Cover Story

Sacrifice - Annie Besant and Bhagavan Das

As far-reaching as the Law of Karma is the Law of Sacrifice, the law by which the worlds were built, the law by which they are maintained. All lives can only be supported by absorbing other lives:

Life is sustained by life only; all forms can only be preserved by absorbing other forms. Sacrifice permeates all religion as it permeates the universe. Says Sri Krishna:

‘This world is not for the non-sacrificer: How then the other? O best of the Kurus!’

The Sanatana Dharma has incorporated this law into its very essence; all the Srutis declare it; all the Smrtis inculcate it; the Puranas and the Itihasas are full of it; the Sadangas circle round it; the six Darsanas lay it down as the pathway to be trodden here knowledge can be gained.

We shall see in Part II how sacrifices pervade the whole life of the true Aryan; we are here concerned with the general principle, not with the specific application.

Creation began with sacrifice:

‘Om! The dawn verily is the head of the sacrificial horse.’

The dawn is explained as the beginning of the Day of Brahma, the day of creation. Then is the great horse sacrifice, the horse whose body is the universe, the sacrifice of the One who carries the Many — devas, gandharvas, asuras, men — as the next sloka says. And then the Upanishad goes on to describe the beyond, when there was not anything, and the building of the universe.

So also in the Rig Veda the splendid Purusa-sukta describing the sacrificial slaying of Purusa (X. 90) tells how all creatures were formed by one-fourth of Him offered up as ‘victim’ in `that great general sacrifice’, three-fourths remaining in heaven as the Eternal Life.

The great sacrifice involved in creation is beautifully described in the Satapatha Brahmana:

‘Brahman, the Self-existent, performed tapas. He considered: "In tapas there is no infinity. Come, let me sacrifice myself in living things and all living things in myself." Then having sacrificed himself in all living things and all living things in himself, he acquired greatness, self-effulgence and lordship.’

Manu also declares that Brahma created ‘the eternal sacrifice’ before He drew forth the Veda. (MS, I. 22).

This profound teaching, that Isvara sacrificed Himself in order to create His universe, means that He limited Himself in matter, technically died, in order that His life might produce and sustain a multiplicity of separate lives. Every life in His universe is a part of His life ‘a portion of Myself’, mamaivamsah (BG, XV. 7). Without this sacrifice, the universe could not come into existence. As a fourth part only of Purusa is said to suffice for the bringing forth of all beings, so Sri Krishna says:

‘Having pervaded all this universe with a portion of Myself, I remain.’ (Ibid., X. 42).

Isvara is far more than His universe, but it is wholly contained in Him, lives in His life, is composed of His substance.

Sri Krishna tells how Prajapati ‘having emanated mankind together with sacrifice’ (saha yajnah prajah srstva: Ibid., III. 10), bade man find in sacrifice his Kama-duh, the cow whence each could milk the objects he desired. So action is essentially rooted in sacrifice:

‘The pouring out which caused the birth of beings is called karma.’ ‘The pouring out’ is the pouring out of life, which alone enabled separate beings to live, and this pouring out is that same sacrifice described in the Purusa-sukta. So thoroughly has this been recognized that karma has become the general name for sacrifices, and Karmakanda is the name which covers all sacrificial rites.

The essential idea of sacrifice, then, is the pouring out of life for the benefit of others; such pouring out is the law by which life evolves: It is imposed on the lower creation by strife and continual combats; its voluntary acceptance by self-sacrifice is the crowning glory of man. Hence all man’s higher evolution is marked out by self-sacrifice, by sacrificing himself and all his actions to the Supreme, man obtains liberation.

‘Whatsoever thou doest, whatsoever thou eatest, whatsoever thou offerest, whatsoever thou givest, whatsoever thou doest of austerity, O Kaunteya, do thou that as an offering unto Me.’

‘Thus thou shalt be liberated from the bonds of action yielding good and evil fruits.’

Let us see how the Law of Sacrifice is seen in the physical world.

