{"id":1385,"date":"2013-07-13T01:34:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1385"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:34:28","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:34:28","slug":"15-the-lord-of-the-sacrifice-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13\/15-the-lord-of-the-sacrifice-vol-13-essays-on-the-gita-volume-13","title":{"rendered":"-15_The Lord of the Sacrifice.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n
\n

\nT<\/font><\/span>HIRTEEN<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>The Lord of the Sacrifice<\/font><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

 \n<\/p>\n

\nW<\/font><\/span><\/b>E HAVE<\/font>, before we can proceed further, to gather up all
\nthat has been said in its main principles. The whole of the Gita’s gospel of
\nworks rests upon its idea of sacrifice and contains in fact the eternal
\nconnecting truth of God and the world and works. The human mind seizes
\nordinarily only fragmentary notions and standpoints of a many-sided eternal
\ntruth of existence and builds upon them its various theories of life and ethics
\nand religion, stressing this or that sign or appearance, but to some entirety
\nof it it must always tend to reawaken whenever it returns in an age of large
\nenlightenment to any entire and synthetic relation of its world-knowledge with
\nits God-knowledge and self-knowledge. The gospel of the Gita reposes upon this
\nfundamental Vedantic truth that all being is the one Brahman and all existence
\nthe wheel of Brahman, a divine movement opening out from God and returning to
\nGod. All is the expressive activity of Nature and Nature a power of the Divine
\nwhich works out the consciousness and will of the divine Soul master of her
\nworks and inhabitant of her forms. It is for his satisfaction that she descends
\ninto the absorption of the forms of things and the works of life and mind and
\nreturns again through mind and self-knowledge to the conscious possession of
\nthe Soul that dwells within her. There is first an involving of self and all it
\nis or means in an evolution of phenomena; there is afterwards an evolution of
\nself, a revelation of all it is and means, all that is hidden and yet suggested
\nby the phenomenal creation. This cycle of Nature could not be what it is but
\nfor the Purusha assuming and maintaining simultaneously three eternal poises
\neach of which is necessary to the totality of this action. It must manifest
\nitself in the mutable, and there we see it as the finite, the many, all
\nexistences, sarvabhūtāni<\/i>.
\nIt appears to us as the finite personality of these million creatures with
\ntheir <\/p>\n

\nPage 117<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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 infinite diversities and various
\nrelations and it appears to us behind these as the soul and force of the action
\nof the gods, \u2013 that is to say, the cosmic powers and qualities of the Divine
\nwhich preside over the workings of the life of the universe and constitute to
\nour perception different universal forms of the one Existence, or, it may be,
\nvarious self-statements of personality of the one supreme Person. Then, secret
\nbehind and within all forms and existences, we perceive too an immutable, an
\ninfinite, a timeless, an impersonal, a one unchanging spirit of existence, an
\nindivisible Self of all that is, in which all these many find themselves to be
\nreally one. And therefore by returning to that the active, finite personality
\nof the individual being discovers that it can release itself into a silent
\nlargeness of universality and the peace and poise of an immutable and
\nunattached unity with all that proceeds from and is supported by this
\nindivisible Infinite. Or even he may escape into it from individual existence.
\nBut the highest secret of all, uttamam
\nrahasyam<\/i>, is the Purushottama. This is the supreme Divine, God, who
\npossesses both the infinite and the finite and in whom the personal and the
\nimpersonal, the one Self and the many existences, being and becoming, the
\nworld-action and the supracosmic peace, pravrtti<\/i>
\nand nivrtti<\/i>, meet, are
\nunited, are possessed together and in each other. In God all things find their
\nsecret truth and their absolute reconciliation. <\/p>\n

