Bhagavagd Gita - Session 28- Track 2803

But uncle just now, before ending I didn’t know that you were going to tackle this question again, and she came up with the question that I would like to understand: ‘what is offering to the Divine’.

Oh! That is a marvellous question.

It is a beautiful question it was just what you were going to answer, because then we could understand the offering in entirety.

‘Offering’ is basically a process in which the ‘object’ returns to the ‘subject’. We are all objects, multiple faces of the Divine; therefore we are all objects of the divine consciousness which is the subject. The supreme Lord is the supreme subject and all of us are His objective faces. You can compare it with any other analogy like: yourself seeing yourself in a mirror. So ‘you’ standing before the mirror is the ‘subject’; what is reflected in the mirror is opposite to you therefore it is an ‘object’. It is in the same way…it is as if the Divine creates a mirror of Himself and in the mirror He reflects Himself so all of us are actually faces of the Divine: each one of us is a face of the Divine. But since we are a face facing God, we call ourselves ‘objects’ so we are objective faces of God, multiple faces of the Divine. We are ‘objects’ because we confront the ‘subject’; everything is an object which confronts: confronts means that which ‘stand in front’ of somebody else is called ‘confronting’. So, the Divine as it were is on this side and we are on the other side: actually the Divine Himself is on the other side but in this form. Now, considering that our position is on the opposite side of God, we look at God from the opposite side: it is not as God looks at Himself, by Himself in Himself; it is as it were God seeing Himself from opposite side.

Now, this ‘observing’ the Divine from the opposite side is the fundamental meaning of ‘offering’. To look at the Divine, looking itself is an offering: you ‘agree’ to look at the Divine. Even that, you might say, ‘agree’ is not a correct word, because you are created…your whole function…your being…the very fact that you are put forth by the Divine is for the sake of the play, and in that play you are automatically play the game of looking at the Divine: so, it is not as if you would look at Him or not. It is God who has put you in the front before Himself because He wants to look at Himself from the other side: so you will always look at Him. Therefore ‘offering’ is automatic. But ‘the act of looking at the Divine’ is the basic function of ‘offering’.

When you say ‘offering’ it means what? You look at the Divine, it is a basic thing: look at the Divine, this itself is enough. But when you look at the Divine, the Divine is free to act with you, and He may smile, He may offer His hand, and then you also react to it, He may also greet, He may also love; you may also offer your hand to Him. But He is the first ‘mover’ and we act according to whatever is to be done from our side as a response to it. Therefore to look at the Divine, and to react to the Divine, properly, as intended by the Divine, as the Divine Himself would do unto Himself that is the highest meaning of offering. But when we are ignorant and when we are objective faces of God, then we feel as if we are not looking at God, although we are always looking at God. But because we are ignorant, we are absorbed only in small little exclusive concentration of consciousness, therefore we ignore that although we are looking at God, we are ignoring that we are looking at God.

Therefore exhortation: now look at God, see God. Actually speaking, you are already doing it. But since your consciousness you are not doing it, it is not a conscious activity of looking at God, so first thing in offering is you look at god ‘consciously’: God is always present before you, but your exclusive concentration is upon the ground, not upon something which is in front of you. Therefore, you do not know that God is just in front of you and it is just a question of your loosing your exclusive concentration of consciousness on the ground and just lifting, and God is present: He is always present. So, this activity of ‘lifting your look at the Divine’, if you call it offering, that is offering; if you feel not to call it offering, it does not matter: words don’t matter. But basically your effort to loose your exclusive concentration on the ground and lift your mind, your face, your eyes towards the Divine is the fundamental activity of offering. But once you look at the Divine, then many things happen because Divine Himself is constantly active, and His activities are multiple, and the moment you begin to perceive, your capacity to react to God becomes also automatically so great. Our present activities are so limited because we are only looking at the ground, so activities are limited. But the moment you look at the Divine and the more you look at the Divine your capacity of reacting becomes tremendous.

This is what is symbolised in our Indian concept of the dance between Radha and Krishna, or the Gopis and Sri Krishna. Gopis and Sri Krishna and Radha are now enlightened, they look at the supreme Divine and in that look, since the Divine is dancing tremendously, the dance of Radha and Gopis with the Divine also is tremendous, multiple; it is automatic but you may call it offering if you like, you may not call it offering if you don’t like, it does not matter; but your activity which is multiplied, which becomes so intense, ‘that’ is what we call ‘sacrifice’, ‘that’ is what we call ‘offering’.

Usually when you use the word ‘sacrifice’, there is some kind of sense of pain in it: when you say “make a sacrifice for it”, actually speaking the real sacrifice has no pain in it. Real sacrifice is only looking at the Divine and playing with Him. Where is the pain in it? The pain is involved only because we are not in the beginning ‘looking at the Divine’, and because we are normally exclusively looking at the ground, it requires a little effort on our part to lift your face and to look at the Divine. That causes some kind of discomfort you might say: you are already concentrated upon the ground, now to lift you consciousness, your look from the ground to the One who is in front of you, it may cause discomfort, not necessarily; in some cases it may not caused discomfort, but in many cases it does, because one is all the time engaged, engrossed in that looking at the ground. So an effort is needed; that effort we call “painful” and therefore we call it ‘sacrifice’.

Otherwise there is no need of calling it sacrifice at all. The word sacrifice in a sense is only a concession to our ignorance. Actually there is no such thing as sacrifice; it is all…even the word offering is also a kind of a misnomer. All that we are doing is nothing but a play with the Divine: so the idea of offering, the idea of sacrifice, they are all true at a lower level of consciousness. At the true level and actually Yoga is imitation of the true level, therefore I normally would not like to use the word ‘make a sacrifice’, ‘make an offering’, I would simply say ‘look upwards’, ‘look at the Divine’. And the moment you do it all that happens automatically: allow it to happen. You may call it offering, you may call it sacrifice if you like, but basically it is nothing but a play and delight.

All right? Is it all right for you?