Sanskrit
ब्रह्मभूतः प्रसन्नात्मा न शोचति न काङ्क्षति । समः सर्वेषु भूतेषु मद्भक्तिं लभते पराम् ॥ ५४ ॥
brahma-bhūtaḥ prasannātmā na śocati na kāṅkṣati samaḥ sarveṣu bhūteṣu mad-bhaktiṃ labhate parām
Translation
Becoming the Eternal, serene in the Self, he neither grieveth nor desireth; the same to all beings, he obtaineth supreme devotion unto Me.
Annie Besant · The Bhagavad-Gita, translated by Annie Besant (4th ed., 1922) — Wikisource · Public Domain
Explanation
Here is the pivot the whole sequence was building toward: becoming Brahman (brahma-bhuta) does not end in impersonal absorption, it opens directly into “supreme devotion unto Me” (mad-bhaktim labhate param). Chapter 11 already showed bhakti succeeding where knowledge, sacrifice, and austerity all failed to grant Arjuna a true vision of Krishna (11.53-54); this verse makes the same move from the other direction, showing that even Brahman-realization, the summit of the jnana path, doesn’t stand apart from bhakti but resolves into it.