FOURTH CHAPTER

3. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRIFICE

(The Gita now proceeds to give an elaborate explanation of the meaning of Yajna which leaves no doubt at all about the symbolic use of the words and the psychological character of the sacrifice enjoined "by this teaching.)

24. Brahman is the giving, Brahman is the food-offering, by Brahman it is offered into the Brahman-fire, Brahman is that which is to be attained by samadhi in Brahman-action.¹

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1. This then is the knowledge in which the liberated man I has to do works of sacrifice. It is the knowledge declared of old in the great Vedantic utterances, "I am He", "All this verily is the Brahman, Brahman is this Self." It is the know- ledge of the entire unity; it is the One manifest as the doer and the deed and the object of works, knower and knowledge and the object of knowledge. The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giving is the Divine; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine himself in man; the action, the work, the sacrifice is itself the Divine in movement, in activity; the goal to be reached by sacrifice is the Divine. For the man who has this knowledge and lives and acts in it, there can be no binding works, no personal and egoistically appropriated action; there is only the divine Purusha acting by the divine Prakriti in His own being, offering everything into the fire of His self-conscious cosmic energy, while the knowledge and the possession of His divine existence and consciousness by the soul unified with Him is the goal of all this God-directed movement and activity. To know that and to live and act in this unifying consciousness is to be free.

But all even of the Yogins have not attained to this knowledge

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25. Some Yogins follow after the sacrifice which is of the gods; others offer the sacrifice by the sacrifice itself into the Brahman-fire.¹

26.Some² offer hearing and the other senses into the fires of control, others offer sound and the other objects of sense into the fires of sense.

27. And others offer all the actions of the sense and all the actions of the vital force into the fire of the Yoga of self-control kindled by knowledge.³

28. The offering of the striver after perfection may be material and physical (dravyayajna, like that consecrated in worship by the devotee to his deity), or it may be the austerity of his self-discipline and energy of his soul directed to some high aim, tapo-yajna, or it may be some form of Yoga (like the Pranayama of the Raja-yog ns and Hatha-yogins, or any other yoga-yajna); or it may be the offering of reading and knowledge.

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1. Those who follow after the sacrifice of the gods, conceive of the Divine in various forms and powers and seek him by various means, ordinances, dharmas, laws or, as we might say, settled rites of action, self-discipline, consecrated works; but for those who have the knowledge, the simple fact of sacrifice, of offering whatever work to the Divine itself, of casting all, their activities into the unified divine consciousness and energy, is their one means, their one dharma.

2. The means of sacrifice are various; the offerings are of many kinds. There is the psychological sacrifice of self-control and self-discipline which leads to the higher self-possession and self-knowledge. There is the discipline which receives the objects of sense-perception without allowing the mind to be disturbed or affected by its sense-activities, the senses them- selves becoming pure fires of sacrifice; there is the discipline which stills the senses so that the soul in its purity may appear from behind the veil of mind-action, calm and still.

3 There is the discipline by which, when the self is known, all the actions of the sense-perceptions and all the actions of the vital being are received into that one still and tranquil soul

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of his soul directed to some high aim, tapo-yajna, or it may be some form of Yoga (like the Pranayama of the Raja-yogins and Hatha-yog ns, or any other yog a-yajna); or it may be the offering of reading and knowledge.

29. Others again who are devoted to controlling the breath, having restrained the Prana (the outgoing breath) and Apana (the incoming breath) pour as sacrifice Prana into Apana and Apana into Prana.

30. Others having regulated the food pour as sacrifice their life-breaths into life-breaths. All these are knowers of sacrifice and by sacrifice have destroyed their sins.¹

31. They who enjoy the nectar of immortality left over from the sacrifice attain to the eternal Brahman; this world is not for him who doeth not sacrifice, how then any other world?²

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1 All these tend to the purification of the being; all sacrifice is a way towards the attainment of the highest. The one thing needful, the saving principle constant in all these variations, is to subordinate the lower activities, to diminish the control of desire and replace it by a superior energy, to abandon the purely egoistic enjoyment for that diviner delight which comes by sacrifice, by self-dedication, by self-mastery, by the giving up of one's lower impulses to a greater and higher aim.

2 Sacrifice is the law of the world and nothing can be gained without it, neither mastery here, nor the possession of heavens beyond, nor the supreme possession of all.

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32. Therefore all¹ these and many other forms of sacrifice have been extended in the mouth of the Brahman (the mouth of that Fire which receives all offerings). Know thou that all these are born of work² and so knowing thou that shalt be free.

33. The sacrifice of knowledge, O Parantapa, is greater than any material sacrifice. Knowledge is that in which all this action culminates (not any lower knowledge, but the highest self-knowledge and God -knowledge), O Partha!

34. Learn that by worshipping the feet of the teacher, by questioning and by service; the men of knowledge who have seen (not those who know merely by the intellect) the true principles of things, will instruct thee in knowledge.

