At the beginning of things, I tell W. - a beginning which, in Hindu cosmology, will return after the end – Vishnu, appears in the cosmic void before his servant, Brahma, who has been charged with the task of creation. How shall I begin, Lord?, asks Brahma. Begin with a sacrifice, says his master.
But what shall I sacrifice?, says Brahma. Sacrifice me, says Vishnu. What shall I use, as the means of sacrifice – what as the knife, as the altar, the post and the fire?, says Brahman. Use me, says Vishnu. I am the offering and the reward.
What is sacrificed, then? If it is Vishnu to whom the sacrificial act is dedicated, then God has been sacrificed to God. The object and subject of sacrifice are the same. But Vishnu is also the means of the sacrifice – its knife, its altar, the ceremony itself. He is the chant and the fire, just as he is what is sacrificed and is also the presiding deity of the sacrifice. He is all those things.
But why, then, is the sacrifice necessary at all? Perhaps it is because the world, the whole world we see before us, is what is not yet sacrificed. Perhaps the world itself – all of us, all our lives – is the offering to be burned on the fire.
But even that is wrong, I tell W. For the sages tell us that the world, seen in the right way, is, in its entirety, already a sacrifice. Seen thus, all things – everything that is part of the world, and even the world itself – are already aflame. The world burns upwards to God just as God is in all things as the burning itself and the power to leap upwards.
Then perhaps we sacrifice to remind ourselves that all things are already sacrifice, and that our souls themselves are afire, licking up into heaven like flames. Perhaps it is for our sake that we sacrifice, not God's: to remind ourselves of our burning souls and of the flaming that is our world. For our sake: then God would ask us to sacrifice because we ourselves are sacrifice, and we are part of that great sacrifice that God also is.
Lars Iyer's Blog 