Purpose Of Sacrifice

Thus all sacrifice is meant for the satisfaction of Krsna or Visnu, and as such it cannot be done whimsically, for verse fifteen says: "Activity (karma) arises from the Vedas, and the Vedas spring from the Supreme Godhead. Therefore, the all-pervading transcendence is eternally situated in acts of sacrifice." Karma means working according to the prescribed rules and regulations, or scriptural injunctions, and here it is asserted that such instructions are not different from the personality of Godhead. And elsewhere it is stated that "All the four Vedas-namely Rg-veda, Yajur-veda, Sama-veda, and Atharva-veda-are emanations from the breathing of the great Personality of Godhead." Krsna is so powerful that just by His breathing He can produce so many Vedas; factually His omnipotence means that He can do anything with any one of His senses, and that is confirmed in the Brahma-samhita. Bhagavad-gita says that He can impregnate with His eyes, for it says that He glanced over material nature and thus fathered all living entities. Out of His infinite mercy, the Supreme Lord, after impregnating the conditioned souls into material nature, gave directions how they could return home, back to Godhead, how they could revive their original Krsna consciousness.

The individual soul is conditioned in matter because he has a tendency to try to lord it over material nature, to desire the enjoyment of some portion of Krsna's inferior energy, matter. The Lord gives the conditioned soul a chance to fulfill his desire to be lord, but at the same time he instructs him to perform some yajna. In that way, while fulfilling his material desires, he can also progress back to Godhead. It is something like the little child who is pestering his mother while she is cooking: "Let me cook! Let me cook!" So the mother gives the child a little set of play cooking utensils and says, "Here, cook." While the child is amusing himself with his artificial "cooking," he is also being gradually trained up for the time when he can factually help mother with the real cooking. The conditioned soul is actually the servant of Lord Krsna, but because he has forgotten his position as servant, he is put into this material bondage where he must learn to serve before he can return to the kingdom of God. But as soon as one actually comes to that platform of desiring to render transcendental loving service to the Lord, immediately he is a liberated man, even if apparently still in the material world. Verse eighteen says: "A self-realized man has no purpose to fulfill in the discharge of his prescribed duties, nor has he any reason not to perform such work. Nor has he any need to depend on any other living being." A self-realized man knows that he is the servant of Krsna and knows that Krsna is the proprietor of everything; therefore everything which is entrusted to him is Krsna's. Certainly such a liberated soul has no duty to perform, but one will find that such a man is always performing his duty. Why? Because there is no reason not to do it, and because Krsna has requested it. There is no reason not to do it because such a liberated man is no longer under the bodily conception of existence. Sometimes it appears to us too troublesome to do our duty because it may be a little inconvenient for the body. But for one who factually knows and has fully realized that he is not the body, there is no reason not to perform his prescribed duty. There is, rather, every reason to perform it. Krsna states in verses twenty and twenty-one: "Therefore just for the sake of educating the people in general, you should perform your work. Whatever action is performed by a great man, common men will follow in his footsteps. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues." Krsna Himself is following this example, for He says that He has no need to act personally in any particular way, nothing to gain, nothing that He is in need of, yet He is never inactive.