All truth of
\nworks must depend upon the truth of being. All active existence must be in its
\ninmost reality a sacrifice of works offered by Prakriti to Purusha, Nature
\noffering to the supreme and infinite Soul the desire of the multiple finite
\nSoul within her. Life is an altar to which she brings her workings and the
\nfruits of her workings and lays them before whatever aspect of the Divinity the
\nconsciousness in her has reached for whatever result of the sacrifice the
\ndesire of the living soul can seize on as its immediate or its highest good.
\nAccording to the grade of consciousness and being which the soul has reached in
\nNature, will be the Divinity it worships, the delight which it seeks and the
\nhope for which it sacrifices. And in the movement of the mutable Purusha in
\nNature all is and must be interchange; for existence is one and its divisions
\nmust found themselves on <\/p>\n

\nPage 118<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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 some law of mutual dependence,
\neach growing by each and living by all. Where sacrifice is not willingly given,
\nNature exacts it by force, she satisfies the law of her living. A mutual giving
\nand receiving is the law of Life without which it cannot for one moment endure,
\nand this fact is the stamp of the divine creative Will on the world it has
\nmanifested in its being, the proof that with sacrifice as their eternal
\ncompanion the Lord of creatures has created all these existences. The universal
\nlaw of sacrifice is the sign that the world is of God and belongs to God and
\nthat life is his dominion and house of worship and not a field for the
\nself-satisfaction of the independent ego; not the fulfilment of the ego, \u2013 that
\nis only our crude and obscure beginning, \u2013 but the discovery of God, the
\nworship and seeking of the Divine and the Infinite through a constantly
\nenlarging sacrifice culminating in a perfect self-giving founded on a perfect
\nself-knowledge, is that to which the experience of life is at last intended to
\nlead. <\/p>\n

But the
\nindividual being begins with ignorance and persists long in ignorance. Acutely
\nconscious of himself he sees the ego as the cause and whole meaning of life and
\nnot the Divine. He sees himself as the doer of works and does not see that all
\nthe workings of existence including his own internal and external activities
\nare the workings of one universal Nature and nothing else. He sees himself as
\nthe enjoyer of works and imagines that for him all exists and him Nature ought
\nto satisfy and obey his personal will; he does not see that she is not at all
\nconcerned with satisfying him or at all careful of his will, but obeys a higher
\nuniversal will and seeks to satisfy a Godhead who transcends her and her works
\nand creations; his finite being, his will and his satisfactions are hers and
\nnot his, and she offers them at every moment as a sacrifice to the Divine of whose
\npurpose in her she makes all this the covert instrumentation. Because of this
\nignorance whose seal is egoism, the creature ignores the law of sacrifice and
\nseeks to take all he can for himself and gives only what Nature by her internal
\nand external compulsion forces him to give. He can really take nothing except
\nwhat she allows him to receive as his portion, what the divine Powers within
\nher yield to his desire. The egoistic soul in a world of sacrifice is as if a
\nthief or robber who takes what these Powers bring to him and has no mind to <\/p>\n

\nPage 119<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 give in return. He misses the
\ntrue meaning of life and, since he does not use life and works for the enlargement
\nand elevation of his being through sacrifice, he lives in vain. <\/p>\n

Only when the
\nindividual being begins to perceive and acknowledge in his acts the value of
\nthe self in others as well as the power and needs of his own ego, begins to
\nperceive universal Nature behind his own workings and through the cosmic godheads
\ngets some glimpse of the One and the Infinite, is he on his way to the
\ntranscendence of his limitation by the ego and the discovery of his soul. He
\nbegins to discover a law other than that of his desires, to which his desires
\nmust be more and more subordinated and subjected; he develops the purely
\negoistic into the understanding and ethical being. He begins to give more value
\nto the claims of the self in others and less to the claims of his ego; he
\nadmits the strife between egoism and altruism and by the increase of his
\naltruistic tendencies he prepares the enlargement of his own consciousness and
\nbeing. He begins to perceive Nature and divine Powers in Nature to whom he owes
\nsacrifice, adoration, obedience, because it is by them and by their law that
\nthe workings both of the mental and the material world are controlled, and he
\nlearns that only by increasing their presence and their greatness in his
\nthought and will and life can he himself increase his powers, knowledge, right
\naction and the satisfactions which these things bring to him. Thus he adds the
\nreligious and supraphysical to the material and egoistic sense of life and
\nprepares himself to rise through the finite to the Infinite. <\/p>\n

