बीजं मां सर्वभूतानां विद्धि पार्थ सनातनम्।बुद्धिर्बुद्धिमतामस्मि तेजस्तेजस्विनामहम्॥
bījaṃ māṃ sarva-bhūtānāṃ viddhi pārtha sanātanambuddhir buddhimatām asmi tejas tejasvinām aham
Word by word
The verse says
Know me as the seed of all beings, Arjuna — the seed that was always there. I am the sense in those who have sense, and the brilliance of the brilliant.
In plain words
Bījam — seed. Not builder, not owner, not king. Seed.
A seed does not stand over the tree and direct it. It is inside it, spent, and the tree is the seed carrying on.
Then two more items: intelligence, and whatever it is that makes a person shine.
Where you've felt this · in family life
Somebody throws a mango stone into the corner of the yard after lunch and forgets about it. Two monsoons later there is a sapling nobody planted, watered or asked for. The whole tree was folded inside a thing the size of your thumb. Nothing was added to it except time and rain.
Going deeper
A seed is a strange thing for a god to call himself, and the strangeness is the teaching.
The usual picture has God outside the world, making it the way a carpenter makes a chair. A carpenter can walk away from the chair and go home. A seed cannot walk away from the tree. It is not standing next to the tree; it is the tree in its first form, and it is no longer anywhere else.
Sanātanam, the word attached to it, means without beginning. So this is not a seed somebody planted at some point in the past.
The practical end of it is this. If the source is inside the thing rather than behind it, nothing happening to you is happening at a distance from him. Looking up is no more likely to find him than looking at what is in front of you.