The Synthesis of Yoga - Sri Aurobindo Ashram

The Sacrifice and the Lord of the Sacrifice 109
is not one’s self, but the band of the spirit’s inner enemies that
we have to discourage, expel, slay upon the altar of the growth
of the spirit; these can be ruthlessly excised, whose names are
desire, wrath, inequality, greed, attachment to outward pleasures
and pains, the cohort of usurping demons that are the cause of
the soul’s errors and sufferings. These should be regarded not
as part of oneself but as intruders and perverters of our self’s
real and diviner nature; these have to be sacrificed in the harsher
sense of the word, whatever pain in going they may throw by
reflection on the consciousness of the seeker.
But the true essence of sacrifice is not self-immolation, it
is self-giving; its object not self-effacement, but self-fulfilment;
its method not self-mortification, but a greater life, not selfmutilation,
but a transformation of our natural human parts
into divine members, not self-torture, but a passage from a lesser
satisfaction to a greater Ananda. There is only one thing painful
in the beginning to a raw or turbid part of the surface nature;
it is the indispensable discipline demanded, the denial necessary
for the merging of the incomplete ego. But for that there can
be a speedy and enormous compensation in the discovery of a
real greater or ultimate completeness in others, in all things, in
the cosmic oneness, in the freedom of the transcendent Self and
Spirit, in the rapture of the touch of the Divine. Our sacrifice
is not a giving without any return or any fruitful acceptance
from the other side; it is an interchange between the embodied
soul and conscious Nature in us and the eternal Spirit. For even
though no return is demanded, yet there is the knowledge deep
within us that a marvellous return is inevitable. The soul knows
that it does not give itself to God in vain; claiming nothing, it
yet receives the infinite riches of the divine Power and Presence.
Last, there is to be considered the recipient of the sacrifice
and the manner of the sacrifice. The sacrifice may be offered to
others or it may be offered to divine Powers; it may be offered to
the cosmic All or it may be offered to the transcendent Supreme.
The worship given may take any shape from the dedication of a
leaf or flower, a cup of water, a handful of rice, a loaf of bread,
to consecration of all that we possess and the submission of all