But this is only
\na long intermediate stage. It is still subject to the law of desire, to the
\ncentrality of all things in the conceptions and needs of his ego and to the
\ncontrol of his being as well as his works by Nature, though it is a regulated
\nand governed desire, a clarified ego and a Nature more and more subtilised and
\nenlightened by the sattwic, the highest natural principle. All this is still
\nwithin the domain, though the very much enlarged domain, of the mutable, finite
\nand personal. The real self-knowledge and consequently the right way of works
\nlies beyond; for the sacrifice done with knowledge is the highest sacrifice and
\nthat alone brings a perfect working. That can only come when he perceives that
\nthe self in him and the self in others are one being and this self is <\/p>\n

\nPage 120<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n
\n

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 something higher than the ego, an
\ninfinite, an impersonal, a universal existence in whom all move and have their
\nbeing, \u2013 when he perceives that all the cosmic gods to whom he offers his
\nsacrifice are forms of one infinite Godhead and when again, leaving all his
\nlimited and limiting conceptions of that one Godhead, he perceives him to be
\nthe supreme and ineffable Deity who is at once the finite and the infinite, the
\none self and the many, beyond Nature though manifesting himself through Nature,
\nbeyond limitation by qualities though formulating the power of his being
\nthrough infinite quality. This is the Purushottama to whom the sacrifice has to
\nbe offered, not for any transient personal fruit of works, but for the soul’s
\npossession of God and in order to live in harmony and union with the Divine. <\/p>\n

In other words,
\nman’s way to liberation and perfection lies through an increasing
\nimpersonality. It is his ancient and constant experience that the more he opens
\nhimself to the impersonal and infinite, to that which is pure and high and one
\nand common in all things and beings, the impersonal and infinite in Nature, the
\nimpersonal and infinite in life, the impersonal and infinite in his own
\nsubjectivity, the less he is bound by his ego and by the circle of the finite,
\nthe more he feels a sense of largeness, peace, pure happiness. The pleasure,
\njoy, satisfaction which the finite by itself can give or the ego in its own
\nright attain, is transitory, petty and insecure. To dwell entirely in the
\nego-sense and its finite conceptions, powers, satisfactions is to find this
\nworld for ever full of transience and suffering, anityam<\/i> asukham<\/i>; the
\nfinite life is always troubled by a certain sense of vanity for this
\nfundamental reason that the finite is not the whole or the highest truth of
\nlife; life is not entirely real until it opens into the sense of the infinite.
\nIt is for this reason that the Gita opens its gospel of works by insisting on
\nthe Brahmic consciousness, the impersonal life, that great object of the
\ndiscipline of the ancient sages. For the impersonal, the infinite, the One in
\nwhich all the impermanent, mutable, multiple activity of the world finds above
\nitself its base of permanence, security and peace, is the immobile Self, the
\nAkshara, the Brahman. If we see this, we shall see that to raise one’s
\nconsciousness and the poise of one’s being out of limited personality into this
\ninfinite and impersonal Brahman is the first <\/p>\n

\nPage 121<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 spiritual necessity. To see all beings
\nin this one Self is the knowledge which raises the soul out of egoistic
\nignorance and its works and results; to live in it is to acquire peace and firm
\nspiritual foundation. <\/p>\n

