Yajña is not just Fire Sacrifice

The word yajña is ordinarily understood as the ritualistic fire sacrifice. Etymologically the word yajña is derived from the root-sound yaj which means: ‘to worship, adore, honor to, consecrate, and offer, to present or bestow’. If we go further deep, we find that the root-sound yaj is a derivative of the seed-sound ya which essentially signifies motion to or from, yearning, contact and union. The sound j adds to it the idea of sharply applied and decisive or effective force in the motion, desire and contact. Hence the root yaj gets the meaning of effort, seeking after, wooing, application to, adhesion or strongly maintained union or contact. We also find this meaning in the root-sound yuj from which the word yoga is derived. The sense of successful effort leads to the idea of mastery. So we find this sense in other roots of ya family also. For example: yam - which means to control, govern; yat - to make effort, to control, to have mastery.

We gather from here that the sense of force put forth, to reach, obtain or control is a common significance in this group. These significations are developments from the sense of going (combined with effort or an original impetus), with its common, almost invariable development of going after, seeking, striving, desiring, also reaching, meeting, mixing, acquiring, joining, embracing, enjoying and the sense of reaching to, joining to or handing, from which we have the idea of giving, the sense of sacrifice.

Then, yajña essentially means self-giving. It is this sense that we see in the Gita’s concept of yajña. When the Gita says all action must be performed with the sense of yajña, and for the sake of yajña, it refers to this sense of self-giving. The Veidc seers followed this path of self-giving and surrender in which the body, life and mind are not denied or rejected but given as offerings to the divine powers of the Spirit. This results in a gradual and integral expansion, fulfillment, perfection and divine participation of the powers of the mind, life and soul, or in other words the whole being of man, in the higher life and nature of the Spirit. But this self-giving has to be a forceful and masterful giving. One has to rise to one’s highest potentiality and then offer. Everything has to be done with the sense and for the sake of this self-giving, for the sake of the Divine. It has to be a constant active surrender not a tamasic offering. This is the true meaning of yajña.

“Self-fulfillment by self-immolation, to grow by giving is the universal law. That which refuses to give itself, is still the food of cosmic powers… All the powers and potentialities of the human life are offered up, in the symbol of a sacrifice, to the divine Life in the cosmos.”
-- Sri Aurobindo