Where does the Gita end? The Gita ends with liberation, what we call moksh (liberation).
सर्वधर्मान्परित्यज्य मामेकं शरणं व्रज ।
अहं त्वां सर्वपापेभ्यो मोक्षयिष्यामि मा शुच: ॥Sarvadharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śharaṇaṁ vraj.
Ahaṁ tvāṁ sarva-pāpebhyo mokṣhayiṣhyāmi mā śhuchaḥ- Gita 18.66
In Krishna’s final teaching to Arjun in the Gita, he says, basically summarizing everything in the Gita,
“Leaving all other practices, just surrender to Me. If you surrender to Me exclusively and wholeheartedly, I will relieve you from all of your past actions. All of your past karma will be deleted, and you will be liberated.”
Liberated means liberated from the effect of your uncountable past actions, liberated from the bondage of maya (material energy), liberated from the cycle of birth and death. So then what happens when you’re liberated? Your soul is liberated from needing this material body, and your material mind is also left behind, and then you merge into God. What aspect of God? Because God has many aspects, you merge into His formless aspect, which is basically the dormant Divine existence. Dormant in this way that none of God’s characteristics are manifested in His formless aspect - no form, no personality, no activity or actions, just an ocean of Divine peacefulness. And when you merge into that ocean of Divine peacefulness, you do become peaceful, but you are not aware of your own blissfulness, because you don’t have a body or mind or senses with which to know anything or experience anything.
So this is the state of liberation, or moksh, which you hear about a lot in the Hindu scriptures. It’s a state of non-experience. You still exist. You don’t cease to exist, but you cease to experience anything. There’s something beyond this. Many people don’t know this, that the state of liberation is only one type of Divine state. There’s something else beyond this.
The state of liberation doesn’t actually sound very appealing, at least to me. Having a state of no experience is a little scary to me. I don’t want to not experience anything. I don’t want to lose the awareness of my own existence. I want to keep experiencing, but I want that experience to be blissful.
So there is such a state beyond the state of liberation, where you actually get a Divine mind and Divine senses and Divine body, just like you need all of these faculties to experience the material world, so you have material faculties. In the Divine state, you can receive Divine faculties to experience God directly. That’s when you can see, touch, smell, hear, taste everything in the Divine world, if you go beyond this state of liberation.
So the Bhagwatam teaches this, that there is something beyond liberation. Whereas the Gita finished with liberation, the very second verse of the Bhagwatam throws out liberation as a goal.
