Aspiration and Surrender

Shouldn’t a sadhak offer to the Mother not only his good experiences and knowledge but also the ordinary movements of ignorance? Otherwise how will his lower nature be purified and transformed? The psychic elements of our nature will help, won’t they?

It is true that with the psychic action these things are more easily overcome. Also the ignorance etc. must be surrendered, i.e., all attachment to them, justification or acquiescent habitual response must be given up.

If my being is to make some real and substantial progress, it will be done only when it learns to depend completely on the Mother and her inner help and guidance.

Yes. It must be absolutely sincere in its self-giving and dependence and keep nothing for the ego and its desires.

Sincerity means to accept the Divine influence only and not that of lower forces.

When one learns to leave things to the Divine, isn’t He bound to answer all our real needs?

The Divine is not bound to do that, He can give or not give; whether He gives or does not give makes no difference to the one who is surrendered to Him. Otherwise there is an arriere pensee in the surrender which is not then complete.

Because there is a sense of ego in our surrender, to stop surrendering is absurd. Even if we can’t reject the ego, an egoistic surrender is better than no surrender.

Certainly. The action must go on, only the mixture of ego in it must more and more disappear.

If there is any identification with the vital demands or outcries, that necessarily diminishes the surrender for the time.

What is meant by a complete surrender?

A surrender of all the parts and all the movements without insistence or claim or desire or demand of any kind.

In this case a complete surrender is not possible in the initial stages.

It is for that reason that personal effort is necessary.

You said that, when the surrender is not complete, personal effort is necessary. Is the baby-cat attitude not possible in the beginning?

If there is not a complete surrender, then it is not possible to adopt the baby-cat attitude; it becomes mere tamasic passivity calling itself surrender. If a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, it follows that personal effort is necessary.

If complete surrender means a total extinction of the ego, then not a single human creature can claim it till he reaches the final stage of Yoga.

It is correct on the whole, but one can overcome this difficulty if the psychic leads.

The absolute surrender must be not only an experience in meditation, but a fact governing all the life, all the thoughts, feelings, actions. Till then the use of one’s own will and effort is necessary, but an effort in which also there is the spirit of surrender, calling in the Force to support the will and effort and undisturbed by success or failure. When the Force takes up the sadhana, then indeed effort may cease, but still there will be the necessity of the constant assent of the being and a vigilance so that one may not admit a false Force at any point.

It depends on what is meant by absolute surrender — the experience of it in some part of the being or the fact of it in all parts of the being. The former may easily come at any time; it is the latter that takes time to complete.

If you are surrendered only in the higher consciousness, with no peace or purity in the lower, certainly that is not enough and you have to aspire for the peace and purity everywhere.

If the surrender is complete, then that certainly is the best — what has to be avoided is a tamasic state devoid of will or vigilance justifying itself under the name of surrender.

In the morning there comes a spontaneous state during which I feel like surrendering my sadhana to the Mother. But in the evening that condition withdraws, and I have to take up personal effort to save my nature from getting into inertia. Is this the only way to arrive at a complete surrender?

It is not a way or method of arriving at complete surrender; it is a mixed action that one has to use so long as there is not a complete surrender.

How can you surrender to the psychic if you are not conscious of its action?

Can’t I do it in the same way as surrender to the Force above? I am not always conscious of the Force.

It is then a sankalpa [resolution] of surrender. But the surrender must be to the Mother — not even to the Force, but the Mother herself.

If the psychic manifests, it will not ask you to surrender to it, but to surrender to the Mother.

Surrender and love-bhakti are not contrary things — they go together. It is true that at first surrender can be made through knowledge by the mind but it implies a mental bhakti and, as soon as the surrender reaches the heart, the bhakti manifests as a feeling, and with the feeling of bhakti, love comes.

A surrender by any means is good, but obviously the impersonal is not enough — for surrender to that may be limited in result to the inner experience without any transformation of the outer nature.

Could you kindly inform me when you find my surrender is on the decrease?

It is not a question of decrease, but of necessary increase.

The aspiration must be for entire purification, especially (1) purification from sex, so that no sex imaginations may enter and the sex impulse may cease, (2) purification from desires and demands, (3) purification from depression which is the result of disappointed desires. It is the most important for you. Particularly what you must aspire for is peace in all the being, complete equanimity — samata. The feeling that peace is not enough must go. Peace and purity and equanimity, once established, all the rest must be the Mother’s free gift, not a result of the demand from the being.

You can mix normally with people keeping as much as possible an inner quietude. In future when the purification is done and a continuous experience possible we can reconsider the matter.

Is not a state where no aspiration is needed better than one with aspiration?

You have to arrive at such a state first.

How is it that the working of the Force felt at one time is so different from what is felt at another?

I can only say as before, that there is “no specific” reason which the mind can determine. It depends on the total condition and interaction of the forces. One has to hold on to the aspiration and look steadily towards the goal without being disturbed by these inequalities and fluctuations.

Are there not some laws and rules in the fluctuations? Cannot one find out what caused them and then manage them?

There are no fixed rules. There are simply a mass of tendencies and forces with which one has to become familiar. It is not a fixed machinery which one can manage by devices or by pulling this or that button. It is only by the inner Will, the constant aspiration, by detachment and rejection, by bringing down the true consciousness, force etc. that it can be done.

You said, “It is a stage [in which one cannot aspire freely] from which you must come out as soon as possible.” What is this stage?

Your present condition in which the lower nature is able to stop the aspiration and experience.

Instead of trying to find out reasons for not being able to aspire, better I turn all my energy to making the way forward.

That is right.

My attitude of surrender is now being planted too deeply to be shaken by the storm of suggestions and demands of ego. Therefore I live as if I have no difficulties.

Not to be touched or disturbed by the difficulties, to feel separate from them is the first step towards freedom.