Bhagavagd Gita - Session 12- Track 1209

This is the cycle: yajñā is a cycle. Be engaged in a cycle, and ultimately you will see that actually you are not even throwing the action into it. As Sri Krishna will say that, “It is an illusion that you are throwing a yajñā, you ultimately attain to Knowledge”. That will come in the 4th chapter: “You will really realise what is the whole universe.”

At present, you only think that you have all surroundings in you, around you, and all in the surroundings is yours, and you want to even take from others, and accumulate, and put into your own utensil: ‘this is mine’. And then you want to enjoy it: this, Sri Krishna says is “stena (III, 12), you are a thief.” Because actually speaking, when you will see, this is no real way even of increasing. Even if you want to, then the only means is “You throw into the Fire”, and then you will see that more will come to you even if you want more. Otherwise without doing it if you just accumulate, you are only stealing, you are like a robber. All that is there you are robbing; ultimately nothing will remain, because there is cycle going on in the world, and nature will extract from you, even if you do not want, it will be taken away from you by force; it will be thrown because the whole world is a yajñā: it’s not ‘you are doing yajñā’, the whole world is a huge yajñā.

The whole world is nothing but ‘one huge sacrifice’. Sacrifice done by whom, for whom, what is all this? Sri Krishna says: “Unless you know the whole process…” that is why Knowledge is required: you must know what the whole process of the world is. In that process where you are, what you are, what you have, what you don’t have…you are completely ignorant! You are just moving about thinking that all that is yours and you just try to accumulate, and you just go on fighting with people for accumulating. It’s completely in ignorance. First of all, realise the whole world.

Sri Krishna will explain that right from the beginning…this is 3rd chapter, 10th verse:

saha-yajñāḥ prajāḥ sṛṣṭvā purovāca prajāpatiḥ |
anena prasaviṣyadhvam eṣa vo ’stv iṣṭa-kāma-dhuk ||10|| (III)

This is only the preliminary statement that ‘when the whole world was created, the whole world was created saha-yajñāḥ prajāḥ; saha-yajñāḥ, along with yajñā, yajñā is a fundamental thing, without yajñā there is no world. What is this yajñā? Before we proceed further, I will just take you to the real meaning of yajñā: yajñā is a process by which you cease to be what you are. Sacrifice: sacrifice means you give up everything.

In the beginning, here He says saha-yajñāḥ prajāḥ sṛṣṭvā, so we are gone back to the origin of the sṛṣṭi. Entire sṛṣṭi, the whole world is created out of sacrifice, and with sacrifice: it’s a continuous sacrifice, and the world is nothing but a cycle of sacrifice. In the beginning there is only the “Supreme One Reality”. He could have remained absolutely alone, quiet, because He needs nothing, He is complete, perfect. But, He is not incapable of activity. But, His very activity has one condition: His activity takes place by Himself ceasing to be Himself. Only there is only one way by which activity arises: on the moment activity arises, yajñā starts; He becomes other than Himself.

You remember, I have been speaking to you about the Vedic statement (Rig Veda I. 170, 1), where it is said that the Reality is adbhuta, is wonderful: na nūnamasti no śvaḥ, that Reality is neither today nor tomorrow: it is eternal; kastadveda yadadbhutam. What is that Reality which is so wonderful? Why is it wonderful? anyasya cittamabhi sancareṇyam, His very activity is another’s, He remains He is, but He becomes another. His very activity becomes …makes out of Him something other than Himself. A Reality which remains itself and yet becomes other than Himself, that is the wonder of the Reality; that is why He is adbhutam. Therefore it is utādhītaṁ vi naśyati, don’t try to understand it by our ordinary intellectual way, because in this world it does not happen; there is only one Reality which is adbhutam; in His becoming, ‘sancareṇyam’, in His very becoming means: sancara. In His very activity of becoming, ‘anyasya’, He becomes another.

That means there is holocaust; in His activity, there is a holocaust of His being: all that He is is as it were, given to somebody else. This is at the ‘very root’ of activity. Action means what? Action means: ‘you cease to be’ what you are. You make a sacrifice of yourself, but the moment you sacrifice yourself, something else is created. And that something that is created also is of such a nature, that that something else also throws back upon you. There is the yajña puruṣa to prakṛti, and there is the yajña prakṛti to puruṣa. This is the only nature of action, action is nothing but this: throwing yourself, abolishing yourself totally, which you can never be because you are the Sattwa, the real sat, and yet you become: your holocaust is such a thing that you really create another.