35. Possessing that knowledge thou shalt not fall again into the mind's ignorance, O Pandava; for by this, thou shalt see all existences without exception in the Self,³ then Me.

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1 They are all means and forms of the one great Existence' in activity, means by which the action of the human being can be. offered -up to That of which his outward existence is a part and with which his inmost self is one.

2 All these proceed from and are ordained by the one vast energy of the Divine which manifests itself in the universal Kama and makes all the cosmic activity a progressive offering to the one Self and Lord and of which the last stage for the human being is self-knowledge and the possession of the divine or Brahmic consciousness. But there are gradations in the range of these various forms of sacrifice.

3 For the Self is that one, immutable, all-pervading, all- containing, self-existent reality or Brahman hidden behind our mental being into which our consciousness widens out when it

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36. Even if thou art the greatest doer of sin beyond all sinners, thou shalt cross over all the crookedness of evil in the ship of knowledge.

37. As a fire kindled turns to ashes its fuel, O Arjuna, so the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes.

38. There is nothing in the world equal in purity to knowledge,¹ the man who is perfected by Yoga, finds it of himself 1 in the self by the course of Time.

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is liberated from the ego; we come to see all beings as becomings, bhutani, within that one self-existence. But this Self or immutable Brahman we see too to be the self-presentation to our essential psychological consciousness of a supreme Being who is the source of our existence and of whom all that is mutable or immutable is the manifestation. He is God, the Divine, the Purushottama. To Him we offer everything as a sacrifice; into His hands we give up our actions; in His existence we live and move; unified with Him in our nature and with all existences in Him, we become one soul and one power of being with Him and with all beings; with His supreme reality we identify and unite our self-being. By works done for sacrifice, eliminating desire, we arrive at knowledge and at the soul's possession of itself; by works done in self-knowledge and God-knowledge we are liberated into the unity, peace and joy of the divine existence.

1 Yoga and knowledge are, in this early part of the Gita's teaching, the two wings of the soul's ascent. By Yoga is meant union through divine works done without desire, with equality of soul to all things and all men, as a sacrifice to the Supreme, while knowledge is that on which this desirelessness, this equality, this power of sacrifice is founded. The two wings indeed assist each other's flight; acting together, yet with a subtle alternation of mutual aid, like the two eyes in a man which see together because they see alternately, they increase

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39. Who has faith, who has conquered and controlled the mind and senses, who has fixed his whole conscious being on the supreme Reality, he attains knowledge; and having attained knowledge he has swiftly to the supreme Peace.

40. The ingnorant who has not faith,² the soul of doubt goeth to perdition; neither this world, nor the supreme world nor any happiness is for the soul full of doubts.

41. He who has destroyed all doubt by knowledge and has by Yoga given up all works and is in

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one another mutually by interchange of substance. As the works grow more and more desireless, equal-minded, sacrificial in spirit, the knowledge increases: with the increase of the knowledge the soul becomes firmer in the desireless, sacrificial equality of its works.

1 The knowledge grows within him and he grows into it as-- he goes on increasing in desirelessness, in equality, in devotion to the Divine. It is only of the supreme knowledge that this can altogether be said; the knowledge which the intellect of man amasses, is gathered laboriously by the senses and the reason from outside. To get tins other knowledge, self-existent, intuitive, self-experiencing, self-revealing, we must have self- control and faith (Shraddha).

2 We must have a faith which no intellectual doubt can be allowed to disturb. In fact, it is true that without faith nothing decisive can be achieved either in this world or for possession of the world above, and that it is only by laying hold of some sure basis and positive support that man can attain any measure of terrestrial or celestial success and satisfaction and happiness; the merely sceptical mind loses itself in the void.

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possession of the Self is not bound by his works,¹ O Dhananjaya

42. Therefore, having cut asunder with the sword of knowledge this doubt ² that has arisen out of ignorance and abides in the heart, resort to Yoga, do thou stand up, O Bharata.”

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1. When the Gita says that all the totality of work finds its completion in knowledge or that the fire of knowledge turns all works to ashes, it is not at all meant that there is cessation from works, What is meant by the Gita is made clear in this sloka; the man of Yoga and knowledge is not bound by his works.

2. In the lower knowledge doubt and scepticism have their temporary uses; in the higher they are stumbling-blocks: for there the whole secret is not the balancing of truth and error, but a constantly progressing realisation of revealed truth. It is not a truth which has to be proved, but a truth which has to be lived inwardly, a greater reality into which we have to grow. Finally,- it is in itself a self-existent truth and would be self- evident if it were not for the sorceries of the ignorance in which we live; the doubts, the perplexities which prevent us from accepting and following it, arise from that ignorance, from the sense-bewildered, opinion-perplexed heart and mind, living as they do in a lower and phenomenal truth and therefore questioning the higher realities, ajnanasambhutam hritstham sanshayam. They have to be cut away by the sword of knowledge, says the Gita, by the knowledge that realises, by resorting constantly to Yoga, that is by living out the union with the Supreme whose truth being known all is known, yasmin vijnate' sarvam vijnatam.

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