When I approached my Master and I expressed to Him, because I was a little desolate, a little disappointed with myself - I had just started my career, not by any means a very laudable career - my Master could sense all these things and he said, "You are disappointed with yourself. Give it up." I said, "But Babuji" - we used to address Him as Babuji - I said, "How is it possible to so easily throw away one's ambitions? I still hanker" - I mean this is way back in nineteen sixty four, I still hankered - "for those degrees which I never got! I feel small in front of these dignitaries of the universities and schools I feel humble before them." He said, "Yes! There is no wrong in feeling humble. Be humble, but don't be humbled." There is a big difference, you see, between 'being humble' and 'being humbled'. Being humbled is a derogatory thing, somebody putting something over you, victory over you, things like that, but to be humble is an attitude. Then I heard one of our preceptors, who used to be there, say that, "Knowledge must give us humility," as the Gita says. Of course, how many people who have strings of degrees behind their names have this virtue of humility? It is something we don't see much of today. So He taught me to reconcile myself to my situation. The first training in yoga is the training to learn to accept yourself as you are. We should neither think too much of ourselves, nor belittle ourselves. We should neither have an exaggerated attitude towards ourselves, nor towards others. We should not belittle anybody nor belittle ourselves; accept, because after all, in the science of Yoga we deal with reality and I must be real. What I am today is what is real. It was in that sense in which my Master did not like to be praised and extolled.
- (P. Rajagopalachari, Principles of Sahaj Marg, Volume 9, pp. 208-209)
I appreciate your writing all about your past. The details are not the important things, provided one has made proper use of all that one has had to undergo. I believe that you have succeeded in this to some extent and will gain greater measures of success in the future, by Master's Grace. Acceptance is the secret, and this is what surrender, in spirituality, really means. It means total acceptance of all that is given to us by way of life in the concrete faith that we are but getting back what we have put into the bank of samskara in the past, and accepting the fact that we alone are responsible for all that is happening to us, and all is good for us as foundations laid by us for our own future evolution. This is the real meaning, and deep significance, of surrender.
It is wisdom to put the past back where it belongs (in the past!) and get on with the job of living properly in the present-which is where the future is being built! If this is understood and followed sensibly, then the past is past, and we should not devote even a moment to it. Then we become free of all the disappointments, sorrows and guilts associated with that part which has gone, and we are free to face the future in the most sensible way by trying to build the future. This, if followed exactly, is in itself a great liberation, as it confers freedom of thought and action upon the individual who has hitherto been burdened by the sins and the tragedies of the past!
- (P. Rajagopalachari, The Spider's Web, p. 31)
Now what happens in our ordinary life? We try to do away with one and keep the other. We want to take away sickness and retain health. We want to take away poverty and remain rich. Like that, you see. The law says, these are two opposites which always exist together: light and shade; health and sickness; foolishness and wisdom; vice and virtue. They are two sides of a coin. You cannot keep one and give away the other. It is a futile exercise. You go to the Master and say, "Babuji, I would like this but not this." He smiles most compassionately, but gives no answer because He knows it is impossible - even for Him.
But what can He do for you that He has done for Himself? He can bring these widely separated opposites closer and closer together until they are merged and balanced inside you. Now, they are inside you, you see, not outside you to trouble you. So He has with Him, inside, like an atom has in itself, a nucleus and the electrons, He has within Himself a nucleus of strength, with electrons perhaps of illness. And you know what keeps the electrons spinning around the nucleus? Difference in polarities. So when you embody within yourself by accepting this - that existence has two opposites sides to it - don't try to deal with them outside yourself. Like cleaning the garbage cans, keeping the toilet clean, putting on a good dress - it's no solution. Because now one is inside you, the other is outside you. But if you accept the fact that they are two things which must inexorably exist together for all time; and you tell them, "Come within me!"; and you compress them into one bit; there they are twisting around themselves, no longer troubling me, you see. My health and my sickness are whirling inside me leaving me free of both. My total richness with a few electrons of poverty is whirling inside myself leaving me free of both. So also with all opposite phenomena. And that is why He is called a Master - because He has absorbed the opposites within Himself, reconciled them within Himself, and made them inoperative. This is a condition which we should aspire for. Not by negating sickness, negating stupidity, negating poverty, negating vice, but in a grand synthesis, accepting everything to go into you, and allowing the Master to balance them. And they become harmless atoms, like you have here, you have here, you have everywhere, you see. They are playing their part; and I exist.
I don't know what's happening to the atoms inside me. May be electrons are changing orbits. What does it matter to me? It may be one atom of radium has become plutonium. What does it matter to me? Nothing matters to me any more because I have contained them within myself. Even if somebody could explode an atom within me, it would have as little effect upon me as a supernova explosion has on the universe which contains it. So you see, troubles can be overcome, happiness can be accepted, only when both are negated, both are accepted, and both are interiorized and forgotten. That is another aspect of surrender.
- (P. Rajagopalachari, Heart to Heart Volume 1, pp. 161-163)
You know there is a principle in physics (when dealing with light) reflection - that a green object appears green because it absorbs everything else and reflects only green. Yellow object appears yellow, because it absorbs everything else and reflects the yellow component of light. And one child - I read this in a book - says why God cannot be seen, because He absorbs everything and reflects nothing. I mean it is a very stupendous concept. Therefore He is able to absorb our prayers, He is able to absorb our praises, and even our curses. He is able to absorb all these in Himself and reflects nothing. Therefore whatever we say, whatever we do, we are unable to see. Now, if we want to be like Him - there is so much talk about humility and similar praiseworthy traits - I would suggest that if we want to be like Him we have to develop this capacity to absorb everything that is hurled at us. I deliberately use the word hurled because praise is often hurled at us. People think humility is only in denying praise. It is also in denying condemnation. If a man says, "Sir, everybody is blaming me but I am not bothered about it, let them blame me," he is taking pride in his blameworthiness. He is making use of the situation where he is blamed to create an ego situation for himself out of that and seeking some sort of sympathy from the external world. We should be non-reactive. God is non-reactive - He is not bothered about the way we praise Him because instantly He doesn't dole out something we want. Nor is He bothered about our criticism and our condemnation. He doesn't come and justify Himself and say, "No, no, brother you are wrong. Your child was this and this and this in the past janma [life], and therefore he has to go." No God has appeared and said these things. He is quiet. He is what He is as my Master used to say. God id God. God can be nothing else.
So those who seek God-realisation, or as we put it in Sahaj Marg, to become divinised, have of necessity to accept the formless, nameless, attributeless Master, because if He is God He has to be that. All that He manifested was a play for us in one sense, a reflection of what we need in another sense. Similarly, if we want to be like Him, and through Him, to be like God, divinised, we have also to learn to absorb everything within ourselves. Not by an act of deliberate acceptance, in the sense that my mind is conditioned and I am trained in charity and things like that, and I put on a brave face and a stiff upper lip (as they say in the English language) and I bear it with tolerance. Anything borne with tolerance is not borne. Absorbing what is thrown into me must become an act of unconscious acceptance. I should not be even conscious that I have accepted it. I should not even be conscious that I have absorbed it. If I am conscious it is already in the human level of acceptance or non-acceptance, from which I cherish a certain return, from which I cherish a certain meritorious reward.
- (P. Rajagopalachari, Principles of Sahaj Marg Volume 5, pp. 89-91)
