore, keep well in mind, O Arjuna, (the term) ‘Best Person’ suggests itself from the term ‘Supreme Self.’ The place where ‘no talk’ is the talk, ‘knowing nothing’ is knowledge, and nothing happening is happening—where ceases to exist the very notion ‘I am myself Supreme Brahman,’ where the one who tells and the one who is told, (or) where the seer and the object seen both get extinguished—under these circumstances whatever comes actually to be experienced, should be taken as its form, since it would not be right to say that there exists no light at all because the light of the Sun and his reflection have ceased to be perceived, or there exists no fragrance at all because the fragrance abiding between the nostrils and the flowers cannot be perceived, or there exists nothing whatever, because the seer and the object of seeing have both ceased to appear.

That which is illuminator in the absence of the objects to be illuminated, or that which is sovereign (regulator) in the absence of things to be controlled (governed), or that which abides in its own self in the form of Supreme Being, that which makes the very Sound to hear sound, makes flavour to taste itself, and bliss to enjoy itself, the Best Person who is the very perfection of the Perfect, the very rest in restfulness, who is the happiness in the happy, the splendour in the splendid and the zero (void) in the great zero; who transcends the very expansion, and devours the devourer and who is quantitatively far greater than the greatest;—which besides, brings to the experience of the ignorant (the appearance) as the silver of mother-of-pearl without the latter’s actual conversion into silver;—that which becomes the support to the semblance of the universe, without dropping its own form or without itself mixing with the universe, in the way gold assumes the form of the ornaments, without in any way losing its property as gold;—or that which itself imparts reality and light to the world in the way there is no distinction between water and ripples;—that which even though to a certain extent becomes perceptible in the form of the universe, in the way the Moon becomes the cause of contraction or expansion of a reflection in water, it does not disappear along with the world when it (the world) disappears. The Sun does not assume two different forms during the day and the night (but remains one and the same); in that way there is no place where it does not exist nor is there any thing which can waste or spoil it: he alone can be compared to himself.