योगयुक्तो विशुद्धात्मा विजितात्मा जितेन्द्रियः।सर्वभूतात्मभूतात्मा कुर्वन्नपि न लिप्यते॥
yoga-yukto viśuddhātmā vijitātmā jitendriyaḥsarva-bhūtātma-bhūtātmā kurvann api na lipyate
Word by word
The verse says
Joined to practice, clear in himself, his self mastered, his senses mastered — his own self having become the self of all beings — even acting, he is not smeared.
In plain words
The portrait, in one long compound.
And the line that matters is the odd one in the middle: his self has become the self of all beings.
That is not described as an achievement. It is described as what happened.
Where you've felt this · in community
The woman who runs the food bank knows every family's situation and never once makes anybody say it out loud. She is not performing kindness and she is not tired of it either. Something has stopped being separate between her and the queue.
Going deeper
Sarva-bhūtātma-bhūtātmā is a mouthful even in Sanskrit, and unpacking it is the whole verse: the self that has become the self of all beings.
What is being claimed is not sympathy. Sympathy still has two people in it. This is closer to the boundary having thinned, so that another person's situation arrives without needing to be imagined.
And notice where it sits in the list. It comes after the disciplines — mastered senses, cleared mind — and before the result. It is not presented as something you work at directly. It is what shows up when the rest is in place.
Then the practical claim: acting, he is not smeared. The same word the Gita used of Krishna at 4.14, now said of an ordinary person doing ordinary work.
Which is the chapter's real argument. Nothing here requires leaving. It requires the apparatus that collects things for you to stop running.