Essays on the Gita, First Series (Arya Publishing House, 1922)
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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SACRIFICE the worker to the true executrix of all works, Prakriti, and his personal sense of being the enjoyer to the Divine Purusha, the higher and universal Self who is the real enjoyer of the works of Prakriti. In Aat Self. „and not in any personal en joymejiL be finds now his sole_ satisfaction, complete content, pure delight ; he has nothing. _to gain by action or inaction, depends neither on gods nor men for anything, seeks no profit from any, for the self- delight is all-sufficient to him, but does works for the sake of the Divine only, as_a_ pure sacrifice, mj^ut attachment or d esire^ . Thus he^^ains equality and becomes free from the modes of 5Jature, nistr aigunya ; his soul takes its poise^ not inTthe insecurity oTTrakriti, but in the peace of the immutable Brahman, even while his actions continue in the movement of Prakriti. Thus is sacrjfige^ his way of attaining, to the Highest.
That this i s the sense of the passage is made cl ear im what follows, by t^_^rmation of loka- sangraha as the object of works, of Prakriti~as the sole doer of works and the divine Purusha as their equal upholder, to whom works have to be given up jeyen in their doing, — this inner giving up of worl^ and yet physical doing of them is the culmination of sacrifice, — and by the affirmation that the result of such active sacrifice with an equal and desir eless mind i s liberatio n froin tHe bondage. of Ja^orks. “He ^o is satisfied with whatever gain comes to him and equal in failure and success, is not bound even when he acts. When a man liberated, free from attachment, acts for sacrifice, all his action is dissolved,’' leaves, t^^t.is tq^say, no result drafter-impression on his free,_pure, perfect and ^ual, §ouL- To these passages we shall have to return. They are followed by a perfectly explicit and detailed interpretation of the meaning of yajna in the language of the Gita which leaves no doubt at all about the symbolic use of the words and the psychological character of the sacrifice enjoined by this teaching. In the ancient Vedic system, .xhere was„ always a double sense physical and. psychologi- cal, outward and symboliCt^ihe exXerior form of the sacrifice and the inner meaning of all. its circums- tances. But the secret symbolism of the ancient Vedic mystics, exact, curious, poetic, psychological, had been long forgotten by this time and it is now replaced by another, large, general and philosophical in the spirit of Vedanta and a later Yoga. The fire of sacrifice, agni, is no material flame, but brahmdgni, the fire of the Brahman, or it is the Brahman-ward energy, inner Agni, priest of the sacrifice, into which the offering is poured ; the fire is self-control, or it is a purified sense-action or kis the vital energy in that discipline of the control of the vital being through the control of the breath which is common to Rajayoga and Hathayoga, or it is the fjie of self-knowledge, the |[ame._pf,.the supreme sacrifice. The food eaten as the leavings of the sacrifice is, it is explained, ''Ae jiectar of immortality, amrita, left over from the offering; and here we have still something of the old Vedic
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