Bhagavad Gītā Chapter 9, Verse 7: Krishna to Arjuna — Rāja-Vidyā-Rāja-Guhya-Yoga

Bhāṣyakāra purports

• Śaṅkaraadvaita

  At the dissolution of a cosmic cycle (kalpa-kshaya), all beings return into My lower nature (apara prakriti), the threefold-stranded matrix of ignorance — not into the Supreme Self, which is untouched. At the dawn of the next cycle I send them forth again, just as before. Shankara insists the dissolution is into avidya-lakshana prakriti: the beings do not merge into Brahman but merely subside into the unmanifest mode of cosmic nescience, ready for another round of bondage.

• Rāmānujaviśiṣṭādvaita

  All beings — from the unmoving stone to the moving creature — dissolve at the end of a Brahma-lifetime into My body-constituting prakriti, the undifferentiated tamas that cannot yet bear the distinctions of name and form, and they dissolve by My very intention (mat-sankalpa). I then pour them forth again at the opening of the next cycle. Ramanuja grounds this in Manu and Shruti: the Lord's body contracts into its own subtle mode and then re-expands; the jivas are never abandoned but held within the divine body throughout.

• Madhvadvaita

  Madhva's gloss here is tersely programmatic: the verse is adduced to demonstrate (jnana-pradarshanartham) that even cosmic dissolution and creation are occasions for the Lord's sovereign knowledge to manifest. All beings flow back into His prakriti at pralaya and are re-emitted at srshti — every phase of the cosmic rhythm is an act of Hari's independent, unobligated will, and the eternally distinct jivas remain precisely that: objects of His governance, not portions of His substance.

• Vallabhaśuddhādvaita

  Vallabha reads the verse through Pushtimarga's lens of kriya-shakti: My prakriti here is not an alien power but a shadow-extension (chhaya-bhuta) of My own activity-power (mat-kriya-shakti-amsha), threefold-stranded and wholly under My sway. At kalpa-kshaya beings dissolve back into it in reverse order; at kalpa-adi I — as the imperishable (akshara-atma) — re-emit them through the medium of prakriti and purusha. Because they belong entirely to prakriti, not to Me directly, no contamination touches the Lord: the entire play is His lila-prasada, enacted in joyful freedom.

• Śrīdharabhakti

  Shridhara Svami is the most economical of all the commentators here: he simply identifies My prakriti with the three-stranded maya and reads the verse as rounding out the previous teaching — having shown the Lord's non-attachment (asanga) during cosmic maintenance, Shridhara now notes that the same maya is the instrument of creation and dissolution alike. At kalpa-kshaya all beings dissolve into the threefold maya; at kalpa-adi they are specially projected (vishesha-srjami) once more. The bhakta recognises that even cosmic time is the Lord's household.

• Madhusūdanaadvaita-bhakti

  Madhusudana Sarasvati frames 9.7 as the third panel of a triptych: having established the Lord's non-contact (asanga) at creation (9.5) and at maintenance (9.6), the verse now seals the claim at dissolution. At kalpa-kshaya all beings re-enter the threefold maya imagined as His power (mac-chaktitven-kalpita) — they merge into their subtle causal form within it. At kalpa-adi He, the omniscient omnipotent Ishvara, distinguishes the undifferentiated (avibhaga-apanna) back into differentiation. The synthesis: dissolution is not loss but return to the unmanifest matrix of the same non-dual ground, and the Lord's absolute knowledge-power governs every phase.