The Gita’s synthesis includes a reconciliation and affirmation of the paths of knowledge, works, and devotion. The Gita accomplishes this through a process of redefining the terms and reframing the context. In the traditional path of knowledge, the goal or end result would be the abandonment of works in the world as an illusion or a lesser goal. In order to justify the yoga of works and the yoga of devotion, the Gita clearly must be able to show us why and in what manner the manifestation is both real and meaningful.
The integration of both the Kshara Purusha and the Akshara Purusha in the wider frame of the Purushottama provides the gateway for the Gita to both recognize the reality of the manifestation and the reality of the non-manifest consciousness, and to develop the mutuality rather than opposition of these two standpoints.
The human mental framework thrives in dualities and opposites and black/white definitions. It takes a more wholistic consciousness to find the complementary aspects that resolve the apparently irreconcilable differences.
In an “omnipresent reality” as Sri Aurobindo defines it, there is a status, represented by the Akshara Purusha, that is separated and uninvolved in the action of the universe, while concurrently there is a status, equally real and valid, that participates in the manifestation and the creation, represented by the Kshara Purusha.
Similarly, the Gita finds the integration of these two terms in the Purushottama and thereby provides a foundational basis for not only the yoga of knowledge, but also for a yoga of works and a yoga of devotion. If the universal manifestation is unreal, there is no cause to focus on the value of works or devotion. They too would then be equally unreal in their essence.
Sri Aurobindo summarizes: “The union of the soul with the Purushottama by a Yoga of the whole being is the complete teaching of the Gita and not only the union with the immutable Self as in the narrower doctrine which follows the exclusive way of knowledge.”
“…it is the vision of the Divine in the world harmonised with a realisation of the Divine in the self which makes action and devotion possible to the liberated man, and not only possible but inevitable in the perfect mode of his being.”
Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, First Series, Chapter 23,Nirvana and Works in the World, pg. 223