O Supreme Spirit: What is Brahman? What is the Primal Self? What is action? What is the Primal Being? What is the Primal God? (8:1)
What, and in what way, is the Primal Sacrifice here in this body? And how are you to be known at the time of death by the self-controlled ones? (8:2)
The Holy Lord said:
The Imperishable is the Supreme Brahman. Its dwelling in each individual body is called the Primal Self; the offering in sacrifice which causes the genesis and support of beings is called Karma. (8:3)
Primal Being is perishable existence; the Primal God is the Supreme Divine Being; and I myself am the Primal Sacrifice. (8:4)
At the time of death he who remembers me while giving up the body attains my Being–of this there is no doubt. (8:5)
Moreover, whatever he fixes his mind on when he gives up the body at the end, to that he goes. Always he becomes that. (8:6)
Therefore at all times remember me, and fight with your mind and intellect fixed on me. Thus without doubt you shall come to me. (8:7)
With mind made steadfast by yoga, which turns not to anything else, to the Divine Supreme Spirit he goes, meditating on him. (8:8)
He who meditates on the Seer, the Ancient, the Ruler, subtler than the atom, Support of all, whose form is inconceivable and radiant like the sun and beyond darkness, (8:9)
At the time of death with mind unmoving, endowed with devotion and yoga power, having made the prana enter between the eyebrows, he goes to the Divine Supreme Spirit. (8:10)
That which the knowers of the Veda call the Eternal, which the ascetics free from passion enter, desiring which they live the life of brahmacharya, that path I shall explain unto you briefly. (8:11)
Closing all the doors of the body, confining the mind in the heart, drawing his prana into the head, established in yoga concentration, (8:12)
Uttering Om, the single-syllabled Brahman, meditating on me, departing thus from his body, he attains the Goal Supreme. (8:13)
He who thinks of me constantly, whose mind never goes elsewhere, for him, the constantly-united yogi, I am easy to attain. (8:14)
Coming to me, those great souls who have reached the highest perfection do not incur rebirth in this world, which is, the impermanent home of suffering. (8:15)
The worlds up to Brahma’s realm are subject to rebirth’s return, but for him who attains to me there is no more rebirth. (8:16)
They know the true day and night who know Brahma’s Day a thousand yugas long and Brahma’s Night a thousand yugas long. (8:17)
At the approach of Brahma’s Day, all manifested things come forth from the unmanifest, and then return to that at Brahma’s Night. (8:18)
Helpless, the same host of beings being born again and again merge at the approach of the Night and emerge at the dawn of Day. (8:19)
But there exists, higher than the unmanifested, another unmanifested Eternal which does not perish when all beings perish. (8:20)
This unmanifest is declared to be the imperishable, which is called the Supreme Goal, attaining which they return not. This is my supreme abode. (8:21)
This is the Supreme Being, attained by one-pointed devotion alone, within which all beings do dwell, by which all this is pervaded. (8:22)
Now I shall tell you of the times in which the yogis, departing at the time of death, return or do not return. (8:23)
Fire, light, daytime, the bright lunar fortnight, the six months of the sun’s north path: departing then the Brahman-knowers go to Brahman. (8:24)
Smoke, nighttime, the dark fortnight, the six months of the sun’s south path: thereby attaining the lunar light, the yogi returns again. (8:25)
Truly these two light and dark paths the world thinks to be eternal. By one he goes to non-return; by the other he returns again. (8:26)
No yogi who knows these two paths is confused. Therefore at all times be steadfast in yoga. (8:27)
Whatever meritorious fruit is declared to accrue from study or recitation of the Vedas, sacrifice, tapasya, and almsgiving–beyond all these goes the yogi who knows the two paths; and he attains to the supreme, primeval Abode. (8:28)
Om Tat Sat
Thus in the Upanishads of the glorious Bhagavad Gita, the science of the Eternal, the scripture of Yoga, the dialogue between Sri Krishna and Arjuna, ends the eighth discourse entitled: The Yoga of Imperishable Brahman.
Read Chapter Nine: The Yoga of the Royal Science and Royal Secret