CHAPTER 8: Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ🔗

8.1 Arjuna says: O my Lord, O Supreme Person, what is Brahman? What is the Self? What are result-based actions?

What is this material manifestation? And what are the demigods? Please explain all this to me.

8.2 How does this Lord of sacrifice live in the body, and in which part does He live, O Madhusūdana? How can those engaged in devotional service know You at the time of their death?

8.3 Bhagavān says: The indestructible, transcendental living entity is called Brahman and His eternal nature is called the Self. Actions pertaining to the development of the material bodies is called karma, or result based activities.

8.4 Physical nature is known to be endlessly changing. The Universe is the cosmic form of the Supreme Lord, and I am that Lord represented as the Super Soul, dwelling in the heart of every being that dwells in a body.

8.5 Whoever, at the time of death, quits his body remembering Me alone, attains My nature immediately. Of this there is no doubt.

8.6 Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, It is that state one will attain without fail.

The key is to create the right space inside you to express your greatest and highest possibility. When you create the right space inside you, all the events of your choice will simply flow into your life without any effort! Everything you do will be successful. When you learn to use these powers in the right way, you will immediately transform not only your own life, but the lives of all those living around you.

To be able to unlock these great powers inside you, you must first understand a little more about yourself—the way you live and the way you leave! As I told in earlier chapters, your four inner powers are: the power of words or vāk śakti; the power of thoughts or mano śakti; the power of feeling or prema śakti; and the power of living or ātma śakti.

The same Supreme Soul lives in everything. When we understand this, we see the truth that we are a part of everything around us and we complete with everything. There is no difference between you and me. There is no difference between this chair and me or this tree and me. We see ourselves in everything.

When we understand this great truth, a new dimension of ourselves is revealed to us. When we see ourselves in everything around us, our compassion towards everything grows a thousandfold. By being compassionate to others, we are being compassionate to ourselves because everything is one.

Please listen! This is what I mean when I say, ‘Enriching others enriches you.’ Enrich yourself and enrich everyone. Then, experientially you understand that you are one with others, others are one with you. Please understand this great truth of enriching, the space of Enlightenment, the power of living. This changes the way we look at life and everything around us. This completely changes the way we perceive our desires, our fantasies. Kṛṣṇa answers all the questions with a single sūtra, a single

technique.

Now we enter the main subject. Here, Kṛṣṇa reveals the secrets of death.

He says, ‘Whoever dies remembering Me alone at the time of death will attain Me at once.’ What does He mean when He says, ‘remembering Me alone?’ He says, ‘Whoever, at the end of his life, quits his body remembering Me alone, at once attains My nature. Of this there is no doubt.’

Kṛṣṇa says: nāsty atra saṃśayaḥ, because He is going to speak something that is beyond logic. When we want to understand the outer world, we need logic. When we want to know about the inner world, we need a Master who takes us beyond logic. Logic gives us the outer world; it cannot give us the inner world.

Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Whatever state of being one remembers when he quits his body, O Kaunteya, that state he will attain without fail.’

What exactly happens at the time of leaving the body? We should understand that. When a person leaves the body, he goes through seven layers of his being. The first and the outermost layer is the physical layer. When a person leaves the body, it creates tremendous pain in his whole system, what the Upaniṣads liken to ‘thousands of scorpions stinging at a time.’ What happens is, the moment the pain becomes unbearable, we fall into coma. If we fall into coma, we will not experience pain. But the big problem is that we die in unconsciousness when we die in coma. That is the worst thing, because we remain unaware of why we took this birth, and we will not be able to make the decision about the next birth consciously.

That is the reason Kṛṣṇa says: yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ—in whatever state you are at the time of leaving the body, you will achieve that state without fail. If we are unconscious at the time of leaving the body, we naturally take lower level bodies in our next birth; we come back as beings, which do not have a high level of consciousness.

At the time of death, the moment we leave the physical body, we go to the next level, the prāṇic body or the prāṇic layer in us. The prāṇic body refers to the layer responsible for the inhaling and exhaling of prāṇa, the life giving energy in our body. The prāṇic body is filled with all our desires. Please understand, our prāṇa and desires are closely related. If our desires change, immediately the circulation of our praṇa changes.

Similarly, if we change the circulation of prāṇa, our whole mind changes. Our mind and prāṇa are closely connected. That is why people inhale and exhale, pull and push with their breath at the time of leaving; they suffer. The body says, ‘I can’t host you anymore; relax, go out.’ But the being says, ‘But I have so many desires. I must live in this body. I must enjoy this body.’ The tug of war happens between body and being.

