A portion of Me alone, of the supreme Self, Nārāyaṇa, has become a living being, well known in the world of living beings, in transmigration, as the doer and the enjoyer, eternal, age-old; 'portion' is part, member, a single place, words for the same thing. As the reflection of the sun in water is a portion of the sun, and when the water, its occasion, is gone goes to the sun itself and does not return, going by that very self; or as the space enclosed by the adjunct of a pot and the like, a portion of space, when the pot, its occasion, is gone, reaches space and does not return: so it is fittingly said, 'having gone to which they do not return'. Now, the supreme Self being partless, whence a part, a single place, a portion; and if it had parts, the destruction of the Self would follow by the parting of its parts. This is no fault, since the portion is imagined as if it were a single place marked off by an adjunct made by ignorance; and this matter was shown at length in the chapter on the field. And how does that living being, imagined as a portion of Me, transmigrate and depart? It draws to itself the senses, hearing and the rest, with the mind for a sixth, which stand in Nature, in their own place, the hollow of the ear and the like. At what time?
Contemporary English rendering of the Sanskrit bhāṣya, pending scholar review.