Obedience Leads to Surrender

In spirituality obedience is the highest virtue. 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.

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.”

Dependency – The way to Surrender
I often wondered how to bring about this state of surrender. I found a hint in Master’s writings, where he says that to achieve this state one should create a feeling of dependency on the Master. This idea of dependency creates its own problems in the minds of abhyasis. It seems to imply that the abhyasi is a helpless being bereft of freedom of choice, freedom of action etc. I too felt in this same way until one day, during meditation session with abhyasis of the Madurai Centre, some ideas came to me. I understood that we are all utterly dependent on so many things for our very existence. We are dependent on air more than anything else for our life, for without air to breathe, we would die in a minute or so. We are dependent on water to a very great extent.

It is not enough that there is water all around us. It must be fit for drinking. As a poet has said, “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink!” So we are greatly dependent upon this second element of Nature for our survival. Then we are dependent upon food for our living. Here we see a law which seems to operate in Nature. Air is vital for our very existence; water for our living. As the element becomes grosser, our dependence seems to decrease accordingly, but nevertheless the dependence is there.

A baby is dependent totally upon its mother. Without the mother it could not survive. But the child does not feel it is a slave of its mother. Then, as human beings, we are dependent upon one another for love, for help and so many other aspects of our social existence. We are dependent upon energy sources whether animate like animals, or whether inanimate like the sun, coal, oil, etc. So we find that when we analyze this subject adequately, it reveals total dependence on so many things, but are we thereby made slaves to these things? I think not. Our human condition is a state of existence in dependence while being free to live as we choose within the parameters of that dependence.

Master gives us the beautiful illustration of a mother and child. If a child should be attacked by a tiger, the child runs to its mother. The mother does not hesitate to protect the child even if she should be killed in the process. Nor does the child wonder whether its mother can protect it. It runs to the mother naturally, and the mother protects the child in a similar natural manner. This gives us a clue to the state of dependence. It is a natural state created by Nature in its boundless wisdom and mercy so that by interdependence all may grow on the evolutionary way. Dependence therefore is a help. What we could not do for ourselves, natural dependence makes available to us. No human being would like to face a situation where he had to manufacture the very air that he breathes! Is such a thing possible? Nature gives it to us free of cost, without putting us to any effort for it.

There is a beautiful story in the Mahabharata, where the five brothers, the Pandavas and their cousins, the 100 cousins, the Kauravas are at war, or going to be at war, because the eldest brother has gambled away everything including their common wife Draupadi. And they determine, these 100 cruel, tyrannical cousins decide to humiliate the 5 brothers in public by stripping her of her sari. Now it is said that her own brother was Lord Krishna. And here, they call the cruellest of these fellows, Dussasana, and he starts to disrobe her, pulls away her sari. She is holding on tight, weeping, for shame. And when the last bit of flimsy cloth is going, she throws up her hands and says, “Krishna, where are you?” At that moment the miracle happens, Dussasana is pulling yard after yard of sari, there is no end. Ultimately he falls. He cannot stand even, so much of his energy has gone into it. And she is still fully clad, and there is a mountain of sari lying there. There is Krishna, you see, with his hand raised. And the sister, you see, here comes a very famous or I should say very important moral to the whole story, Draupadi turns around and asks him, “Where were you? Till I shouted for you, you didn’t come?” And he says, “Sister, I was always with you, but while you were holding, how could I help you? When you let go and said ‘Hare Krishna’, now it was my business to hold and you see the result.” This exemplifies the need to surrender, you see. Surrender what? That which you are most unwilling to surrender, our sense of shame. How can a human being who calls himself divine, have a sense of shame? What is shame but another protective device which we build around ourselves?

Now this conveys the biggest lesson, the most important lesson: as long as we hold, he says, “Go ahead. You think you are responsible, you think you are capable, well I have no quarrels with that. Even that capacity is mine, use it. But remember as long as you depend on yourself, I am out of the picture. When you are no longer capable, when you have exceeded your limits, call me, I will come.” Spiritual wisdom says, “Why do you want to wait so long? Do it in the beginning.” Anything that you may have, however competent you may be, however strong you may be as a human being, whatever be the wealth that you have got, in His kingdom it is less than an atom. What are you really surrendering? Throw it at His feet and say, “Lord, take it and take me with it,” and then see the miracle. You don’t have to wait ten years, fifteen years, twenty years and then surrender. Surrender today and the battle is won.

We have to live in this world. Whatever we may do or not do, our existence is something over which we have no control; I mean the physical existence. But surely we have control over our spiritual experience when we surrender ourselves to the Master. His control comes only when we give up our control to Him. That is, instead of my depending on myself I transfer this dependence to our Beloved Babuji Maharaj and then when the dependence is surrendered it becomes a true state of surrender. That is as Master states repeatedly “create in yourselves a state of dependency and surrender will automatically come.”

