Ye Tvaksharam Anirdeshyam

Here Krishna turns to the other path. Some seekers worship something that words cannot capture, eyes cannot see, and the mind cannot fully grasp — and yet it is everywhere, in everything, always. This is the nirguna Brahman: imperishable, unmanifest, beyond thought, unchanging, immovable, and eternal.

Consider the air around you. You cannot see it. You cannot point to it and say "there it is." And yet it fills every room, every forest, every space between the stars. The formless Brahman is like that — invisible, yet permeating all of existence. Those who devote themselves to this reality also reach Krishna. The destination is the same; only the road is different.

This shloka is the first half of a paired set (12.3-4). In 12.2, Krishna praised the saguna devotee. Now in 12.3-4, He gives due recognition to those on the nirguna path. Together, the two shlokas present a complete picture of formless devotion — what the Brahman is (12.3) and what qualities its seekers have (12.4).

In traditional commentaries, these shlokas are seen as Krishna's acknowledgment that the nirguna path is valid. However, in 12.5, He will also address the difficulty this path poses for embodied beings.