Next we move to the mental layer, mana śarīra. All the guilt that we harbored throughout our lives, stays in this layer. Desire is expectation about the future. Guilt is regret about the past. Guilt is: I have not lived in this way—thoughts about the past. Desire is: I should live like this—a thought about the future. Understand, guilt is nothing but the emotion created in our being when we review our past decisions with updated intelligence. When we review past decisions with updated intelligence, we create guilt. Never make that mistake. If we create guilt, the whole thing sits in the mental body and when we leave the body it becomes a big obstruction.

The next layer we cross in the process of death is the etheric body. Here, all the painful experiences that we had in life are stored.

These four layers are hell. When the energy crosses these four layers: physical body, prāṇic body, mental body and etheric body, the being undergoes hell.

During our life in the body, if we have kept these four layers clean and complete, we never enter hell.

That is, if we can technically clean these layers; when I say ‘technically’, I mean through meditation, through the process of completion. If we keep these layers clean with the proper meditation techniques, we will never have a problem at the time of leaving the body.

After these first four layers, the three inner layers where all our blissful memories are stored are called heaven. Even if we are stuck there, we need to move on. Please be very clear, even our puṇya, merits, are karma. Even that will not allow us to become enlightened. We may feel good, ecstatic, for a few days. After that our mind takes that also for granted. In the case of heaven also, we will take it for granted after a few days. When you take it for granted, you have to come back to take another body, another birth.

8.7 Arjuna, think of Me in the form of Kṛṣṇa always, while continuing with your prescribed duty of fighting.

With your activities dedicated to Me and your mind and intelligence fixed on Me, you will attain Me without doubt.

8.8 He who meditates on the Supreme Person, his mind constantly engaged in remembering Me, not deviating from the path,

O Pārtha, is sure to reach Me.

8.9 One should meditate on the Supreme as the one who knows everything, as He is the most ancient, who is the controller, who is smaller than the smallest, who is the maintainer of everything, who is beyond all material conception, who is inconceivable, and who is always a person. He is luminous like the sun and, being transcendental, is beyond this material nature.

8.10 One, who at the time of death, fixes his mind and life breath between the eyebrows without being distracted, who by the power of yoga and in full devotion engages himself in dwelling on Me, He will certainly attain Me.

One important question we may ask, ‘Anyhow, I have to think of Him only at the time of leaving the body, so why bother doing that now? Right now, let me lead my life. At the time of death, I will think about Him.’ Please be very clear, these verses answer that question. We cannot think about Him then unless we think about Him now. At the time of our death, automatically the totality of our whole life will come up. The whole file will come up. Whatever we spent the maximum energy on, that file will automatically come up first. That’s all. We can’t do anything in that moment. Don’t think that we can forget about it now and tackle the issue of our last thought at the time we leave the body. It does not work that way! Only the thought that we lived with intensely throughout our life will come up at that moment. That is why He says, ‘Even when you do your duty, may you be absorbed in Me.’ This means that when we live, we should try to continuously be in thoughtless awareness, the witnessing consciousness, the Kṛṣṇa consciousness.

The next question: ‘How can I be in the witnessing mode when I live my regular life?’ Start in a simple way. When you drive, when you sit, when you talk, see what is happening inside and outside you. You don’t need to close your eyes. At least while driving, please don’t close your eyes! Just move away from your body. See what is going on in your mind and what is going on outside your being.

In the next verse Kṛṣṇa says, ‘At the time of death, fix your mind between the eyebrows.’ He adds, ‘without being distracted and with devotion.’ See, all this is not in our control at the time when the life force is about to leave the body. We cannot decide at that time, ‘Ok, let me focus between the eyebrows, let me think of devotion, let me not be distracted.’ But if we have led a life in such higher consciousness, this automatically happens at that time! When Kṛṣṇa talks about the space between the eyebrows, He speaks of the higher cakra or energy center in the body, related to higher consciousness. Our mind is nothing but a bunch of conditionings. All these conditionings influence us at the time of death. If we are taught that eating is the greatest pleasure in life, we see only all kinds

of food when we leave this body. Then the last thought will be, 'Let me take birth in a family where I will be given food and nothing but food, where I will not have any other responsibility.'

