Essays on the Gita

The Significance of Sacrifice 117guṇas, first qualities or modes of Nature, traiguṇyaviṣayāvedāḥ.This Brahman or Divine in the workings of Nature is born, aswe may say, out of the Akshara, the immutable Purusha, theSelf who stands above all the modes or qualities or workings ofNature, nistraiguṇya. The Brahman is one but self-displayed intwo aspects, the immutable Being and the creator and originatorof works in the mutable becoming, ātman, sarvabhūtāni; itisthe immobile omnipresent Soul of things and it is the spiritualprinciple of the mobile working of things, Purusha poised inhimself and Purusha active in Prakriti; it is akṣara and kṣara. Inboth of these aspects the Divine Being, Purushottama, manifestshimself in the universe; the immutable above all qualities is Hispoise of peace, self-possession, equality, samaṁ brahma; fromthat proceeds His manifestation in the qualities of Prakriti andtheir universal workings; from the Purusha in Prakriti, from thisBrahman with qualities, proceed all the works 1 of the universalenergy, Karma, in man and in all existences; from that workproceeds the principle of sacrifice. Even the material interchangebetween gods and men proceeds upon this principle, as typifiedin the dependence of rain and its product food on this workingand on them the physical birth of creatures. For all the workingof Prakriti is in its true nature a sacrifice, yajña, with the DivineBeing as the enjoyer of all energisms and works and sacrificeand the great Lord of all existences, bhoktāraṁ yajñatapasāṁsarvaloka-maheśvaram, and to know this Divine all-pervadingand established in sacrifice, sarvagataṁ yajñe pratiṣṭhitam, isthe true, the Vedic knowledge.1 That this is the right interpretation results also from the opening of the eighth chapterwhere the universal principles are enumerated, akṣara (brahma), svabhāva, karma, kṣarabhāva, puruṣa, adhiyajña. Akshara is the immutable Brahman, spirit or self, Atman;swabhava is the principle of the self, adhyātma, operative as the original nature of thebeing, “own way of becoming”, and this proceeds out of the self, the Akshara; Karmaproceeds from that and is the creative movement, visarga, which brings all natural beingsand all changing subjective and objective shapes of being into existence; the result ofKarma therefore is all this mutable becoming, the changes of nature developed outof the original self-nature, kṣara bhāva out of svabhāva; Purusha is the soul, the divineelement in the becoming, adhidaivata, by whose presence the workings of Karma becomea sacrifice, yajña, to the Divine within; adhiyajña is this secret Divine who receives thesacrifice.