The last chapter gathers the whole Gita into itself and resolves the crisis with which it began. Arjuna asks once more about renunciation and abandonment, and Krishna distinguishes sannyasa, the renunciation of desire-driven works, from tyaga, the renunciation of the fruit, but gives the decisive sense of both: works are not to be abandoned, only the desire and the attachment to their fruit. Sacrifice, gift and austerity especially must never be given up, for they purify the soul; and the highest renunciation is the sattwic, which does the work that ought to be done, with attachment and the longing for fruit alone cast away (18·9).
Krishna then analyses the very structure of action. There are five factors in the accomplishment of every work, the body, the doer, the various instruments, the manifold efforts, and the divine sanction that is the fifth (18·14); and the egoistic intelligence that thinks “I alone am the doer” is therefore in error and does not see the truth. Knowledge, action, the doer, the intelligence and the will, even happiness itself, are all shown to be threefold according to the gunas. This searching analysis explains to Arjuna why his ordinary moral certainty was so unstable, for human action is a mixed product of nature and temperament, of motive and instrument and cosmic sanction, and cannot be resolved by the ego’s judgement alone.
From this follows the teaching of swabhava and swadharma. The fourfold order is read by Sri Aurobindo not as a rigid social scheme but as a principle of nature-function, each being having an inner law, a characteristic power and a true line of action that arise from its own quality. Hence the Gita’s striking word that one’s own law of action, even if imperfectly fulfilled, is better than the well-performed law of another’s nature, since growth must follow the truth of one’s own being (18·47). Yet this is no licence for the ego’s preference; the swadharma is itself to be purified, widened and finally offered up.
Works become a means of perfection when a man worships by his own work the Divine from whom all beings have come and by whom all this universe is pervaded (18·46). Following the labour native to his being, casting away attachment and ego, winning self-mastery, the seeker rises to the Brahmic condition, becomes calm and equal, grieves not and desires not, and so attains a supreme love and devotion. By that devotion he comes to know the Divine in his very truth and enters into him. Thus in this chapter works, knowledge and love at last converge into one.
The final instruction now surpasses every rule that has gone before. Krishna first repeats the way of devotion, bidding Arjuna give him his mind, become his lover and worshipper, sacrifice to him and bow before him (18·65). Then comes the supreme secret, the last and most secret word of all: abandoning all the dharmas, all the lesser laws of conduct, take refuge in the Divine alone, who will deliver the soul from every sin and evil (18·66). Sri Aurobindo reads this not as lawlessness but as the passage beyond all mental, social and ethical formulas into a direct surrender to the supreme Lord seated within; the lower ego ceases to originate the action, and the Divine Power itself works through the surrendered nature.
Arjuna’s closing answer completes the movement begun in the first chapter. His delusion is destroyed and his memory restored, and he stands ready to act according to the Divine word (18·73). The bow that fell from his hand may now be taken up again, not by the old egoistic warrior but by the soul that has received knowledge, devotion and surrender. The Gita ends where it began, upon the field of action, but action has been wholly transfigured. The battle is no longer Arjuna’s private burden; it has become the Divine work accepted by a conscious and liberated instrument.
