The uttama puruṣa ('highest person', 'supreme being') is the technical designation of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa as established in Bhagavad Gītā 15.16–18, the Puruṣottama-yoga chapter. Bhagavān Himself explains the tripartite metaphysical division: the kṣara puruṣas are all embodied, bound souls undergoing change and transmigration through beginningless saṃsāra; the akṣara puruṣa is the liberated soul (mukta-jīva) which, having escaped saṃsāra, stands in its unchanging, eternal nature in Śrīvaikuṇṭha; but Bhagavān, the uttama puruṣa, is said to 'transcend' (atīta) both — He is not a soul in any category, but the antaryāmin (inner controller) of both, the ground of their being, and the sovereign who sustains all.
Rāmānuja's commentary on this passage in the Gītā Bhāṣya is one of the most celebrated sections of his philosophical corpus. He argues that the epithet Puruṣottama is not merely a superlative ('greatest among puruṣas') but a qualitatively distinct category: Bhagavān's transcendence is not the transcendence of degree but of kind. While a liberated soul (akṣara) is infinite and unbounded in its knowledge, Bhagavān is the ādhāra (substrate), the niyantā (controller), and the śeṣī (lord-who-employs) of that liberated soul. The liberated soul rests in Bhagavān's nitya-vibhūti (eternal realm) and serves Him eternally — demonstrating that even liberation is a state of relational dependence, not of ontological equality with Bhagavān.
In Viśiṣṭādvaita, the term uttama puruṣa also grounds the doctrine of śeṣatva: all souls, whether bound or liberated, are śeṣas (dependent properties) of Bhagavān the śeṣī. This relationship is eternal and constitutive of the soul's own nature — it is not a bondage imposed from outside but the very structure of reality. The recognition of Bhagavān as the uttama puruṣa is therefore not merely a speculative metaphysical proposition but the foundational self-understanding that motivates prapatti and sustains eternal kaiṅkarya.