A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in Bharatham - Ch - 6 : The Bhagavadgita - Swami Krishnananda

========================================================================

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17/03/2020.
Chapter-6 : The Bhagavadgita : DEATH AND AFTER -

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1.

#The Lord assures that one who leaves this world, thinking of Him alone, reaches Him, in the end. One's future is governed by one's last thought, at the time of death. As this thought is, however, the cumulative result of what one has been thinking throughout one's life, it is to be understood that one's future life is determined by the nature of the present life taken as a whole. 

##As a bitter tree does not bear a sweet fruit, one's last thought cannot be expected to be a divine one, if the life that precedes it is one of error and wickedness. By its fruit, we know the tree. Whatever one has been contemplating in one's life, that becomes the last thought which fixes the nature of the future life. 

###Whatever one thinks deeply at the time of death, that one becomes in the next life. He who, by the practice of yoga, meditates, in an undivided consciousness, on the Supreme Purusha, resplendent like the Sun, and thinks of Him at the time of his death, with deep concentration, devotion and power of aspiration, reaches Him, the Divine Being. 

####In a concise statement, the Gita says that, by controlling all the senses, by centring the mind in the heart, by drawing the prana to the head, engaged in the practice of yoga, uttering the monosyllable - Om the Brahman - and meditating on Him, he who departs hence, attains the Supreme Goal. There is no return to the consciousness of mortality (samsara) and pain after attaining the Divine Purusha.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2.

#The Gita confirms the two paths of the departed soul mentioned in the Upanishads - the northern and the southern - in a more pithy statement of this route. 

*The blessed soul moving towards its salvation is said to course through the Deities of Fire, Light, Day, the bright half of the lunar month and the six months of the northern motion of the Sun. 

**The soul that is destined to return to rebirth passes through the presiding powers of the Smoke, Night, the dark half of the lunar month and the six months of the southern motion of the Sun. 

##The Gita does not throw light on the apparently intricate meaning of these stages of the soul's movement after its departure from the world, and we are left in the same position as in the Upanishads on the subject. 

###In all probability the Northern Path (archiradimarga) and the Southern Path (dhumamarga) are certain mystical experiences of the Soul in the subtler layers of the Cosmos, through which it traverses, determined by the spiritual and non-spiritual tendencies in it, respectively.

To be continued ..

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

========================================================================