What is the difference between heaven and moksha as per Geeta?

Answer 1

There are three types of Karma. One is good karma, another is bad karma, another is karma with no attachment to it or karma done in the name of God or in service of god. Good karma takes you to heaven ( or you get good rewards).Bad karma gives you bad rewards (you get lower births and have more difficulties in life) What ever you do good or bad will come back to you. You will have to spend your earning (good or bad) If you go heaven due to your good karma, you will have move out once your good karma is spent. However moksha is escaping out of these cycle of birth and death and reach the God's abode permanently. You can attain mokshawhen you do not have any good or bad karma left unspent with you. But as human being you need to do some karma. hence do karma in service to God, in the name of God, not for yourself. Do not get attached your karma.

Answer 2

Lord Krishna has very clearly differentiated between heaven (swarga) and moksha. You go to heaven after doing good karma. In the heaven you get the things to be enjoyed by all the sensory organs. So as per Geeta there are ultimate earthly things in the heaven to be enjoyed by you. But then there is end to this enjoyment. After you utilize the fruits of good things that you have done, you come back eventually to the earth. That is you are reborn again. The moksha is the ultimate place of Lord Krishna, where from you do not get the rebirth. (8/16). (8/20). (8/21). Throughout the Geeta Lord Krishna talks about the moksha. But at no place he has said about that to what you get in the moksha. i mean, you do not get the things to be enjoyed there by your sensory organs. You get 'ultimate' happiness there, which 'never' ends. So the basic difference between heaven and moksha is that there is always end to the enjoyment of the heaven. There is no end to your stay to the house of Lord Krishna. So your stay within the moksha is never ending. (8/21). It is the 'permanent' solution to your problems. So the heaven to earth to heaven is a 'cyclical event' and moksha is 'infinite' state. (8/16). In the Geeta, Lord Krishna has refuted Vedas. Lord Krishna says that Vedas talk about the heaven and senseless people go after the heaven. (2/ 42, 43 and 44). At another place he has said that the birth and death cycles are the ultimate fears. (2/40). When you go to moksha, you get freedom from these ultimate fears. The Geeta is about how to go to the moksha. The people, who go after the three Vedas, do yadnyas (worshiping the holy fire). They do so with the intention of going to heaven. They go to the heaven. They go to heaven as a result of their good deeds. There they enjoy the subjects or objects of the sensory organs. (9/20). There they enjoy the very big heaven. After the utilization of the fruits of their good deeds, they 'come back' to the earth again. Like this the people, who fallow the Vedas and go after the objects of sensory organs, repeatedly go to the heaven and come back to the earth. (9/21). Those people, who worship the finite gods, goes to them. Those, who worship the ancestors, goes to them. Those, who worship the 'bhutas' go to them. Those, who worship Lord Krishna, goes to Lord Krishna only. That is why those who worship Lord Krishna are 'never' born again. (9/25). ( Here the God is 'infinite'. So when you go to Him, your happiness is 'never' ending. It is 'permanent'. You go to the heaven, you come back eventually. It is cyclical event and is not permanent.) ( The source is the book Bhagwadgeeta by Geeta press, Gorakhpur, which is available all over India.)