Obedience Leads to Surrender

Obedience is the fundamental virtue in the disciple, because Babuji has said, "One who is disciplined is a disciple," and discipline means obedience. Now there will be many people who will equate obedience with loss of freedom. It doesn't mean anything like that. I cannot possibly obey unless I am free to obey. So only a free man obeys. One who is a slave doesn't obey. He only performs. Obedience means I am free to obey out of my own free will, out of my love for the Master, anything and everything that he tells me to do. So, obedience is a sign of freedom. Unfortunately, especially in the West, with all the philosophic mind and high education, they have not understood the simple truth, you see, that only he or she is free, who can obey.

A prisoner has no choice. Can a prisoner disobey? He will be shot. So there, obedience is not obedience. It is instant action to an order, like in the military. Here, we obey with our freedom, with our love for the Master. Therefore, it is not mere obedience, it is my handing over myself. How can there be surrender without obedience? Obedience means, for that moment, I am obeying one, whom I consider higher than myself; my Master, my Lord, my God, everything. When that attitude becomes a continuous, twenty-four hour attitude, pervading my life, it is surrender - "I am yours; whatever you do, I do; whatever you say, I say; whatever you think, I think."

When a person surrenders to a Master, it means he has surrendered completely in all ways. He has become merely an instrument in the Master's hands. How can such a person even try to decide what is right or wrong? Here obedience alone is correct. There are various levels of existence, and duty is different from level to level. The soldier obeys the captain's orders; but in ordering his troops the captain in turn is only obeying the orders of his immediate superior officer - and this goes on up the scale of authority. It is an axiom of the Army that "He alone can command who has learnt to obey." One who has never learnt to obey, one who has never obeyed, can never command, because he doesn't know what to do.

So by being obedient to the Master, we are able to work for Him. If you are totally obedient, you are totally like the Master. And that brings Him something which He never had in His life - happiness, like every father you see. When we accept Him and obey Him and work for Him and become like Him, He is happy.

So obedience, love, surrender, they are three faces of the same thing. You cannot have them individually. You have them all three or you don't have them at all. So one cannot be obedient without dedication. Otherwise we are like policemen and military people, that is obedience for pay. Here we obey because we love. So finally your work will reflect your love for the Master. Love for a person must reflect in the action that he desired you to do for him. Love of a principle must be revealed in your working and in your adherence to that principle. And love for Master must be revealed in your love for all.

So, all obedience is for the sake of the self. Here also, it is for your sake that you are obedient. Therefore, you practise for your own development; you have to develop obedience to make that practice effective, for your own development; that develops love for the Master to take you to the highest state of development. And one day that will take you to the Master and make you one with him, again for your sake.

I hope, I pray, that the Master may bless us with this ability to be totally obedient, totally self-forgetful of ourselves, totally unconscious of our own existence, because only then can such obedience be possible. May the Master bless all of us in that.

"The secret of spiritual success, spiritual growth, spiritual achievement is obedience."