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Compassion - The Spirit of Truth

By Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

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Sacrificing others is a crime against Nature

The whole universe owes its very existence to the greatest of all sacrifices, that of Aja Purusha, the “unborn lamb.” It was slaughtered at the foundation of the World so that a new world may live.1 The higher the consciousness of the sacrificer and the lower that of its beneficiaries, the greater the sacrifice. Logos falling into the abyss of objectivity is an infinitely greater sacrifice than the privations of a mere individuality rising to subjectivity. The former fructifies animal man en masse towards ever-loftier vistas of self-ideation; the latter brings home the treasure of individual reflection. But, as the repercussions of higher life are not even suspected by the masses, the significance of Logoic Sacrifice and the exalted motives of SamyakSambuddha 2 will forever remain riddles to the Spiritual Selfishness of Pratyeka-Buddha.

Similarly to Eros and Love, the true meaning of Sacrifice 4 has been defiled by modern tongues. Without exception, all misconceptions about such a noble act stem from outward-looking perspectives and narrow, personal interests. In Sacrifice proper there are at least three defining attributes.
Sacrifice is always a voluntary, not an enforced, act

In the ambivalence of the West, the theological dogma of “Christ’s offering of himself as mankind’s saviour” 5 has undergone an astonishing expansion of meanings, for example, to “give up, surrender, for a higher good or for mere advantage; to make a victim of; to sell at a loss.” 6 Even Man’s barbarity against Man and animals is often disguised as sacrifice in the euphemisms, dysphemisms, and the hyperbole of our times. Vivisectionists, for example, often describe laboratory animals as “sacrificed,” thus elevating themselves to priesthood and their science to religion. “Without kindness to harmless animals and self-mortification, none can arrive at the angels,” says the Desatir.

A Band next succeed, who know good, and practise evil, vexing harmless creatures. 
COMMENTARY — The distinctive mark of this band is that they love knowledge and ingenuity: and yet vex harmless animals, and stain their mouths with the blood of unoffending creatures, and fill their bellies with them.

One class deem themselves prophets, in spite of their molesting harmless creatures. Without kindness to harmless animals and self-mortification, none can arrive at the angels.

HP Blavatsky traces this noblest act to the 
. . . voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love. 2 . . . the surname Christos is based on, and the story of the Crucifixion derived from, events that preceded it. Everywhere, in India as in Egypt, in Chaldea as in Greece, all these legends were built upon one and the same primitive type; the voluntary sacrifice of the logoi — the rays of the one LOGOS, the direct manifested emanation from the One ever-concealed Infinite and Unknown — whose rays incarnated in mankind.3

T Subba Row, a learned “VEDANTIN ADVAITEE of the esoteric Aryan school,” 4 explains the occult meaning of the “Blood of Christ”: 
Christ took advantage of the Jewish tendency to sacrifice, and gave it a certain turn, and made it more or less identical with the transfer of blood in the final Initiation. That is the meaning of the final Initiation — the mysterious thing going to happen when he goes to join the permanent counterpart, in Nirvana, of his Ray. The Blood of Christ is the spiritual life that flows from Christ — his Daiviprakriti.

And Master KH acknowledges the awful privations that Blavatsky herself had endured by her own volition: 6 
. . . Until that day of final triumph someone has to be sacrificed — though we accept but voluntary victims. The ungrateful task did lay her low and desolate in the ruins of misery, misapprehension, and isolation: but she will have her reward in the hereafter for we never were ungrateful.