CWTVKS Volume 3

SURRENDER

“Complete surrender" is a consummation that is aimed at and results in the course of a disciplined life definitely turned towards God-realisation. It does not come in the beginning except perhaps in the cases of a rare few who are chosen in spite of themselves, as it were, for a catastrophic change of outward and wordly life turned inward and Godward. Even then, the suddenness of the change is just apparent and may be the rapid result of long preparation going on within, though obscure to the outward mind.

’Surrender’ as a mental attitude, as a dominant idea in the mind may remove the mental obstacle to the building of the “inner life”, but that is not enough. By itself it can neither contribute positively to the growth of the inner life, nor even give the assurance felt within that the being gives itself to something larger, and deeper, and more knowing and feeling than itself and to which it really belongs.

Surrender, then, is not primarily a mental idea; it is an inward act of feeling; though the mental attitude may be a translation, an expression in terms of the mind of an inner movement, in the consciousness that grows more and more drawn to the deeper truths of the spirit.

Does not surrender tend to induce slackness?

No, is the answer. When surrender is accepted as the ruling principle of life, the whole life and its activities are not really given up or offered in a moment to the God within, the Higher and Inner self; up to the point when one feels the Guide within and there is some awakening to a deeper Being or Consciousness, the feeling that I am the agent, am responsible for my acts, will be there, and is necessary also. But when the inner life is built, the sense of egoistic independence gives way, and something higher and larger slowly takes charge of the being, introduces different values which may quite often supersede the accepted set of moral values, and in the end completely takes away all sense of responsibility. In this way, the questions of Karmic law, self-deception etc. do not arise.