इदं ज्ञानमुपाश्रित्य मम साधर्म्यमागताः।सर्गेऽपि नोपजायन्ते प्रलये न व्यथन्ति च॥
idaṃ jñānam upāśritya mama sādharmyam āgatāḥsarge ’pi nopajāyante pralaye na vyathanti ca
Word by word
The verse says
Taking refuge in this knowledge, they come to share my nature. They are not born when creation comes, and they are not shaken when it dissolves.
In plain words
Two freedoms, one at each end.
Not born at the beginning, not disturbed at the end.
The promise is about being outside the cycle rather than about doing well inside it.
Where you've felt this · in growing older
Your grandfather stopped following the news at eighty-four. Not out of indifference — he will ask what you think about things. He simply came off the cycle of being lifted and dropped by every week's headlines, and his days got noticeably better.
Going deeper
Sharing the nature of something is a different promise from reaching a place, and the verse uses the first.
Sādharmyam — having the same quality, the same way of being. What is offered is not arrival somewhere but a change in kind, which is why the two things named afterwards are things that stop happening rather than things that start.
That matches how this book has described freedom throughout: by subtraction rather than acquisition.
And it sets the terms for the chapter. What follows is a long analysis of three forces that move everybody, and the goal at the end is not to be moved by the best one. It is to stop being the kind of thing those forces operate on, which is a stranger and more interesting aim than becoming good.