While still in the body, if we have experienced 'thoughtlessness' at least once, (thoughtlessness means being alive without a sense of body and mind), if we have experienced thoughtless awareness, if we have been in Universal consciousness for a single moment without the body and mind, that is what I call Samādhi.

Here is a small diagram to explain what exactly I mean by the word 'thoughtlessness'.

FOUR STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

In our life, we experience two states of being and two levels of mind. For example, now, while we are awake, we have thoughts. In deep sleep, do we have thoughts? No! So the two possibilities for the mind are with thought and without thought.

In the same way, in the being, there can be 'I' consciousness and no 'I' consciousness. As of now, while we are awake and talking and moving, we have the idea of 'I' all the time, that of 'I' consciousness. In deep sleep, do we have this consciousness? No. The 'I' consciousness does not exist at that time. So the two levels of the being are: with 'I' consciousness and without 'I' consciousness. These two levels of consciousness and the two levels of mind and thought overlap each other and create four states of being in us.

In jāgrat, we live with the body that we have now—the sthūla śarīra or gross body. In svapna, we live with the sūkṣma śarīra or subtle body; please understand in the dream state also we assume a body. That is why we are able to travel in our dreams. For example, we fall asleep in Los Angeles but suddenly dream we are in India! It means we travel with a body, a subtle body called sūkṣma śarīra. In deep sleep, we assume a body called the causal body, kāraṇa śarīra.

In turīya state, we experience boundarilessness, bodylessness. There we have pure 'I' consciousness, with 'I' but without thoughts. Vivekananda says, 'If you experience even a single glimpse of this consciousness when you are alive, the same thing automatically repeats when you leave the body. You leave the body in samādhi.' If we have not lived a single moment of our life without the feeling of being the body and mind, we cannot be without the body and mind once we die. So once we die, we immediately try to catch hold of another body. Because we have never lived a single moment without body and mind, the moment we die, we will not bother about which body we are getting into. We rush as fast as possible.

After coming down, we again forget the supreme purpose of assuming the body; this is the biggest problem. If we have experienced a single moment of complete rest and thoughtless awareness, the state of restful awareness, then naturally at the moment when we leave the body, we will be in the same state. This state is also called 'bodyless' awareness because when we are in turīya state, all the three bodies do not touch us; neither the gross body nor the subtle body nor the causal body touches us.

We experience awareness that is beyond the three bodies. If we have experienced this thoughtless restful awareness for even a single moment earlier, we will have the required clarity in the end. If we have experienced that we can exist without the body and mind, we will have the patience to work with our data files before

assuming the next body. We will go through the data line carefully and decide, 'Should I take birth at all? What is the need?' Sometimes, if we decide to take birth, we can even take a conscious birth, like the great Masters!

Kṛṣṇa says yogabraṣṭha. We take birth in a family that will be conducive to our spiritual growth, which will not create obstacles to our spiritual practices. Kṛṣṇa says that only very rarely do souls take birth in this type of family. I have rarely seen parents who do not object when the son does spiritual practices. If your family does not object, if they do not disturb you, please be very clear, there is every chance of your being a yogabraṣṭha!

In the next step, Kṛṣṇa explains how to achieve thoughtless awareness and gives a deeper understanding about death and the art of leaving.

8.11 Persons who are learned in the Veda and who are great sages in the orders of renunciation, enter into the Brahman. Desiring such perfection, one practices brahmacarya.

I shall now explain to you the process by which one may attain liberation.

8.12 Closing all the doors of the senses and fixing the mind in the heart and the life breath at the top of the head, one establishes oneself in yoga.

8.13 Centered in this yoga practice and uttering the sacred syllable Om, the supreme combination of letters, if one dwells in the Supreme and quits his body, he certainly achieves the supreme destination.

8.14 I am always available to anyone who remembers Me constantly Pārtha, because of his constant engagement in devotional service.

If someone is completely immersed in the scriptures, his thoughts will continuously be along those lines. That is what Kṛṣṇa means by His words 'Immerse yourself in the scriptures'. Keep reading some scripture or the other and imbibe its truth. It will have a tremendous impact on you.

Even if we do not understand the deeper meanings of these scriptures, it is ok. These scriptures are energy hubs. When we read them, the sound that is generated is enough to cleanse our inner being. That is the power of those verses. They will transform you. If you listen to vedic chants, you will find that they are chanted in a specific tone and pitch. When they are chanted, they completely cleanse our system, our inner being.

