Surrender

A complete surrender is not possible in so short a time,— for a complete surrender means to cut the knot of the ego in each part of the being and offer it, free and whole, to the Divine.

It is not possible to get rid of the stress on personal effort at once — and not always desirable; for personal effort is better than tamasic inertia. The personal effort has to be transformed progressively into a movement of the Divine Force.

It is not advisable in the early stages of the sadhana to leave everything to the Divine or expect everything from it without the need of one’s own endeavour. That is only possible when the psychic being is in front. Under other conditions this attitude is likely to lead to stagnation and inertia.

It is ego and desire that prevent surrender. If there is no surrender, there can be no transformation of the whole being. Absolute sincerity can make the determination of surrender rapidly effective.

Active surrender is when you associate your will with the Divine Will, reject what is not the Divine, assent to what is the Divine. Passive surrender is when everything is left entirely to the Divine — it turns out that you surrender to the lower nature under pretext of surrendering to the Divine.

True surrender is possible when the sadhak is able to get rid of these things — accept the knowledge from above in place of his own ideas, the will of the Divine in place of his own desires, the movements of the Truth in place of his physical habits — and as a result is able to live wholly for the Divine.

Self-giving or surrender is demanded of those who practise this Yoga, because without such a progressive surrender of the being it is quite impossible to get anywhere near the goal. To keep open means to call in Mother’s Force to work in you, and if you do not surrender to it, it amounts to not allowing the Force to work in you at all or else only on condition that it will work in the way you want and not in its own way which is the way of the Divine Truth.

It is necessary if you want to progress in your sadhana that you should make the submission and surrender of which you speak sincere, real and possible. This cannot be as long as you mix up your desires with your spiritual aspiration. It cannot be as long as you cherish vital attachment to family, child or anything or anybody else. If you are to do this Yoga, you must have only one desire and aspiration, to receive the spiritual Truth and manifest it in all your thoughts, feelings, actions and nature. You must not hunger after any relations «with anyone.

To give oneself is the secret of sadhana, not to demand and acquire a thing. The more one gives oneself, the more the power to receive will grow. But for that all impatience and revolt must go; all suggestions of not getting, not being helped, not being loved, going away, of abandoning life or the spiritual endeavour must be rejected.

The whole principle of this Yoga is to give oneself entirely to the Divine alone and to nobody and nothing else, and to bring down into ourselves by union with the Divine Mother-Power all the transcendent light, force, wideness, peace, purity, truth-consciousness and Ananda of the supramental Divine. In this Yoga, therefore, there can be no place for vital relations or interchanges with others; any such relation or interchange immediately ties down the soul to the lower consciousness and its lower nature, prevents the true and full union with the Divine and hampers both the ascent to the supramental Truth-consciousness and the descent of the supramental Ishwari Shakti.

There is no single rule for all, it depends on the personality and the nature. Surrender is the main power of the Yoga, but the surrender is bound to be progressive; a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, but only a will in the being for that completeness. It is only when the surrender is complete that the full flood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender.

It is altogether unprofitable to enquire who or what class will arrive first or last at the goal. The spiritual path is no^ a field of competition or a race that this should matter. What matters is one’s own aspiration for the Divine, one’s own faith, surrender, selfless self-giving. Others can be left to the Divine who will lead each according to his nature. Meditation, work, bhakti are each means of preparative help towards fulfilment; all are included in this path. If one can dedicate oneself through work, that is one of the most powerful means towards the self-giving which is itself the most powerful and indispensable element of the sadhana.

The true movement is a pure aspiration and surrender. After all, one has not a right to call on the Divine to manifest himself; it can come only as a response to a spiritual or psychic state of consciousness or to a long course of sadhana rightly done; or, if it comes before that or without any apparent reason, it is a Grace; but one cannot demand or compel Grace. Grace is something spontaneous which wells out from the Divine Consciousness as a free flow of its being. The bhakta looks for it, but he is ready to wait in perfect reliance — even if need be, all his life — knowing that it will come, never varying in his love and surrender because it does not come now or soon.

It is the first principle of our sadhana that surrender is the means of fulfilment and so long as ego or vital demand and desire are cherished, complete surrender is impossible. You have to go on rejecting the vital mixture every time it rises. If you are steadfast in rejecting, it will lose more and more of its force and fade out.

Always keep within and do things without involving yourself in them, then nothing adverse will happen or, if it does, no serious reaction will come.

Self-surrender to the divine and infinite Mother, however difficult, remains our only effective means and our sole abiding refuge,— self-surrender to her means that our nature must be an instrument in her hands, the soul a child in the arms of the Mother.

This Yoga accepts the value of cosmic existence and holds it to be a reality; its object is to enter into a higher Truth-Consciousness or Divine Supramental Consciousness in which action and creation are the expression not of ignorance and imperfection, but of the Truth, the Light, the Divine Ananda. But for that, surrender of the mortal mind, life and body to that Higher Consciousness is indispensable, since it is too difficult for the mortal human being to pass by its own effort beyond mind to a Supramental Consciousness in which the dynamism is no longer mental but of quite another power. Only those who can accept the call to such a change should enter into this Yoga.

The Mother:

In our Yoga there is no room for sacrifice. In its pure sense it means a consecrated giving, a making sacred to the Divine....... If you have the slightest feeling that you are making sacrifice, then it is no longer surrender..... True surrender enlarges you; it increases your capacity; it gives you a greater measure in quality and in quantity, which you could not have had by yourself.

Even the gods have to make their surrender to the Supreme, if the Divine creation is to be realised upon the earth.

The true, lasting quietness in the vital and the physical as well as in the mind, comes from a complete consecration to the Divine; for when you can no more call anything, not even yourself, yours, when everything, including your body, sensations, feelings and thoughts belong to the Divine, the Divine takes the entire responsibility of all and you have nothing more to worry about.