Udarah Sarva Evaite

Krishna speaks with great tenderness here. All four devotees, He says, are noble and generous. None is to be looked down upon. But about the jnani, His view is this: the wise one is My very self.

This is an extraordinary statement. The Lord does not merely call the jnani beloved or favored. He says: that person is Me. The way sunlight is not separate from the sun, the wise one who has dissolved all distance between themselves and the divine is no longer distinct from the divine.

'Mam evanuttamam gatim' — that jnani is established in Me as the highest goal. This is the culmination of devotion — where the devotee and the divine share one identity.

Shlokas 7.16, 7.17, and 7.18 form a complete arc: four devotees (7.16), the jnani is foremost (7.17), all are noble but the jnani is My self (7.18). This progression traces the full journey of bhakti from its beginning to its perfection.

The Mandukya Upanishad describes the turiya state, where the boundary between individual and supreme dissolves. The Gita's 'atmaiva me matam' is a simple expression of that same experience.