The Yoga of Sri Aurobindo - Part 7

Offering And Surrender

They are not quite the same thing: they are rather two aspects of the same thing. They do not belong altogether to the same level of consciousness. For example, you have resolved to make an offering of your life to the Divine. All on a sudden there happens a very unpleasant thing: you did not expect it. Your first movement is to react and protest. And yet you have made the offering; but something in you turns. If you are, however, consistent in your offering, you will hold the protesting part in your hands and put it before the Divine and say, "let thy will be done". In surrender, on the other hand, there is a natural spontaneous unprotesting adhesion. Even if there happens something unpleasant or contrary to your expectations, you are equally unperturbed and tranquil.

In the beginning you make a general surrender or submission, in principle, as it were: it is in your inner being. It must be brought forth gradually in the outer being, carried out in all the details of life. That is how difficulties arise. You have made your offering, you say, even you have worked at it for a long time, worked hard, given much time and much will; suddenly you find, upsetting your calculations, something different happens, you have not succeeded in something. So there is a revolt, a turning back and so on. But what you have to

Page 109

do is to renew your offering, reaffirm your adhesion. When the adhesion is complete, when there is the spontaneous acceptance of the Divine Will in everything, in every manner of happening, then comes the surrender, the perfect obedience which is calm, tranquil, at peace in either case, whether things happen in this way or that.

You ask if you cannot make a mistake unwittingly, do a wrong even if you do not want to. It is not likely. If you are sincere to the core, you are always conscious and you cannot be taken unawares. It is some form or degree of insincerity that veils your sense of right and wrong, makes you unconscious, as it were. Your discrimination is clouded, because you wish things to happen in a way, or do not wish them to happen in another way. On the other hand, if you are straight, if you are indifferent to either way and await only the Divine's will, you will always immediately perceive if there is or likely to be a wrong move in you; you know it intimately in a very precise manner, for you are ready to rectify it.

Perfect sincerity does not want to err: it will give up everything rather than live in an illusion. It is a very precise movement, but it is also a very delicate movement. For when you do a thing, even the right thing, the mental and the vital are there that seek to profit by it, a profit, at least of personal satisfaction, to have a good opinion of oneself. It is difficult not to hoodwink oneself.

Page 110