Chapter 8

Arjuna asked: Who is this Brahma you speak of? What is that Soul of Souls, the Adhyatman? What, O Best of All, is your work, the Karma? Tell me what you mean by Adhibhuta. And what does Adhidaiva mean? And how is it that you can be Adhiyajna while in the flesh? Slayer of Madhu, tell me further—how do good men find you in the hour of death?

Krishna replied: I am Brahma, the one eternal God. Adhyatman is the name of my essential being, the Soul of Souls. What goes forth from me, causing all life to live, is called Karma. Manifested in divided forms, I am the Adhibhuta, Lord of Lives; and Adhidaiva, Lord of all the gods, because I am Purusha, the begetter. And as Adhiyajna, Lord of Sacrifice, I am here speaking with you in this body, embodied one—for all shrines flame toward me. At the hour of death, whoever has meditated on me alone, in shedding his flesh, comes forth to me and enters into my Being—do not doubt it. But if he has meditated on something else at the hour of death, when he sheds his flesh he goes to whatever he was looking for, son of Kunti—because the soul is shaped into the likeness of what it seeks.

So keep me always in your heart—and fight! When your heart and mind are fixed on me, you too will surely come to me. All who cling to me with unwavering will and firmest faith, recognizing no other gods, come to me, the Uttermost, Purusha, the Holiest.

Whoever has known me—Lord of sage and singer, Ancient of Days, the support of all Three Worlds, boundless, yet the one who brings to every atom the spark that quickens it—whoever, I say, has known my form, which is beyond mortal knowing, and has seen my radiance, which no eye has seen, brighter than the sun’s burning gold and scattering all darkness—such a person has lived rightly. And when life ends, with mind held steady and trusting piety, breathing calmly beneath an unbending brow, that faithful one dies in happy peace.

In glad peace he passes to the heaven of Purusha—the place the readers of the Vedas call Aksharam, “the Ultimate,” toward which saints and ascetics strive. Their road is the same.

That highest way is taken by the one who shuts the gates of all his senses, locks desire safely in his heart, focuses the vital breaths upon his parting thought held firm, and—murmuring Om, the sacred syllable that stands for Brahma—dies meditating on me.

For whoever regards no other gods and looks always to me, by such a yogi I am easily attained; and having reached me, these great souls do not fall back into birth, into this life which is a place of pain and which ends, but take the path of utmost blessedness.

The worlds, Arjuna—even Brahma’s own world—keep rolling back from death into the restlessness of life. But those who reach me, son of Kunti, taste birth no more. If you know that Brahma’s Day is a thousand Yugas, and that Brahma’s Night is also a thousand Yugas, then you know Day and Night as he knows them. When that vast Dawn breaks, the Invisible is brought once more into the Visible; when that deep Night falls, all that exists fades back again into the one who sent it forth. Yes—this immense host of living beings, produced again and again, expires at Brahma’s Nightfall and rises, without willing it, into new-born life at Brahma’s Dawn. But higher, deeper, more inward, there abides another Life, unlike the life of the senses—beyond sight, unchanging. It endures when all created things have passed away. This is the Life called the Unmanifest, the Infinite, the All, the Uttermost. Those who arrive there do not return. That Life is mine, and I am there. And, Prince, by faith that does not wander, there is a way to come there. I, Purusha, who spread the universe around me, in whom all living things dwell—I can be reached and seen this way.

Richer than the holy fruit that grows on the Vedas, greater than offerings, better than prayer or fasting, is such wisdom. The yogi who knows this path comes at last to the Utmost Perfect Peace.

Here ends Chapter VIII of the Bhagavad-Gita, entitled “Aksharaparabrahmayog,” or “The Book of Religion by Devotion to the One Supreme God.”