Bhagwan Gita - Post 101

Verse 16

Aabrahmabhuvanaallokaah

Punaraavartino’rjuna;

Maamupetya tu kaunteya

Punarjanma na vidyate.

(All) the worlds, including the world of Brahma, are subject to return again, O Arjuna! But he who reaches Me, O son of Kunti, has no rebirth!

Sri Krishna says here that even if we reach Brahmaloka, there are certain conditions in which we may have to come back; but after reaching the Absolute, we will not come back.

The concept of Brahmaloka is to be clarified first. What do we mean by Brahmaloka? The concept of Brahmaloka that is in our mind is what will decide whether we will come back from there or not. 

Generally, Brahmaloka is something like our idea of the Universal Being: it is spread out everywhere as an all-pervading, brilliant, divine existence into which we enter, where we stay and abide in the glory, beauty and grandeur of that kingdom.

The Brahmaloka that is conceived by us has two characteristics: a universal in which we find our abode, and a universal that is we ourselves. 

Are we going to live in Brahmaloka as residents of that place, due to the tapas we have done? If that is the case, when the effect of the tapas is over by the exhaustion of the momentum thereof, we will come back.

So, in a way, there is a possibility of our coming back from Brahmaloka if we have attained it with the power of our meditation on objective universality — a vast kingdom of heaven, yet a kingdom into which we have to enter as individuals, with the prerogative of participating in the joys of that realm. If that is the case, we will come back. 

The theory of gradual liberation (Krama Mukti), accepted in Vedanta, says that ritualism (Karma), accompanied by meditation (Upasana), takes the ego to the realm-of-the-Creator (Brahma-loka) where, at the end of the Kalpa (the cycle of creation and dissolution), it merges with the Supreme. 

Even in Brahma-loka it is necessary that the ego must, through self-effort, live strictly all the spiritual directions of the Creator, and through constant contemplation upon the Self (Atma-Vichara) come to deserve the total liberation, by ending all its connections with "ignorance." Those who have not reached the realm-of-the-Creator, may not come to enjoy the Supreme merger.

They will, at the end of the Kalpa, have to come back and take their manifestation in embodiments, ordered by their remaining vasanas. 

This principle is kept in mind when Krishna says that rebirth is for everyone, even to those who have attained any high plane up to Brahma-loka.

So, ābrahmabhuvanāllokāḥ punarāvartino’rjuna: Even if we reach that abode of the Creator as an abode where we will reside, we will come back because it is in space and time; it is an extended kingdom. That is the reason why when we enter there, we will have to come back.

But if we identify with Brahmaloka as the essence of what we ourselves are — because Brahmaloka is universal, we cannot be outside it — the question of staying there as a citizen cannot arise. 

Mām upetya tu kaunteya punarjanma na vidyate: “You will not be reborn after having attained Me.” Would we like to be reborn? If so, we will have freedom to be reborn as we like. But if we enter that which is not capable of coming back into space and time, we will enjoy that eternal beatitude. 

To  those who have awakened to the rediscovery of their essential, Eternal Nature and realized themselves to be the One, All-pervading Self --- "AFTER ATTAINING ME" --- to them, thereafter, there is no return to the plane of limited-existence. 

Love.