August 10, 2011 – Surrender and Yoga

By which standard shall I walk,
the word that God speaks to me, saying
“This is My will, O my servant,”
or the rules that men who are dead, have written?
Nay, if I have to fear & obey any,
I will fear & obey God rather & not the pages of a book or the frown of a Pandit.

Sri Aurobindo

(Thoughts and Aphorisms 364)

Surrender and Yoga

Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. Without this decision nothing is at all possible; if you do not surrender, the Yoga is entirely out of the question. Everything else comes naturally after it, for the whole process starts with surrender. You can surrender either through knowledge o through devotion. You may have a strong intuition that the Divine alone is the truth and a luminous conviction that without the Divine you cannot manage. Or you may have a spontaneous feeling that this line is the only way of being happy, a strong psychic desire to belong exclusively to the Divine: “I do not belong to myself,” you say, and give up the responsibility of your being to the Truth. Then comes self-offering: “Here I am, a creature of various qualities, good and bad, dark and enlightened. I offer myself as I am to you, take me up with all my ups and downs, conflicting impulses and tendencies- do whatever you like with me.”

The Mother

The Great Adventure: page 37