We cut the continuous flow of inputs from our senses when we increase our awareness. The number of thoughts slowly drops as awareness rises. As we increase awareness, our thoughts per second, TPS, drops.

This is what Kṛṣṇa means by closing all the senses. When we do this, our awareness becomes more and more concentrated on the present moment. When we shut our senses and remain in pure awareness, we focus on our divinity. We keep a single-minded focus on the divinity resonating in us. We automatically fall into the present moment. Awareness of our breath becomes more acute. We feel life energy or prāṇa filling our system. This is called dhārana, single-minded focus. We can focus on the life force energizing our system when we increase our awareness and close all the inputs from our senses. We automatically unite mind, body and spirit. This is yoga.

Our thoughts are generally related to greed and fear. We keep piling up desires because our root thought patterns are of greed and fear. When we die, our soul re-experiences these desires. Attachment to these desires makes our death painful. An Enlightened Master has seen this process and speaks from experience. He is pure compassion and He wants everyone to know the secret of mastering the art of leaving.

That is why Kṛṣṇa says again and again: When we direct our thoughts to the Divine, greed and fear are completely wiped out. Our whole being is filled with gratitude to the Divine. One more thing, many people think of God because they want to go to heaven. Some people are afraid of death so they think of God. Both are only because of greed or fear.

8.15 After attaining Me, the great souls who are devoted to Me in yoga are never reborn in this world. This world is temporary and full of miseries and they have attained the highest perfection.

8.16 From the highest planet in the material world [brahmaloka] down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death take place.

One who reaches My abode, O Kaunteya, is never reborn.

8.17 By human calculation, a thousand ages taken together is the duration of Brahma's one day. His night is just as long.

8.18 From the unmanifest all living entities come into being at the beginning of Brahma's day. With the coming of Brahma's night, they dissolve into the same unmanifest.

The understanding of this science, the very intellectual understanding, gives the inspiration to experience truth and naturally leads us to the ultimate Truth.

Here Kṛṣṇa says, ‘If you achieve this state, you never come back.’ He inspires us; He persuades us to enter that state, to enter thoughtless awareness.

In the next verse, Kṛṣṇa talks about the misery-filled world and we see how good deeds cannot get us out of the cycle of birth and death.

Kṛṣṇa says here:

‘From the highest planet of Brahmaloka in the material world down to the lowest, all are places of misery wherein repeated birth and death takes place. But one who attains Me, one who attains My being, one who attains My consciousness, never takes birth again.’

If we achieve that one glimpse of consciousness, we achieve what has to be achieved. If we have not had that, whatever we achieve is a pure waste. All merits and sins—nothing comes with us. We will not be judged by anything except this glimpse of samādhi, the ultimate truth.

Samādhi in Saṃskṛit means: being in our original state. Once we realize this state, we have arrived.

Vivekananda says, ‘If you achieve even a single glimpse, you leave your body in that experience.’ It is because this intense experience of Self-realization will come up at the time when we leave the body. At the time of death, our whole life is played back to us in a fast-forward mode in a few seconds. And only the important scenes appear in multicolor again and again; all other scenes appear in black and white. They become the background. If we have had thoughtless awareness, the samādhi experience when we were alive, that alone will appear in multicolor; all other things will fade away in the background.

As of now, understand this one thing: Throughout this chapter Kṛṣṇa conveys the single message:

Experience His consciousness, the thoughtless awareness or the witnessing consciousness in which Kṛṣṇa stays and plays the whole game of life, how He lives through the whole of life. That is why Kṛṣṇa’s life is called līlā—cosmic play, Kṛṣṇa līlā. It is not history. It is līlā; it is a Cosmic play.

Kṛṣṇa conveys one thing: All we need to do is work to achieve a glimpse of thoughtless awareness, the space of completion. In the next few chapters, He speaks deeply, intensely about how to open every layer, how to progress, how to clean and complete with every layer and how to achieve the conscious glimpse or thoughtless awareness. He says further:

‘By human calculation, the thousand ages taken together form the duration of Brahma’s one day and such also is the duration of his night.’ For Brahma, a thousand ages are taken as one day. Only when we achieve the consciousness of nirvāṇa—thoughtless awareness, will we not take rebirth.

When we are in the body, if we have had a single glimpse of thoughtless awareness—the experience of

meditation, then automatically this consciousness comes up at the time of leaving the body and we will have two benefits. We can choose to become enlightened and not take another birth, or we can choose the right place to express and work out our karma, to live as we want. We have both choices if we experience thoughtless awareness while living.

