जरामरणमोक्षाय मामाश्रित्य यतन्ति ये।ते ब्रह्म तद्विदुः कृत्स्नमध्यात्मं कर्म चाखिलम्॥
jarā-maraṇa-mokṣāya mām āśritya yatanti yete brahma tadviduḥ kṛtsnam adhyātmaṃ karma cākhilam
Word by word
The verse says
Those who take refuge in me and work toward freedom from age and death — they come to know that whole ground, and the self, and how action works, completely.
In plain words
The chapter is closing, and three large words arrive at once.
What matters first is the promise attached to them. This knowledge is not a separate subject to be studied afterwards.
It comes with the taking refuge, not before it.
Where you've felt this · in growing older
Your grandmother is eighty and has started giving things away. A watch to one grandchild, a heavy cooking pot to another, a photograph she had been keeping for no particular reason. She is cheerful about it and nobody asked her to begin. Something in her has already stopped holding the house with both hands.
Going deeper
Freedom from age is named here as what people are working toward, so it is worth being exact about the claim.
Nothing in this book says the body will not get old. What is offered is release from one particular relationship with ageing: the one where every year is a subtraction and the whole arrangement is a slow defeat you are losing politely.
Brahman is the word that arrives alongside it, the ground everything else stands on. And the verse says something generous. Those who take refuge come to know it entire, along with the self and the workings of action. The understanding is not a separate course with its own entrance exam.
That reverses the order most people assume. You do not have to understand all this before you can begin. Beginning is how it gets understood.