8.1 Arjuna asked the messenger: What is the Absolute? What is the inner self? What is action, O best of men? What is said to concern created things, and what concerns the angels?

8.2 Who is the Lord of worship in this body, and how, O Madhusūdana? And how is God to be known at the hour of death by those who are self-controlled?

8.3 Krishna conveyed the word of God: The Imperishable is the Supreme Absolute; the soul's own nature is called the inner self; and the creative command that brings beings into existence is called action.

8.4 What concerns created things is their perishable existence; what concerns the angels is the spirit; and I alone am the Lord of all worship, nearer to you than your own body, O best of the embodied.

8.5 Whoever, at the hour of death, leaves the body remembering Me alone, comes to Me; of this there is no doubt.

8.6 Whatever a person remembers when at last he leaves the body, to that he goes, O Kaunteya, for he has always been absorbed in it.

8.7 Therefore remember Me at all times, and fight. With mind and understanding surrendered to Me, you shall surely come to Me.

8.8 With a mind disciplined by constant practice and wandering to nothing else, one who meditates on the Supreme, the Divine, reaches Him, O Pārtha.

8.9 Whoever remembers the All-Knowing, the Ancient, the Ruler, subtler than the subtlest, the Sustainer of all, whose form is beyond conception, radiant as the sun, beyond all darkness —

8.10 at the hour of departure, with unwavering mind, filled with devotion and strengthened by discipline, his life-breath gathered within — he reaches that Supreme, Divine Lord.

8.11 That which knowers of scripture call the Imperishable, which the self-controlled, free from passion, attain, for the sake of which men live in chastity — that goal I shall declare to you briefly.

8.12 Guarding all the gates of the senses, confining the mind in the heart, gathering his life-breath, established in steadfast concentration,

8.13 uttering the one sacred Word of God's remembrance and remembering Me, whoever departs leaving the body reaches the supreme goal.

8.14 Whoever remembers Me constantly, with a mind turned to nothing else — to that ever-devoted servant I am easy to reach, O Pārtha.

8.15 Having come to Me, these great souls never return to this transient abode of sorrow; they have attained the highest perfection.

8.16 All the worlds, up to the highest heaven of creation, are subject to passing away, O Arjuna; but whoever comes to Me never perishes again.

8.17 Those who know the reckoning of days and nights know that a single Day with your Lord is as a thousand ages of your reckoning, and a Night as a thousand ages.

8.18 At His command all things come forth from the unseen into being, and at His command they return again to the unseen.

8.19 This same multitude of beings, having come into being, dies, O Pārtha, helpless before His decree; and by His command it shall be raised again for the reckoning.

8.20 But beyond this unseen there is another, eternal Unseen Being, who does not perish when all beings perish.

8.21 He is called the Unmanifest, the Imperishable; Him they call the supreme goal. Those who reach that highest abode near Me do not return to loss.

8.22 That Supreme Lord, O Pārtha, is reached by undivided devotion alone — He by whose knowledge and power all beings are encompassed and by whom all this is spread out.

8.23 Now I shall tell you, O best of the Bhāratas, of the times at which the devout depart, to return no more, or to return.

8.24 Fire, light, day, the bright fortnight, the six months of the northern sun — those who know God and depart on that path of light go to God.

8.25 Smoke, night, the dark fortnight, the six months of the southern sun — on that path the devotee gains only a borrowed light, like the moon's, and turns back to the reckoning.

8.26 These two paths, the bright and the dark, are held to be everlasting for the world: by the one a person goes and never returns to loss; by the other he returns to account.

8.27 Knowing these two paths, O Pārtha, no devoted servant is deluded. Therefore at all times be steadfast in devotion, O Arjuna.

8.28 Whatever reward of merit is declared for study of scripture, for sacrifices, austerities and gifts — the devoted servant who knows this passes beyond it all and reaches the supreme, primal abode.