Bg 4.24

brahmārpaṇaṁ brahma havir
brahmāgnau brahmaṇā hutam
brahmaiva tena gantavyaṁ
brahma-karma-samādhinā

Synonyms: 

brahma — spiritual in nature; arpaṇam — contribution; brahma — the Supreme; haviḥ — butter; brahma — spiritual; agnau — in the fire of consummation; brahmaṇā — by the spirit soul; hutam — offered; brahma — spiritual kingdom; eva — certainly; tena — by him; gantavyam — to be reached; brahma — spiritual; karma — in activities; samādhinā — by complete absorption.

Translation: 

A person who is fully absorbed in Kṛṣṇa consciousness is sure to attain the spiritual kingdom because of his full contribution to spiritual activities, in which the consummation is absolute and that which is offered is of the same spiritual nature.

 

We will discuss yajñāyācarataḥ karma, generally people think Yajna as fire sacrifice – the word sacrifice is related to word sacred. 

First Shri Krishna will give a broad meaning of sacrifice and then he will mention how Arjuna can do sacrifice.

Havi is butter.

brahmārpaṇaṁ -> brahmā + arpaṇaṁ 

brahmāgnau -> brahma + āgnau

Here Brahma doesn’t mean Brahma Jyoti but Brahma means spiritual here.

brahmaṇā hutam, the person doing offering is also spiritual.

brahmaiva tena gantavyaṁ -> Destination attained is also spiritual.

brahma-karma -> The person is doing spiritual work

samādhinā -> The person is absorbed in Samadhi.

When one act in the spirit of Yajna then all of his existence become like a sacrifice.

Once someone understands that it is Shri Krishna’s energy present everywhere and that Krishna’s energy is all encompassing, ultimately all is Krishna’s energy, they can use it for Krishna’s service or they can use for sense gratification but ultimately it is Krishna’s energy

Material & Spiritual

We can discuss in two ways:

Compositional sense: What is it composed of …

Application sense: What is it used for …

Compositional means what is material and what is spiritual it depends on what it is made of, e.g. if something is made of Sac-Chid-Ananda it is spiritual and if it is made of 5 gross matters it is material. But there is also application sense, e.g. prasad may be made of something material but it is spiritual as it is used for spiritual purposes. E.g. Spiritual master’s body is spiritual as it is used for spiritual purposes, that body may also become old but that doesn’t mean that is materialistic as ordinary people body.  Since it is used for Krishna’s service so it is spiritualized for all practical purposes.

Srila Prabhupad has said there are two boxes, golden box and gold plated box, golden boxes are like sac-cit-ananda body but gold plated box is also made of gold. Everything is Shri Krishna’s energy.

Vishvanath Chakrabarthi Pad has mentioned that “Re-envision the battlefield as yajna”. Arjuna asks Krishna that, Krishna if you want me to perform Yajna then it is better I will go forest and perform Yajna, but then Krishna is saying No this itself is yajna, the battle field is your Yajna-asthali, your Gandiva bow is your Ladle / spoon, Ahuti is Kauravas and Virat rupa will accept the sacrificial fire or offering.

e.g. in this course also we are doing brahma-arpan branhma-havir, we are speaking and hearing and we are offering our consciousness to Krishna, so everything is spiritualized. This way we will attain spiritual platform by hearing it regularly.

Srila Prabhupad’s Purport: The word brahma (Brahman) means “spiritual.” The Lord is spiritual, and the rays of His transcendental body are called brahma-jyotir, His spiritual effulgence. Everything that exists is situated in that brahma-jyotir, but when the jyotir is covered by illusion (māyā) or sense gratification, it is called material.

Everything is coming from Krishna so it is spiritual but when it is covered by Maya we think that it is for sense gratification and when we think it is for sense gratification we get entangled so we need to develop right vision, So Srila Prabhupad said that everything is spiritualized when we have right consciousness.