Brahmaṇo hi pratiṣṭhā aham — I am the foundation of Brahman. Shankara reads this as pointing to the identity between the personal Krishna and the impersonal Brahman: the same reality is described from two perspectives. The impersonal Brahman is the foundation of all reality; and that foundation is none other than the supreme Self that Krishna embodies. There is ultimately no contradiction between the personal and impersonal dimensions of the Divine.

This final verse elevates the personal God above the impersonal Brahman in the most unambiguous terms. Brahman — often spoken of as the ultimate — rests on Krishna as its own ground. The impersonal is real, but the personal is more ultimate. This is the grand conclusion of the Gita's teaching: beyond knowledge, beyond the guṇas, beyond even Brahman as abstractly conceived, stands the living, loving God as the source of all bliss, all dharma, and all immortality.

Sukhasyaikāntikasya ca — of absolute, unambiguous bliss. The word aikāntika is key: it denotes bliss that is unmixed, undiluted, absolute — not the happiness that comes and goes with circumstance, but the foundational joy of the divine nature itself. The soul who transcends the guṇas and attains the divine nature participates in this absolute joy. This is the final answer to the question of why one should transcend the guṇas: not merely to escape suffering, but to attain the eternal joy of the Divine.