Bhagavad Gita 4.36
अपि चेदसि पापेभ्यः सर्वेभ्यः पापकृत्तमः । सर्वं ज्ञानप्लवेनैव वृजिनं सन्तरिष्यसि ॥
api ced asi pāpebhyaḥ sarvebhyaḥ pāpa-kṛttamaḥ | sarvaṃ jñāna-plavenaiva vṛjinaṃ santariṣyasi ||
Translation
Even if you were the very worst of sinners among all sinners, you would yet cross over all this evil by the bark of knowledge alone.
Reflection
What past of yours have you been arguing was too heavy for the practice to lift?
Read this verse in its chapter: Chapter Four
Pāpa-kṛttamaḥ. The most evil-doing of all. Jñāna-plavena, by the boat of knowledge. The verse is the chapter's most generous moment toward the failed student. Whatever the wreckage, the boat of knowing carries across. The image is precise: not a healing, not a forgetting, but a crossing. The wreckage stays where it is; the man is no longer on that bank. Aurobindo reads this as the verse to remember when the past feels like an argument against the practice. The verse pre-empts the argument.