“Nay, what wonder that men – conscious of a higher and lower nature, and oft identifying their self-consciousness more with the lower than with the higher – felt the struggle of the lower nature, the form, as their own struggles, and felt that they were accepting suffering in resignation to a higher will, and regarded sacrifice as that devout and resigned acceptance of pain.
Not until man identifies himself with the life instead of with the form can the element of pain in sacrifice be gotten rid of.
In a perfectly harmonized entity, pain cannot be, for the form is then the perfect vehicle of the life, receiving or surrendering with ready accord.
With the ceasing of struggle comes the ceasing of pain. For suffering arises from jar, from friction, from antagonistic movements, and where the whole nature works in perfect harmony the conditions that give rise to suffering are not present.
The law of sacrifice being thus the law of life-evolution in the universe, we find every step in the ladder is accomplished by sacrifice – the life pouring itself out to take birth in a higher form, while the form that contained it perishes.
Those who look only at the perishing forms see Nature as a vast charnel-house; while those who see the deathless soul escaping to take new and higher form hear ever the joyous song of birth from the upward-springing life.”
Annie Besant
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 