It is said that sacrifice is the origin of exchange: but exchange is the set in which sacrifice is a subset: and exchange, in turn, is included in another category—substitution—which alone makes it possible: this stands for that: the one who gives this takes that.

Substitution does not originate in the faculty for giving names (and thus substituting them for things) but in that irreducible and all-encompassing faculty for forming mental images; invisible, occasional, impermanent entities, states of consciousness that overlap with what is perceived—or that even substitute it, canceling it. Here we are present at the original bifurcation of the mind; here the two birds of the Upaniṣads come down from the sky to perch on the same branch—the bird that eats and the one that is constantly compelled to perceive (nourish itself), receiving stimuli. The other, the bird that watches it, is superimposing its own gaze on the gaze that the other bird is directing at the world.

Every act can be seen as a sacrifice if the process of giving and taking—the metabolism inscribed in every gesture—is found within it. Sacrifice, then, is every act leading to the consciousness of such a process.

THE SENATOR FROM ST. PETERSBURG: You arrogant orphans of ritual, and ultimately of ceremony: haven’t you realized you find yourselves in the situation most deceptively close to the beginning? Mental sacrifice—the only one you could know—was the esoteric image of that slaughterhouse that was assembled on the altar of offerings. You need no longer see Prajāpati dismembered and emptied over all the regions of the world; nor the nameless man, from whom to tear the single heart; nor the animal that peers at you with eyes almost human, waiting for the knife; nor even the plant that is liquid fire. Silent, motionless, engrossed, you can proceed to that invisible act from which all else follows, that offering of self to Self, which alone still softens the turning of the wheel. And nothing then prevents you from continuing in society, like the Neva that continues to flow behind us as we speak. You well know, of course, that the waters from above do not respond to the fire of the sacrifice, you have given up that Vedic arithmetic that allowed you to follow the course of the cosmic game. And yet, if you do not carry on sacrificing, ignorant of everything and perhaps of yourselves, your thought will be that of the meek rabble that relentlessly pour out the rosary of opinions. An even more mysterious constraint will clutch you at the throat and will drive you to identify yourselves with things that, in the end, are unimportant: for example, you yourselves. Even when you’re alone, a crowd of voices will haunt you, like at the Café du Commerce. And very few of you will rise even to the insolence of the libertine, accustomed to exchanging thoughts for flimsy jabots. Obeying a despot you have never seen, you will end up realizing that living is too costly.