अव्यक्तोऽक्षर इत्युक्तस्तमाहुः परमां गतिम्।यं प्राप्य न निवर्तन्ते तद्धाम परमं मम॥
avyakto ’kṣara ityuktas tam āhuḥ paramāṃ gatimyaṃ prāpya na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṃ mama
Word by word
The verse says
That unmanifest, called imperishable, is spoken of as the highest goal. Reaching it, they do not return. That is my highest home.
In plain words
After all the abstraction, one homely word.
Dhāma — home, dwelling, the place somebody lives.
The imperishable has just been described in the most impersonal terms available, and then Krishna calls it his house.
Where you've felt this · in family life
Your cousin moved four times in six years, and in every flat the boxes never quite got unpacked — two of them always stayed by the door. In the fifth place, within a month, she had planted something in a pot on the balcony. Nobody plants anything in a place they are half-leaving.
Going deeper
Calling the imperishable a home changes what is being offered, and the change is not decorative.
A goal is something you reach and then stand next to. A home is somewhere you stop arranging yourself. The word carries the ordinary meaning too — the place where you are not a visitor, where nothing has to be earned by being useful.
That sits deliberately against everything in the chapter about the worlds you can attain and must leave again. Those are destinations. This is described as an address.
The difference shows up in how a person lives, not only in where they end up. Someone who believes they are passing through keeps the boxes by the door. Someone who has stopped leaving does small, slow things that only make sense if you are staying.