Akshara Brahma Yoga
Arjuna asks a cluster of questions — what is Brahman, what is the individual self, what is action, and what happens to a person at the moment of death? Krishna answers the last question with particular force, teaching that whatever a person is absorbed in remembering at the final moment, that is the state they will attain after death, which is why he urges Arjuna to remember him constantly, even in the midst of ordinary duty and battle, so that death finds the mind already fixed on the highest goal. He describes the practice of the dying yogi who, with steady mind, directs the life-breath upward and utters the single sacred syllable Om — traditionally understood as Brahman itself in sound — as the surest way to reach the highest state at the end. The chapter also sketches a cosmology of paths after death: a path of light leading beyond return, and a path of darkness leading back to rebirth, depending on how and with what state of mind one departs.
“Whoever, at the time of death, leaves the body remembering me alone, attains my very being — of this there is no doubt.”
“Whatever state of being one remembers when relinquishing the body at the end, that very state one attains, having been constantly absorbed in that thought.”
“Therefore remember me at all times, and fight; with mind and reason fixed on me, you shall doubtless come to me.”
“One who meditates on the ancient seer, the ruler, subtler than the subtlest, the sustainer of all, of inconceivable form, radiant like the sun beyond darkness...”
“Uttering the single syllable Om — that is Brahman — and remembering me while departing, leaving the body, one attains the highest goal.”
Chapter summaries composed for MyBrahman; verse translations from the public-domain Kashinath Trimbak Telang translation (1882, Sacred Books of the East, vol. 8) where directly checkable, and/or widely-attested traditional renderings of famous verses, cited by standard chapter.verse numbering.