अन्तकाले च मामेव स्मरन्मुक्त्वा कलेवरम् ।यः प्रयाति स मद्भावं याति नास्त्यत्र संशयः ॥
antakāle ca māmeva smaranmuktvā kalevaramyaḥ prayāti sa madbhāvaṁ yāti nāstyatra saṁśayaḥ
Whoever leaves his body and departs remembering Me at his time of end, comes to my bhava (that of the Purushottama, my status of being); there is no doubt of that.
Compiled rendering · Anilbaran Roy
Essays on the Gita
Whoever leaves his body and departs
Man, born into the world, revolves between world and world in the action of Prakriti and Karma. Purusha in Prakriti is his formula: what the soul in him thinks, contemplates and acts, that always he becomes. All that he had been, determined his present birth; and all that he is, thinks, does in this life up to the moment of his death, determines what he will become in the worlds beyond and in lives yet to be. If birth is a becoming, death also is8·5 a becoming, not by any means a cessation. The body is8·10 abandoned, but the soul goes on its way, tyaktvā kalevaram. Much then depends on what he is at the critical moment of his departure. For whatever form of becoming his consciousness is fixed on at the time of death and has been full of that always in his mind and thought before death, to that form he must attain, since the Prakriti by Karma works out the soul’s thoughts and energies and that is in real fact her whole business. Therefore, if the soul in the human being desires to attain to the status of the Purushottama, there are two necessities, two conditions which must be satisfied before that can be possible. He must have moulded towards that ideal his whole inner life in his earthly living; and he must be faithful to his aspiration and will in his departing.8·5–6 “Whoever leaves his body and departs” says Krishna “remembering me at his time of end, comes to my bhāva,” that of the Purushottama, my status of being. He is united with the original being of the Divine and that is the ultimate becoming of the soul, paro bhāvaḥ, the last result of Karma in its return upon itself and towards its source. The soul which has followed the play of cosmic evolution that veils here its essential spiritual nature, its original form of becoming, svabhāva, and has passed through all these other ways of becoming of its consciousness which are only its phenomena, taṁ taṁ bhāvam, returns to that essential nature and, finding through this return its true self and spirit, comes to the original status of being which is from the point of view of the return a highest becoming, mad-bhāvam. In a certain sense we may say that it becomes God, since it unites itself with nature of the Divine in a last transformation of its own phenomenal nature and existence.
Other writings
When the soul is at rest, peace unutterable becomes its possession. How is rest to be attained? By the thought of Brahman. Whoever thinks of Him at the time of death, passes into Him. Not the mere act of intellectual cognition, but the thought which dwells in the heart. The heart is the meeting place of God and the Soul. When the two meet then all action ceases, and rest becomes the possession of the soul. Whoever wishes to realise this truth must try to seek God in his heart. If he can find Him there, he will experience rest.
