Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 2, Verse 64: Krishna to Arjuna — Sāṅkhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  The aspirant for liberation (mumukṣu) who moves through unavoidable sense-objects — sound, form, and the rest — by means of organs (indriya) that have been stripped of rāga (attraction) and dveṣa (aversion), organs now rendered subject to the Self, reaches prasāda: the inner luminosity that is the natural condition of the antaḥkaraṇa (inner organ) undisturbed by modification. Śaṅkara insists that the organs do not cease their natural movement toward objects; what changes is the absence of the twin distorting forces that ordinarily hijack their movement. The vidheyātmā — one whose antaḥkaraṇa submits willingly to the will of the discriminating Self — attains this prasāda not as a reward but as the restoration of what was always there beneath perturbation.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  Rāmānuja reads this verse as the direct fruit of the prior injunction: surrender the mind to Bhagavān as the supremely auspicious support (śubhāśraya), and the indriya, burned clean of all impurity (nirdigdhāśeṣakalmaṣa) by that surrender, encounter objects of sense without the clinging and recoiling that characterize the unsubmitted will. The phrase vidheyamānāḥ — a mind made obedient — refers not to sheer self-discipline but to the submission of the citta to Īśvara; out of that submission flows a purified inner organ (nirmala-antaḥkaraṇa), which is itself the prasāda Arjuna is promised. Engagement with the world is not abandoned; it is transfigured into kainkarya, transparent service, because the organs move as extensions of Bhagavān's own will rather than as captives of personal rāga-dveṣa.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva frames the verse as announcing the fruit of indriya-jaya (conquest of the senses) in the following two ślokas: the one whose ātmā is vidheyā — in whom the soul remains under governance even while experiencing objects — is the jitātmā, the self-mastered devotee of Hari. The prose is characteristically terse: experiencing (anubhavan) objects is not the problem; the problem is the soul's subordination to rāga and dveṣa rather than to Hari alone. Prasāda here means manah-prasāda, the tranquility of mind that follows when the jīva, eternally distinct from Brahman, has correctly ordered its dependence — not on sense-pulls, but on the Lord who alone sustains it.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha reads 2.64–2.65 together as a two-verse answer to the objection that sense-organs, by nature turned toward objects, cannot be controlled and therefore the sthitaprajña's steadiness is impossible. The answer is that one who is vaśyātmā — whose self has been given over to Kṛṣṇa — enjoys (upabhuñjāna) objects through indriya freed from rāga-dveṣa and yet attains prasānti, the deep peace that is Kṛṣṇa's own śānti flowing into the surrendered heart. In Puṣṭi-mārga the conquest of the senses is not an act of renunciation but of reception: Kṛṣṇa's prasāda — his grace-gift — is precisely what makes the vaśyātmā capable of moving through the world of objects as a transparent participant in his līlā rather than a prisoner of personal craving.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Śrīdhara, answering the doubt whether senses that are naturally object-inclined can ever be overcome, states that the practitioner who moves through objects with indriya that are rāga-dveṣa-rahita (free from attraction-repulsion) and vigata-darpa (without arrogance), attains prasāda — śānti, tranquility — even while engaging (bhuñjāna) with the world. He unpacks vidheyātmā as one whose manas is vaśavartī, self-obedient, and notes that this verse answers the fourth question — how does the sthitaprajña move, how does he eat? — by pointing to svādhīna indriya, organs that serve the practitioner rather than rule him. The devotional inflection lies in that vaśatā: the organs are not suppressed but redirected, their energy purified by the bhakta's prior orientation of the heart.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusūdana draws a pointed contrast with the preceding verse: one whose mind is unsettled (asamāhita-cetāḥ) loses the fruits of all spiritual effort even when he forcibly restrains external organs, because a mind stained by rāga-dveṣa continues to dwell on objects inwardly. The vidheyātmā, by contrast, has made the antaḥkaraṇa vaśīkṛta — brought the inner organ under sovereignty — so that the indriya moving toward unavoidable (avarjanīya) sense-objects are mano-dhīna (mind-dependent) and therefore rāga-dveṣa-free. The prasāda he gains is cittasya svacchatā, the transparency of consciousness, which Madhusūdana explicitly identifies as paramātma-sākṣātkāra-yogyatā — fitness for direct realization of the Supreme Self. This is his characteristic synthesis: the preparatory discipline of Advaita jñāna-mārga culminates in the readiness for Kṛṣṇa-darśana.