Adhyāya 8 — Akṣara-Brahma Yogaḥ

Arjuna asks for the meaning of the technical terms just used — Brahman, adhyātma, karma, adhibhūta, adhidaiva, adhiyajña — and how the steadfast know Kṛṣṇa at death. Kṛṣṇa defines them briefly, then gives the heart of the chapter: whatever state a person dwells on at the moment of leaving the body, that state he attains; therefore one should remember the Divine always, and above all at the end, with the breath gathered and the syllable Om on the mind. He unfolds the vast cosmic cycles — the day and night of Brahmā, the manifest streaming out of the unmanifest and dissolving back — and points beyond even that to the eternal Unmanifest, the Akṣara, his supreme abode from which none returns. He closes with the two paths after death, of light and of smoke, and promises that the yogi who knows all this passes beyond the merit of every rite.