MYSTERY BEHIND THE RITUAL OF YAGNA !

I say all this to explain to you how yajna came into being and how it became so significant in our life.

Yajna was our way of celebrating the discovery of fire; we danced around it with abandon and offered to it every good thing we had.

Our ancestors who initiated these sacrificial rituals did not have much to give. They had wheat and they made an offering of it to the fire. They had somras, the best wine of their times, and they offered it to the fire.

They sacrificed even their best cows to greet this god who had come to transform their life so radically. And everything was so impromptu and spontaneous.

It was an outpouring of a simple, innocent and unsophisticated heart-mind that our people had then. They were a rural people - cities had yet to come into being - who lacked sophistication.

By the time of Krishna and the GEETA civilization had made great strides - thanks to fire. And so fire became a household thing, the extraordinary be came ordinary.

Now it seemed meaningless to dance around fire and make sacrificial offerings to it. In the meantime thousands of people had opposed it.

Fire was no longer taken as the greatest blessing that it was when it was first discovered.

So Krishna grafted a new word onto the old stem of yajna and called it jnan-yajna or the ritual of knowledge. A new word, jnan or knowledge was added to the old word, yajna or ritual.

The society in which Krishna was born was a highly developed and sophisticated society. Now dancing around fire looked so primitive and backward.

So Krishna thought of igniting the fire of knowledge, which is the last luxury of a society that comes to the pinnacle of material prosperity.

But he used an old word, because a word to be a word has to be old. Krishna said, "If we want to dance we will dance around the fire of knowledge.

If we have to offer something to the sacrificial fire we will offer our selves in place of grains and wines and cows."

Jnan-yajna or sacrificial ritual of knowledge stands for a special spiritual path, and every traveler on this path burns his ego, his "I-ness" in the fire of the knowledge of reality.

Ordinary fire burns everything that is gross, but it cannot burn subtler elements like thoughts of arrogance, pride and ego. Only the fire of knowing can destroy it.

It is interesting to know that down the centuries the symbol of fire remains alive. And it is not without reason.

The most important reason was that in the life of the primitive man there was nothing like fire which by its nature moved upward.

Water moves downward: pour it anywhere and it will find a downward path to flow.

But no matter what you do, the flame will always rise upward.

Even if you turn a burning torch upside down, its flames will keep going up.

So fire became the symbol of ascension - upward journey; its flame reflects man's highest aspiration to reach the unknown.

Fire was the first thing in the knowledge of man that rebelled against the law of gravitation.

The earth seems to have no power over fire.

So those who danced around fire and rejoiced over its blessings also nursed a hope and prayer that a day might come in their life when they would go on the upward journey to the highest, the ultimate in existence.

Like water, human mind as we know it is inclined to move downward.

There is some similarity between man's mind and water.

Pour a container full of water on the hilltop and it will soon find its way down to the lowest lake in the valley. Such is man's mind.

Therefore the seers who first exalted the fire and danced around it in joyous homage declared their aspiration to become like fire and ascend to the heavens.

Their prayer said, "We want to turn our spirit into a flame so that even if it is put in an abyss it will continue to move upward and reach the zenith."

So the ritual of the sacrificial fire was symbolic and significant.

There is another attribute of fire which is still deeper and more meaningful; it is that first it burns its fuel and then burns itself.

As soon as the fuel turns into ashes the fire is extinguished.

This aspect of fire is deeply representative of knowledge, which first burns the dross of ignorance and then burns itself.

It means to say that after one's ignorance is dispelled, the ego, the knower himself disappears.

The UPANISHAD says, "While the ignorant wander in darkness the knowledgeable wander in blinding darkness."

For sure, this has been said to ridicule the pundits and scholars who subsist on borrowed knowledge.

One who attains to true knowledge, what is called wisdom, disappears as an ego, and so there is no way for him to wander in darkness.

True knowledge first destroys ignorance and then it destroys the knower too, who ceases to be an ego, an entity. It is like fire, that after burning the fuel extinguishes itself.

So those who came to know the truth realized that knowledge is like fire.

It burns ignorance like fuel, and then burns the knower as an ego, who disappears into emptiness.

Therefore, he alone can embark on a journey to knowledge who is prepared to become an utter emptiness, nothingness.

There is yet another attribute of fire which is still more relevant to the knowledge of truth.

As the fire's flame rises upward it is visible only to an extent and then disappears into the vast space; it becomes invisible.

The same is the case with the knowledge of truth; it is related with its knower only to a small extent and then it disappears into that which is un knowable.

The visible part of reality is very tiny in comparison with its invisible part which is immense and infinite.

For all these reasons fire became a very useful and powerful symbol of knowledge. and Krishna ushered in jnan-yajna.

Worship of knowledge is like worship of fire.

If you rightly understand the significance of fire as a symbol, you will know that worship of knowledge is eternal.

While all other rituals that came into being with the discovery of fire have died because they were products of circumstances, the pursuit of knowledge remains with us forever.

Knowledge is not bound with circumstances; it is eternal.

So for the first time Krishna freed yajna from the fetters of time and events and yoked it to the eternal.

From now on in the future, yajna or rituals will be in vogue in the way Krishna refashioned it; its meaning and purpose will be derived from Krishna alone.

The pre-Krishna chapter of yajna is closed forever.

It is now outdated and dead.

If someone still talks of the yajna of the pre-Krishna days, he is only trying to perpetuate a dead and meaningless ritual.

Now it is not possible to dance around fire in the old way, because fire is no more an event, it is an everyday affair.

Pseudo knowledge is like ashes left after the fire has been extinguished.

You can collect ashes in tons, but they are not going to change you.

So if someone mistakes scholarship for knowledge he is already off the track.

~ Osho

Excerpt from : Krishna The Man and his Philosophy
Chapter : 19 - Rituals, Fire and Knowledge