________________
VEDANTA
vidual, is the one who enacts this sacred office, as well as all the other deeds of the creatures, whether present, past, or future. The three phases of time are one and the same so far as this inner principle is concerned; for it, there is no time; it is a timeless actor. Moreover, it is not only the perpetrator of sacrifice, fundamentally it is inherent in all the utensils of the holy rite, as well as in those used in the other activities of man. Also, it is present in the "beast of sacrifice"--the victim roped to the sacrificial post and about to be slaughtered. That one being is the offerer, the offering, and the implements of the offering-the all-pervading, universally vivifying, omnipresent principle of phenomenal existence.182
For the Brahman priest-whose wisdom was that of the Vedic sacrificial ritual-the process of the cosmos was a gigantic, ceaseless ceremony of sacrifice. The divine life-substance itself, as the giant victim, filled-nay, constituted-the body of the selfimmolating, self-consuming world. The one transcendent essence dwelt anonymously within all-within the officiating priest, the victim offered, and the divinities that accepted the sacrifice, as well as within the pure implements through which the sacrifice was rendered. These were but so many phenomenal forms assumed by the divine force. That unique presence evolved into the shapes of living creatures and dwelt in them as the core of their being, the center of energy prompting them to act, suffer, and partake alternately of the roles of sacrificer and victim in the continuous, never-ending oblation which is the process of the world. Regarded thus as the mere garbs of the one anonymity, the sacrificer and his victim, the feeder and his food, the victor and his conquest, were the same: simultaneous roles or masks of the one cosmic actor.
182 Cf. Bhagavad Gita 4. 24: "The process of the offering is Brahman. The offering is Brahman. The fire is Brahman. It is by Brahman that the offering is made. He, verily, goes to Brahman, who beholds Brahman in every act."
411
