Sanskrit
उत्तमः पुरुषस्त्वन्यः परमात्मेत्युदाहृतः । यो लोकत्रयमाविश्य बिभर्त्यव्यय ईश्वरः ॥
uttamaḥ puruṣas tv anyaḥ paramātmety udāhṛtaḥ yo lokatrayam āviśya bibharty avyaya īśvaraḥ
Translation
The highest Energy is verily Another, declared as the Supreme Self, He who, pervading all, sustaineth the three worlds, the indestructible Lord.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Having set up perishable and imperishable as if they were the whole picture, this verse overturns that binary: there is “another,” higher still, called Paramatman, the Supreme Self, who pervades and sustains the three worlds without himself perishing. This is the verse that effectively introduces the Purushottama — the title arrives explicitly in verse 18, but the concept is already fully present here — and it is also substantively about atman in the fullest sense the Gita uses the term, the ground beneath even the unchanging witness-self of verse 16.
Concepts