Page:Essays On The Gita - Ghose - 1922.djvu/161

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRIFICE.
153

by the sacrifice, offered to the gods and drunk by men. The offering itself is whatever working of his energy, physical.or psychological, is consecrated by him in action of body or action of mind to the gods or God, to the Self or to the universal powers, to one’s own higher Self or.to the Self in mankind and in all exis- tences.

This elaborate explanation of the Yajna sets out with a vast and comprehensive definition in which it is declared that theact and energy and materials of the sacrifice, the giver and receiver of the sacrifice, the goal and object of the sacrifice are all the one Brahman. * 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.” This then is the knowledge in which the liberated man has to do works of sacrifice. It is the knowledge declared of old in the great Vedantic utterances, “ Iam He,” “ All this verily is the Brabhman, Brahman is this Self.” It is the knowledge 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 know- ledge. The universal energy into which the action is poured is the Divine; the consecrated energy of the giv- ing is the Diviné; whatever is offered is only some form of the Divine; the giver of the offering is the Divine him- self 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 ard egoistically appro-

20