Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 10, Verse 7: Krishna to Arjuna — Vibhūti-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  Śaṅkara reads this verse as declaring that true knowledge of the Lord's vibhūti (manifest expansion) and yoga (the power of self-conjunction, or the omniscience born of yoga) dissolves the seeker's remaining oscillation. The one who knows these tattvatah (as they really are) becomes yoked to avikampa-yoga — the unwavering steadiness that is the mark of established right-vision (samyagdarśana-sthairya). Śaṅkara's terse gloss: doubt here is impossible because the instrument of bondage itself has been consumed by knowledge.

  divergence: Śaṅkara: 'avikampena apracalitena yogena samyagdarśanasthairyalakṣaṇena yujyate' — the yoga in question is defined as the fixity of correct seeing, not devotional practice.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads vibhūti as the Lord's sovereignty expressed as the origin, sustenance, and impulse of all beings, and yoga as his body of auspicious qualities (kalyāṇa-guṇa) that are the antithesis of all that is to be rejected. Knowledge of these deepens bhakti-yoga — and Rāmānuja notes this is no promise deferred: the very growth of bhakti will be self-evident to Arjuna as a result of this knowledge. Avikampa here qualifies bhakti-yoga itself — an unshaking devotion, not a jñāna-state.

  divergence: Rāmānuja: 'avikampena aprakampena bhaktiyogena yujyate' — explicit substitution of bhakti-yoga for Śaṅkara's jñāna-yoga; knowledge of vibhūti is the fuel that grows bhakti, not the terminus.

• Madhvadvaita

  *Vibhūti* (the Lord's sovereign self-manifestation) and *yoga* (his power of self-deployment) — *etāṃ vibhūtiṃ yogaṃ ca mama yo vetti tattvataḥ*: whoever knows these *tattvataḥ*, in their true nature, knows Hari as *svatantra* (the independently real, self-sufficient) and the *jīva* as utterly *paratantra* (eternally dependent). The vibhūtis are not figurative excellences or graduated pointers to an impersonal ground; they are real self-expressions of the one *svatantra* Lord, each manifesting the *pañca-bheda* (the five-fold real distinction: Lord–jīva, Lord–matter, jīva–jīva, jīva–matter, matter–matter) rather than dissolving it. *Tattvatah* knowledge is therefore not absorption into Brahman but the *jīva*'s clear recognition of *bheda* (real distinction) at every level of the *taratamya* (graded ontological hierarchy). The fruit — *so 'vikampena yogena yujyate* — is union by *avikampa-yoga* (unswerving, unshaken discipline): the steadiness of a servant who has grasped his master's full magnitude and whose *bhakti* (devotion) is thereby grounded in ontological subordination, never in identity. *Nātra saṃśayaḥ*: no doubt attaches to this, because the ground of such steadiness is the real, permanent distinction between Hari and the *jīva*, not a provisional state to be transcended.

  divergence: Both Madhva and Jayatīrtha are silent on this verse. The reading is voiced directly from dvaita siddhānta primitives: *svatantra* Hari, *paratantra* jīva, *pañca-bheda*, *taratamya*, *bhakti* as ontological subordination, and real arrival in *avikampa-yoga* rather than dissolution into non-difference.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha's gloss is economical and luminous: one who knows both the vibhūti (the Lord's manifold powers) and the yoga (that same sovereignty as its own cause) tattvatah is united through bhakti-rūpa-yoga. For Vallabha's Puṣṭi-mārga, 'knowing' is not intellectual seizure but the grace-saturated recognition that every manifest form is Kṛṣṇa's prasāda-līlā — and that recognition itself is the avikampa-yoga, the devotion that no longer wobbles because its object is everywhere.

  divergence: Vallabha: 'sa bhaktirūpeṇa yogena yujyate' — the explicit formula. The union is through bhakti-rūpa yoga, the most concise statement in the panel.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara names this verse the phala-śloka (fruit-verse) for all the vibhūti knowledge preceding it: one who truly knows the vibhūti enumerated — from Bhṛgu onward — and the Lord's aishvarya-yoga obtains avikampa-yoga, which Śrīdhara equates with samyagdarśana (correct vision), unpacked further as niḥsaṃśaya — doubt-free. His voice balances philological precision with devotional warmth: the fruit of knowing divine greatness is not pride but the cessation of the wobble that makes ordinary life anxious.

  divergence: Śrīdhara: 'avikampena niḥsaṃśayena yogena samyagdarśanena yukto bhavati' — avikampa glossed as both 'unshaking' and 'doubt-free,' bridging the jñāna and bhakti registers.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana, reading through his synthetic lens, treats vibhūti as the Lord's multiform manifestation (buddhi, maharṣi, and so on) in the mode of upādhika (conditioned) sovereignty, and yoga as the power of fabricating purposes for each form — paramaiśvarya. Knowledge of this tattvatah leads to avikampa-yoga defined, Śaṅkara-style, as the stability of samyagjñāna, but Madhusūdana frames that stability as samādhi — the absorbed concentration that is the meeting point of jñāna and bhakti in his tradition.

  divergence: Madhusūdana: 'avikampena apracalitena yogena samyagjñānasthairyalakṣaṇena samādhinā yujyate' — adds 'samādhi' as the synthesizing term absent from Śaṅkara, pointing toward the bhakti-jñāna fusion.