ममैवांशो जीवलोके जीवभूतः सनातनः।मनःषष्ठानीन्द्रियाणि प्रकृतिस्थानि कर्षति॥
mamaivānśo jīva-loke jīva-bhūtaḥ sanātanaḥmanaḥ-ṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi prakṛti-sthāni karṣati
Word by word
The verse says
A fragment of my own self, lasting for ever, becomes the living being in the world of the living. It draws to itself the six senses, the mind among them, which rest in nature.
In plain words
This is one of the largest sentences in the book.
What is alive in you is called aṁśa - a portion, a share, a fragment of Krishna himself. Not made by him. Part of him. And it does not end.
Then the ordinary half. That fragment pulls the five senses and the mind around itself, the way a magnet picks up iron filings, and the whole arrangement is what you call yourself on a normal day.
Where you've felt this · in parenting
Meera watches her four-year-old son argue with a shopkeeper about which sweet he was promised. The stubbornness is hers. Her own mother has been telling her so for thirty years. He did not learn it from watching her, either - he was three weeks old and already doing a version of it. Something came through her into him that nobody taught and nobody can take credit for.
Going deeper
A piece of God is walking around inside a body. That sentence is why this verse is argued over more than almost any other, because a piece can mean three quite different things, and the great traditions take all three.
Aṁśa means a portion. A part broken off, a share, a fragment.
The non-dual reading, Shankara's, says a portion of the infinite cannot really be a separate piece, because the infinite has no pieces. A separate self is like the sun reflected in a bucket of water. The reflection is real enough to see, and it shakes when the water shakes, but there was never a second sun. You are not a part of that. You are that, looking at yourself through a bucket.
The qualified non-dual reading, Ramanuja's, says the word means exactly what it says. You are genuinely a part, the way a hand is part of a body. Real, distinct, never going to become the whole, and never separate from it either. Your relationship with God survives, because there are still two of you.
The dualist reading, Madhva's, keeps the distance wider again. A part here means something dependent, the way a household depends on the one who keeps it. You stay yourself for ever and God stays other for ever, and the closeness between you is love, not merger.
Nothing in the Sanskrit settles this, and anyone who tells you it does has picked a side without saying so. What all three agree on is the part that changes your week. Whatever is awake behind your eyes did not begin when you were born, and it is not something your body is producing.