गतिर्भर्ता प्रभुः साक्षी निवासः शरणं सुहृत्।प्रभवः प्रलयः स्थानं निधानं बीजमव्ययम्॥
gatir bhartā prabhuḥ sākṣī nivāsaḥ śaraṇaṃ suhṛtprabhavaḥ pralayaḥ sthānaṃ nidhānaṃ bījam avyayam
Word by word
The verse says
The goal, the one who holds you up, the lord, the witness, the dwelling, the refuge, the friend. The coming into being and the passing away, the ground, the resting place, the seed that does not perish.
In plain words
Twelve words, and eleven of them are what you would expect.
Goal, lord, witness, refuge, origin, seed. Titles.
And in the middle, without warning: suhṛt — good-hearted one. Friend. Not a title at all.
Where you've felt this · in friendship
Your doctor, your landlord and your bank manager all have a defined relationship with you, written down somewhere, with terms. The friend who drove four hours when you needed help has no defined relationship with you whatsoever. That is precisely why it counted, and everybody knows it without being told.
Going deeper
One word in this list is doing something the other eleven are not.
Suhṛt means good-hearted — the one who wishes you well for no reason, with nothing owed in either direction. It is not a rank. It describes an attitude, and it is the only item on the list that could be declined.
A lord is a lord whether or not you like it. A witness witnesses regardless. But friendship has to be taken up by both sides, which makes its presence in a list of cosmic functions genuinely odd, and clearly intended.
The effect is on how the rest of the list reads. Everything else establishes distance and scale — the holder of worlds, the ground of being. One word in the middle says that none of that rules out being liked, and being liked back.