During a single 'blink of Brahma'—the Lord of creation, so many things change. In our concept of time, we see things as permanent, but when we operate in a different zone of space and time, all this becomes temporary. Our ignorance makes us think that all that we see is real and permanent. Once we understand that this entire life and the world around us is impermanent, we see everything from a completely different space. Kṛṣṇa says that in all this creation and destruction, only one thing is neither created nor destroyed and that is the 'Ultimate Consciousness'! What we think of as an age is a fraction of a second to Brahma and everything we see as permanent is being made and destroyed every time Brahma blinks.

The secret to liberation is what Kṛṣṇa gives here—'One who attains My abode will never return, yaṁ prāpya na nivartante tad dhāma paramaṁ mama (8.21).' The abode where one will not return to refers to the state of the being when it transcends joys and sorrow. Kṛṣṇa again and again talks about focusing one's thoughts on the Divine. The only way to think of the Divine at the time of our death is by thinking about Him all the time. At that time, we suddenly cannot think of God. In such pain and suffering, we suddenly can't think of God if we have always been thinking about money and food in our life. It is impossible. That is why Kṛṣṇa insists upon continuous devotion to the Supreme— bhaktyā labhyas tv ananyayā (8.22). When we live in a state of continuous devotion, our last thought will be of the Divine. Please be very clear: Our last thought determines our next birth. There is no doubt about it.

darkness. When one passes in light, he does not return; but when one passes in darkness, he returns.

Those who know the supreme Divine attain that Supreme by passing away from the world during the influence of Agni, the fire-god, during light or at an auspicious moment of the day, also during the fortnight of the waxing moon or during the six months that the sun travels in the north, referred to as uttarāyaṇaṁ.

Understand, these are not chronological calendars. If it were a chronological calendar, then at uttarāyaṇaṁ time, all of us can commit suicide and be done with it, that’s all! But that is not what is meant here. All these things have metaphorical meanings. When He says uttarāyaṇaṁ, Kṛṣṇa means when our mind is totally balanced and when we are not agitated.

Next, Kṛṣṇa says that the person who passes away from this world during smoke, the night, the fortnight of the waning moon or those six months when the Sun travels in the south, referred to as Dakṣiṇāyanaṁ, reaches the Moon but comes back again.

Again, this is psychological. They can’t say that in these six months nobody can become enlightened.

What does Kṛṣṇa mean by light and darkness, śukla-kṛṣṇa? They refer to the levels of consciousness one has reached. If a person leaves the body without knowing what drove him all along—his saṁskāras, his desires, fears, guilt, etc., which we call root thought patterns—then this ignorance is what He refers to as darkness.

8.27 O Pārtha (son of Pritha), the devotees who know these different paths are never bewildered.

O Arjuna, be always fixed in devotion.

8.28 A Yogī, realizing the path of devotional service, transcends the results derived from studying the Vedas,

performing austerities and sacrifices, giving charity or pursuing pious and result-based activities. At the end he reaches the Supreme and Primal Abode.

He means that a person who understands the different paths that a spirit can take while leaving the body will always be prepared for death. He immerses himself in devotion throughout his life so that he becomes liberated. Kṛṣṇa first gives Arjuna an intellectual understanding of the whole death process. He clearly tells him that the last thought while leaving the body governs the path that the spirit chooses when entering the next body.

Again and again He emphasizes that this thought cannot be divine unless we spend our entire lives in devotional service. When I say devotional service, devotion is more important than service. Kṛṣṇa says, ‘Performing austerities and sacrifices, giving charity or pursuing pious result-based activities will take a person to the Supreme abode.’

While doing each of these activities, it is the attitude that matters most, not the action itself.

Let us pray to that Ultimate Energy, Parabrahma Kṛṣṇa, to give us intelligence and the experience of thoughtless awareness, witnessing consciousness, ātma jñāna, the eternal bliss, Nityānanda.

Thus ends the eighth chapter named Akṣarabrahma Yogaḥ, ‘The Yoga Of Imperishable Brahma’ of the Bhagavad Gītā Upaniṣad, Brahmavidyā Yogaśātra, the scripture of yoga dealing with the science of the Absolute in the form of Śrī Kṛṣṇārjuna saṁvād, dialogue between Śrī Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna.