Verse 5 described deep sleep as a state of blissful undifferentiation. Now verse 6 reveals what that state points toward: it is the closest the ordinary mind comes to the source of everything.
In deep sleep, the individual self temporarily dissolves. What remains — that unindividuated awareness which is the ground of the sleeper — is described here as the lord of all, the knower of all, the inner controller. Not because the sleeping person becomes God. But because what is present in deep sleep, stripped of ego and individuation, is closest in character to what Brahman actually is.
The verse says: all beings originate from this and dissolve back into this. Deep sleep is a small version of cosmic dissolution — and waking is a small version of cosmic creation. The same pattern at every scale.
Layer 3 — What it points toŚaṅkara identifies the Prājña of deep sleep with Īśvara — the personal God, Saguṇa Brahman — at the vyāvahārika level. The attributes here — sarveśvara (lord of all), sarvajña (omniscient), antaryāmin (inner controller) — are the classical attributes of Īśvara in the theistic traditions. The Upaniṣad places them here, at the deep sleep state, as a transitional characterisation: pointing beyond the individual Prājña to Brahman, while using language accessible to theistic understanding.
Yoni (womb/source) and prabhavāpyaya (origin and dissolution) link this verse directly to the cosmological frame: the deep sleep state of the individual mirrors the pralaya (cosmic dissolution) from which all creation emerges and to which it returns. The individual's nightly return to deep sleep is the macrocosmic pattern at the scale of a body-mind.
Layer 3 — What it points toThe Antaryāmin Brāhmaṇa in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (3.7) develops the inner-controller (antaryāmin) concept independently: the one who dwells within earth, within water, within fire, within the self — known by none, controlling all. Verse 6 places this cosmological figure within the analysis of consciousness states, identifying the inner controller with the ground of deep-sleep awareness. Gauḍapāda (Kārikā I.6) reads this as establishing that even deep sleep — despite being characterised by bliss and undifferentiation — is still a conditioned state, because Prājña is associated with the causal body (kāraṇa śarīra) and with the seed of future manifestation. The attributes of Prājña are characteristics of Māyā-conditioned Brahman, not of Nirguṇa Brahman. Verse 7 will establish what lies beyond this last conditioning.
Layer 3 — What it points to