The way to bring
\nabout this great transformation follows a double path; for there is the way of
\nknowledge and there is the way of works, and the Gita combines them in a firm
\nsynthesis. The way of knowledge is to turn the understanding, the intelligent
\nwill away from its downward absorption in the workings of the mind and the
\nsenses and upward to the self, the Purusha or Brahman; it is to make it dwell
\nalways on the one idea of the one Self and not in the many-branching conceptions
\nof the mind and many-streaming impulses of desire. Taken by itself this path
\nwould seem to lead to the complete renunciation of works, to an immobile
\npassivity and to the severance of the soul from Nature. But in reality such an
\nabsolute renunciation, passivity and severance are impossible. Purusha and
\nPrakriti are twin principles of being which cannot be severed, and so long as
\nwe remain in Nature, our workings in Nature must continue, even though they may
\ntake a different form or rather a different sense from those of the
\nunenlightened soul. The real renunciation \u2013 for renunciation, sannyāsa<\/i>, there must be \u2013 is not
\nthe fleeing from works, but the slaying of ego and desire. The way is to
\nabandon attachment to the fruit of works even while doing them, and the way is
\nto recognise Nature as the agent and leave her to do her works and to live in
\nthe soul as the witness and sustainer, watching and sustaining her, but not
\nattached either to her actions or their fruits. The ego, the limited and
\ntroubled personality is then quieted and merged in the consciousness of the one
\nimpersonal Self, while the works of Nature continue to our vision to operate
\nthrough all these \u201cbecomings\u201d or existences who are now seen by us as living
\nand acting and moving, under her impulsion entirely, in this one infinite
\nBeing; our own finite existence is seen and felt to be only one of these and
\nits workings are seen and felt to be those of Nature, not of our real self
\nwhich is the silent, impersonal unity. The ego claimed them as its own doings
\nand therefore we thought them ours; but the ego is now dead and henceforth they
\nare no longer ours, but Nature’s. We have achieved by the <\/p>\n

\nPage 122<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 slaying of ego impersonality in
\nour being and consciousness; we have achieved by the renunciation of desire
\nimpersonality in the works of our nature. We are free not only in inaction, but
\nin action; our liberty does not depend on a physical and temperamental
\nimmobility and vacancy, nor do we fall from freedom directly we act. Even in a
\nfull current of natural action the impersonal soul in us remains calm, still
\nand free. <\/p>\n

The liberation
\ngiven by this perfect impersonality is real, is complete, is indispensable; but
\nis it the last word, the end of the whole matter? All life, all
\nworld-existence, we have said, is the sacrifice offered by Nature to the
\nPurusha, the one and secret soul in Nature, in whom all her workings take
\nplace; but its real sense is obscured in us by ego, by desire, by our limited,
\nactive, multiple personality. We have risen out of ego and desire and limited
\npersonality and by impersonality, its great corrective, we have found the
\nimpersonal Godhead; we have identified our being with the one self and soul in whom
\nall exist. The sacrifice of works continues, conducted not by ourselves any
\nlonger, but by Nature, \u2013 Nature operating through the finite part of our being,
\nmind, senses, body, \u2013 but in our infinite being. But to whom then is this
\nsacrifice offered and with what object? For the impersonal has no activity and
\nno desires, no object to be gained, no dependence for anything on all this
\nworld of creatures; it exists for itself, in its own self-delight, in its own
\nimmutable eternal being. We may have to do works without desire as a means in
\norder to reach this impersonal self-existence and self-delight, but, that
\nmovement once executed, the object of works is finished; the sacrifice is no
\nlonger needed. Works may even then continue because Nature continues and her
\nactivities; but there is no longer any further object in these works. The sole
\nreason for our continuing to act after liberation is purely negative; it is the
\ncompulsion of Nature on our finite parts of mind and body. But if that be all,
\nthen, first, works may well be whittled down and reduced to a minimum, may be
\nconfined to what Nature’s compulsion absolutely will have from our bodies; and
\nsecondly, even if there is no reduction to a minimum, \u2013 since action does not
\nmatter and inaction also is no object, \u2013 then the nature of the works also does
\nnot matter. Arjuna, once having <\/p>\n

