आश्चर्यवत्पश्यति कश्चिदेनमाश्चर्यवद्वदति तथैव चान्यः ।आश्चर्यवच्चैनमन्यः शृणोति श्रुत्वाप्येनं वेद न चैव कश्चित्॥
āścarya-vat paśyati kaścid enanāścarya-vad vadati tathaiva cānyaḥāścarya-vac cainam anyaḥ śṛṇotiśrutvāpyenaṃ veda na caiva kaścit
Word by word
The verse says
One person looks at this and sees a wonder. Another speaks of it as a wonder. Another hears it described as a wonder. And even having heard, no one really knows it.
In plain words
The most honest verse in the chapter, and it undercuts everything around it.
Some see. Some speak. Some listen. And at the end: even after hearing about it, nobody actually knows.
Krishna has just spent eighteen verses explaining this. Now he says that hearing it explained is not the same as knowing it.
Where you've felt this · in health
Your neighbour tells you what it was like the time he nearly drowned. You listen properly, you believe every word, you could repeat it back exactly. You have still never been in that water.
Going deeper
This verse is a warning label on the eighteen verses before it, and it is remarkable that the text supplies one.
The structure is a chain of transmission: one sees, one speaks, one hears - and then the chain breaks. Śrutvāpy enaṃ veda na caiva kaścit - even having heard, no one knows.
The Sanskrit here can genuinely be read two ways, and commentators have argued over it for centuries. Kaścit can mean no one at all, or hardly anyone. The first reading makes this a statement about the limits of language. The second makes it a statement about how rare direct knowledge is.
This edition does not decide between them, because the line supports both and the difference is real.
Either way, the effect on a reader is the same and is worth taking personally. You have just read a set of arguments about what you fundamentally are. You may find them persuasive. This verse says, from inside the text, that being persuaded is not the thing.
That is the Gita being honest about its own limits, and it is one of the reasons the book has kept its authority.