The life in the mineral kingdom evolves as the mineral forms in which it dwells are broken up to nourish plants of every kind. The mineral forms perish to feed the life in the vegetable kingdom, and the life in the mineral forms has grown more complex and developed by this sacrifice.

The life in the vegetable kingdom evolves by the sacrifice of the lower plants to nourish the higher, the countless annual plants perishing to enrich the soil in which trees grow. Myriads of others are eaten by animals, and their forms go to build up animal bodies in which the life has fuller scope.

The life in part of the animal kingdom evolves by the sacrifice again of the lower forms to the higher, and also to the maintenance of the human kingdom, within which also the weak are devoured by the strong in the savage state. But here gradually, with increasing development of the animals to keen sensibility, and with the development of conscience and sympathy in man, another form of the law appears, and man begins to refuse to sacrifice to the support of his own life those who share with him the feelings of pleasure and pain. He first revolts against cannibalism — eating his own kind — and then against eating his weaker brothers in the animal kingdom. He realizes that the divine nature in him develops by sacrifice of himself to others, and not by the sacrifice of others to himself. He lessens as much as he can his demands on the lives of others, and increases as much as he can his own sacrifices for them. So long as a man identifies himself with his body, he is always trying to take, to absorb, because the body continues only by such taking and absorbing. When he identifies himself as the Self, he is always trying to give, to pour out, because the joy of the Self is in forth-pouring. On the pravrtti-marga he takes; on the nivrtti-marga he gives. Thus evolves the life of man.

The alphabet of the lesson of sacrifice was taught to man by the rishis who watched over the Aryan race in its infancy. They did not attempt to teach men the full lesson of self-surrender, but merely laid down for them a system of sacrifices, in which they should sacrifice some of their possessions with a view to their large increase in the future; the firm grasp with which a man grips the objects, on the maintenance of which his life in the body depends, was slowly loosened by the sacrifice of some of them, the return for this not being immediate but lying in the future.

‘O Kings! Indra, Varuna, to this our sacrifice be ye turned by offerings and homage: . . .

‘O Indra, Varuna, plenteous wealth and food and blessing give us: `…This my song may it reach Indra, Varuna, and by its force bring sons and offspring.’ (RV, VII. 84. 1, 4, 5).

Such prayers are found on every page of the Samhitas, and thus were men taught to sacrifice what they valued for a future gain.

By these sacrifices they were also taught to see that man is part of a great whole, and related to all around him; and that as his own life was maintained by the sacrifice of other lives, so must he repay that debt by sacrificing to others some of his possessions, sacrificing to the devas in the fire which was ‘the mouth of the Gods’, or ‘the eater of food’ (Br A Up, I 4, 6), and to men by charitable gifts. In this way the sense of obligation was impressed on them, and the interdependence of lives.

The next step was to train them to sacrifice these same possessions, immediately valuable, for happiness on the other side of death, a far-off invisible reward; ‘let him sacrifice who desireth Svarga.’

‘Whoever works (sacrifices), pouring libations into the shining of these [the seven flames previously mentioned], at the proper time, him these sun rays lead where dwells the one Lord of the devas.

‘Saying to him Come, come, these resplendent libations carry the sacrificer by the sun ray, worshipping him and saying the sweet words: This is your pure well-deserved Brahman-world.’

A great step forward was made in this sacrificing of the visible to the invisible, of the present to a far-off future. But the object of this training in sacrifices was no more the enjoyment of Svarga than the enjoyment of wealth on earth. They had learned to curb their greed for possessions by the practice of giving, and to recognize themselves as owing their lives to the larger life around them; they were thus prepared for the third stage, that of sacrifice as duty, for which no reward should be sought.

Men now began to see that the sacrifice of the lower to the higher was ‘right’, a duty that was owed in return for the perpetual sacrifice of the higher to the lower, of the life of Isvara for the maintenance of His children; and further that the body also owed a debt to the lower creatures who supported it, that ought to be paid by helping and serving them in turn. Then they were ready for the lesson:

‘Thy business is with the action only, never with its fruits; let not the fruit of action be thy motive, nor be thou to inaction attached.