\nPage 123<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 attained knowledge, may continue
\nto fight out the battle of Kurukshetra, following his old Kshatriya nature, or
\nhe may leave it and live the life of the Sannyasin, following his new
\nquietistic impulse. Which of these things he does, becomes quite indifferent;
\nor rather the second is the better way, since it will discourage more quickly
\nthe impulses of Nature which still have a hold on his mind owing to past
\ncreated tendency and, when his body has fallen from him, he will securely
\ndepart into the Infinite and Impersonal with no necessity of returning again to
\nthe trouble and madness of life in this transient and sorrowful world, anityam asukham imam lokam. <\/i><\/p>\n

If this were so,
\nthe Gita would lose all its meaning; for its first and central object would be
\ndefeated. But the Gita insists that the nature of the action does matter and
\nthat there is a positive sanction for continuance in works, not only that one quite
\nnegative and mechanical reason, the objectless compulsion of Nature. There is
\nstill, after the ego has been conquered, a divine Lord and enjoyer of the
\nsacrifice, bhoktāram<\/i> yaj\u00f1atapasām<\/i>, and there is still an
\nobject in the sacrifice. The impersonal Brahman is not the very last word, not
\nthe utterly highest secret of our being; for impersonal and personal, finite and
\ninfinite turn out to be only two opposite, yet concomitant aspects of a divine
\nBeing unlimited by these distinctions who is both these things at once. God is
\nan ever unmanifest Infinite ever self-impelled to manifest himself in the
\nfinite; he is the great impersonal Person of whom all personalities are partial
\nappearances; he is the Divine who reveals himself in the human being, the Lord
\nseated in the heart of man. Knowledge teaches us to see all beings in the one
\nimpersonal self, for so we are liberated from the separative ego-sense, and
\nthen through this delivering impersonality to see them in this God, ātmani<\/i> atho<\/i> mayi<\/i>, \u201cin the Self
\nand then in Me.\u201d Our ego, our limiting personalities stand in the way of our
\nrecognising the Divine who is in all and in whom all have their being; for,
\nsubject to personality, we see only such fragmentary aspects of Him as the
\nfinite appearances of things suffer us to seize. We have to arrive at him not
\nthrough our lower personality, but through the high, infinite and impersonal
\npart of our being, and that we find by becoming this self one in all in <\/p>\n

\nPage 124<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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 whose existence the whole world
\nis comprised. This infinite containing, not excluding all finite appearances,
\nthis impersonal admitting, not rejecting all individualities and personalities,
\nthis immobile sustaining, pervading, containing, not standing apart from all
\nthe movement of Nature, is the clear mirror in which the Divine will reveal His
\nbeing. Therefore it is to the Impersonal that we have first to attain; through
\nthe cosmic deities, through the aspects of the finite alone the perfect
\nknowledge of God cannot be totally obtained. But neither is the silent
\nimmobility of the impersonal Self, conceived as shut into itself and divorced
\nfrom all that it sustains, contains and pervades, the whole all-revealing
\nall-satisfying truth of the Divine. To see that we have to look through its
\nsilence to the Purushottama, and he in his divine greatness possesses both the
\nAkshara and the Kshara; he is seated in the immobility, but he manifests
\nhimself in the movement and in all the action of cosmic Nature; to him even
\nafter liberation the sacrifice of works in Nature continues to be offered. <\/p>\n

The real goal of
\nthe Yoga is then a living and self-completing union with the divine
\nPurushottama and is not merely a self-extinguishing immergence in the
\nimpersonal Being. To raise our whole existence to the Divine Being, to dwell in
\nhim (mayyeva nivasisyasi<\/i>), to
\nbe at one with him, unify our consciousness with his, to make our fragmentary
\nnature a reflection of his perfect nature, to be inspired in our thought and
\nsense wholly by the divine knowledge, to be moved in will and action utterly
\nand faultlessly by the divine will, to lose desire in his love and delight, is
\nman’s perfection; it is that which the Gita describes as the highest secret. It
\nis the true goal and the last sense of human living and the highest step in our
\nprogressive sacrifice of works. For he remains to the end the master of works
\nand the soul of sacrifice. <\/p>\n

\nPage 125<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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