Sanskrit
ममैवांशो जीवलोके जीवभूतः सनातनः । मनःषष्ठानीन्द्रियाणि प्रकृतिस्थानि कर्षति ॥
mamaivāṃśo jīvaloke jīvabhūtaḥ sanātanaḥ manaḥ ṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇi prakṛtisthāni karṣati
Translation
A portion of Mine own Self, transformed in the world of life into an immortal Spirit, draweth round itself the senses of which the mind is the sixth, veiled in matter.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
The register shifts here from cosmic tree to individual psychology: the jiva, the embodied soul, is described as an eternal “portion” (aṃśa) of Krishna’s own Self, which then pulls the mind and five senses around itself like an owner gathering tools. “Portion” is doing real metaphysical work — it commits the verse to a part-whole relationship between the individual self and the divine Self, rather than either strict identity or strict separation, a position later commentators (Ramanuja especially) would build entire schools of interpretation around. This is the verse most directly about atman as this chapter treats it — not the abstract, changeless witness-self of chapter 2, but the same self conceived as what actually migrates and reincarnates. Mamaivāṃśo… jīva-bhūtaḥ — “a fragment of Me become the living self.” The individual soul is Krishna’s own portion, and what it “draws to itself” is the mind-plus-five-senses — the equipment it wears from body to body (BG 15.8).
Study deeper
Word by word
- mamaivāṃśo jīvalokeममैवांशो जीवलोके
- a fragment of Me, in the world of the living (mama + eva + aṃśaḥ + jīva-loke)
- jīvabhūtaḥ sanātanaḥजीवभूतः सनातनः
- becoming the eternal individual soul (jīva-bhūtaḥ + sanātanaḥ)
- manaḥ ṣaṣṭhānīndriyāṇiमनः षष्ठानीन्द्रियाणि
- the senses, with the mind as the sixth (manaḥ + ṣaṣṭhāni + indriyāṇi)
- prakṛtisthāni karṣatiप्रकृतिस्थानि कर्षति
- resting in nature, it draws to itself (prakṛti-sthāni + karṣati)
Commentary
Site Commentary
“Portion” is a carefully chosen word: it commits the verse to neither strict identity between self and Self nor strict separation, but to a harder middle position that later schools would spend centuries arguing over. Easier language was available — the verse could have said the jiva “is” Krishna or is merely “apart from” him — and it chose neither. That refusal to collapse into the simpler option is itself the verse’s argument, not just its vocabulary.
Original commentary written for this site · © Amit Singh — original commentary
Concepts
Apply this verse
Lessons
Personal
- You don't have to choose between being wholly independent of a larger purpose or fully absorbed into it — you can hold the harder middle position of being a genuine part of something larger while still remaining distinctly yourself.
Professional
- You're neither a fully autonomous operator nor an interchangeable cog on your team — you're a genuine portion of it, carrying real responsibility for the whole without losing your individual judgment. Resist collapsing into either the easy independence story or the easy conformity one.
Family & Social
- You are a portion of your family, not identical to it and not separate from it — that harder middle position, rather than either full enmeshment or full estrangement, is usually the honest way to describe how you actually belong.
Ask yourself
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