As faith advances, there comes a stage of total dependence on the Master which can be fittingly called a state of surrender. Surrender is not a ritual act to be piously and ritually gone through, but is a state of existence which comes into being when one’s dependence on the Master has become complete. Here we meet a problem – all our life we have been taught to be independent, to stand on our own legs, to manage our affairs ourselves and so on. How then are we to negate a lifelong and deeply inculcated teaching and accept the opposite state?

A proper understanding of the real meaning of this state becomes necessary. Surrender does not mean an external dependence for material fruits of one’s actions. Surrender does not mean the impotent dependence on external powers to support or bolster our weaknesses. Surrender does not mean outside help in the crisis of existence. All such connotations are wrong, and are largely responsible for the criticism of the doctrine of dependence on the Master. The right meaning is that we recognize the all-pervading, omnipotent and omnipresent nature of the Master’s spiritual essence, and this being so, our endeavour, action becomes something arising out of His will, not ours, and therefore they must have a definite plan and goal and this being so, He works, not we. He achieves, not we and we become instruments of the Divine will of Master. A sure belief in the Cosmic Person carrying out His plans rids us of belief in, or dependence on ourselves, because our judgement of causes, effects, events is no longer useful or even necessary. And so, the earlier dependence we had on our own selves becomes naturally transferred to a total dependence on Him.

What happens when we come to this state of surrender? Hesse’s beautiful imagery comes to my mind where the seeker at just such a desperate moment, comes face to face with a model of a human figure that really consisted of two persons, back to back, first one being himself. This side was blurred, while the other one, of his Master, was strong, well-developed. As he watched, the figures became crystal clear, and he could see inside. Then he saw something was flowing from his own figure into his Master’s, and he thought or felt, that his figure would completely flow into his Master’s, so that only the Master would remain, while he disappeared entirely.

In Sahaj Marg we have this, and in addition we find that as the abhyasi becomes ‘empty’ in the real sense of the word, his Master flows into him, so that what was nothing more than a mere mortal to start with, with all the weaknesses, frailties and limitations of humanity, becomes Divinised until he becomes Master in spirit and essence. This, to my mind, is enriching the individual to the Divine State. I would like to complete Hesse’s beautiful imagery by adding that there is this reciprocal flow, from us into Him, and from Him into us – and only this latter flow of Him into us can really complete what Master calls the Laya Avastha the state of complete mergence of one in the other. The individual is not destroyed by being taken into the Master; all that Master does is to empty us of all that is merely human, and then pours Himself into that vacuum to recreate us to His own state of Being. This, then is the culmination of our search, of our endeavour, that we become He by He becoming us!

All extant systems of yogic practice teach that after a certain state of spiritual elevation has been reached, there is no longer the need for a Master. The Sahaj Marg system is unique in reversing this trend of thought by teaching that, as a disciple develops, his need for the Master increases and at very highest levels of spiritual attainments of elevation, a Divine Master alone can take him on to further achievements. Therefore, instead of dependence on the Master falling off, the dependence on Him for everything we need – physical, material, mental or spiritual progressively increases.

At this stage a disciple may be said to become a pure instrument of the Master’s will and ego falls off. Instead of the disciple acting for himself, by himself, he becomes an instrument in the Master’s hands used at the Master’s will, for unfolding the Master’s plans. No unused instrument can remain sharp and rust-free. It is only a used chisel which remains bright and sharp but it must be recognized that the chisel does not act by itself but allows itself to be used according to the artisan’s will. The disciple must similarly be able to perfect himself under the Master’s will and guidance and later, to surrender himself as a mere instrument into His hands for His use, to achieve His purpose. This may be said to be the state of surrender.

At this level, the instrument offers no resistance or impediment to its use; and, to use an analogy, that pane of glass is perfect which allows the total quantum of light coming from one side to pass through to the other side. A disciple who can achieve this stage of utter transparency where he does not exist for himself, such a disciple alone can allow the Master’s will to pass through him to act for itself. Therefore we must try to become ‘nonexistent’ to the rest of the world or universe, very much like a pure plate of glass which is often unperceived.

I remember one amusing incident when a new airlines office was opened. A full office front of plate glass was kept so impeccably clean and transparent that a prospective passenger who had just purchased his ticket walked out right through the glass front, not perceiving that there was a pane of glass in front of him. The perfect disciple should be similarly ‘transparent’ or nonexistent, because ego manifestation from within himself would have ceased, and the Master alone perceives him as an instrument working at His pleasure. Such a one would fit the definition of a perfect disciple.

By enriching ourselves and coming closer and closer to the Ultimate within ourselves, we become more and more dependent on that inner self. We seek His guidance, we seek His advice, we obey His voice when He speaks to us; and as this dependence on Him increases and becomes Ultimate, it becomes surrender. It is surrender without surrendering; it is renunciation without renouncing, it is truth without seeking it.

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