‘Perform action, O Dhanamjaya, established in Yoga, having renounced attachment.’ (BG, II. 47-8).

The wheel of life which is ever turning, this interdependence of lives, being thoroughly understood, men see it as an obvious duty to help in the turning, and readily see the unworthiness of trying to live without doing their share of work:

‘He who on earth does not follow the wheel thus revolving, sinful of life and rejoicing in the senses, he, O Partha! Liveth in vain.’ (Ibid., III. 16)

This, practiced for long, led up to the last lesson, the complete self-surrender of the man to Isvara, recognizing himself only as an instrument of the Divine Will carrying out in the physical world the purposes of that will.

‘Merge manas in Me, be My devotee, sacrifice to Me, worship Me, thou shalt come to Me; I pledge thee My troth; thou art dear to Me. Abandoning all dharmas, come unto Me alone for shelter.’

Thenceforth the whole life is a sacrifice, and the man lives only to do the Divine Will. Hence he abandons all separate dharmas as dharmas, as having over him no binding force. He has but the one Dharma of carrying out the Divine Will, and if he fulfils all family and other relationships more perfectly than he ever did before, it is not because they in themselves bind him, but because Isvara having placed him amid these surroundings as part of Himself, as His representative, he must fully meet all the necessities of the case in this representative character.

During this long training, men were gradually led to see that outer sacrifices of wealth were less valuable than inner sacrifices of virtue, and that the purification of the heart and mind were of more real importance than the external purifications. While these should not be neglected, the neglect of the other was fatal.

He who has the forty-two samskaras but not the eight virtues of the Self will not obtain Brahman nor will go to Brahmaloka. But he, who has only a part of the forty-two samskaras but the eight virtues of the Self, will attain to Brahman and go to Brahmaloka.’ (Gautama Dharma Sutra, VIII. 22-3).

The object of sacrifice is purification, and this has been insisted on over and over again. Says Sri Krishna:

Flowery speech is uttered by the foolish, rejoicing in the letter of the Vedas, O Partha, saying, There is naught but this.

‘With kama for self, with Svarga for goal, they offer rebirth as the fruit of action, and prescribe many and various ceremonies for the attainment of pleasure and lordship.

‘To those who cling to pleasure and lordship, whose minds are captivated by such, cometh not this determinate reason, on samadhi steadily bent.’

And again:

‘Better than the sacrifice of any objects is the sacrifice of wisdom, O Paramtapa . . .

‘Verily there is no purifier in this world like wisdom.’

Bhishma speaking of truth and declaring it to be sacrifice of a high order, says:

‘[Once upon a time] a thousand horse-sacrifices and truth were weighed against each other in the balance. Truth weighed heavier than a thousand horse-sacrifices.’ (MB, Santi Parva, 162. 26)

With regard to abstention from cruelty he says:

‘Gifts made in all sacrifices, ablutions performed in all sacred waters, and the merit acquired by making all the possible kinds of gifts — all these do not come up to abstention from cruelty. The penances of a man that abstains from cruelty are inexhaustible. The man who abstains from cruelty is regarded as always performing sacrifices.’ (MB, Anusasana Parva, 116. 40-1)

To destroy the sense of separateness is to gain the ultimate fruit of all sacrifices — purification and union with the Supreme. This is the road along which the great rishis have led the true followers of the Sanatana Dharma.

The points to be remembered are:

The world was created and is maintained by a Divine Sacrifice.

Sacrifice is essentially giving, pouring forth.

Sacrifice is the law of evolution; compulsory in the lower kingdoms, becoming voluntary in the human.

Man rises by definite stages from vaidika sacrifices to self-sacrifice.

Sacrifices of virtue and wisdom are more effective than the sacrifices of external objects.

<< Back