Sunyata ji

I think, considering my one or two buckets of knowledge, that there are other options.

One being the person who dies with Lord Shiva's name on his lips is liberated. Granted Krishna may have been thinking of another name.

Two, which I think is much more likely, is that the spiritual evolution we attain in this life is not lost in the next.

Merely having pleasant thoughts of what the next life could be can not preclude karma. Indeed there are arrows in the quiver but there are already arrows on the way from previous lives.

I do think the atman started at the lowest life form and progresses through evolution and we became homo sapien sapiens, if that is the current term. I do not think it is a stretch to consider lower life forms as evolving souls. The essence of God is the same in everything don't the Vedas say.

This is what I believe but that I believe the "Gita" to be allegory and an excellent "how to book" and not scripture should be understood.

Om Namah Shivaya