नान्यं गुणेभ्यः कर्तारं यदा द्रष्टानुपश्यति।गुणेभ्यश्च परं वेत्ति मद्भावं सोऽधिगच्छति॥
nānyaṃ guṇebhyaḥ kartāraṃ yadā draṣṭānupaśyatiguṇebhyaś ca paraṃ vetti mad-bhāvaṃ so ’dhigacchati
Word by word
The verse says
When the one who sees perceives no doer other than the strands, and knows what is beyond them — that one comes to my own nature.
In plain words
Nānyaṃ guṇebhyaḥ kartāram — no doer other than the strands.
Not you, deciding, with the strands as influences. The strands as the doer.
And then the second half, which keeps this from being fatalism: and knows what is beyond them.
Where you've felt this · in friendship
You watch a friend get defensive about something and you can see, from outside, exactly how it is going. You are fond of him and you are not inside it. Both of those are true at once, and the second is what lets the first survive the conversation.
Going deeper
Seeing the strands as the doer is the position the whole chapter has been building toward, and it has two halves.
The first is the same claim Chapter 13 made: actions are performed by nature, and the self is not the actor. Taken alone it would collapse into a shrug. The second half is what prevents that — and knows what is beyond them. There is a position from which the mechanism is visible, and that position is not part of the mechanism.
The word draṣṭā, the seer, is doing the work. Something is watching.
What this offers is the one move available when you are inside a state. You cannot decide to be in a different one; the state is not taking instructions. You can sometimes notice that a state is what is happening, and the noticing is coming from somewhere the state has not reached, which is both the content of this verse and the whole of its practical use.