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Not Resorting to Prayer Even
For me prayer seems to be some sort of an insult to my Master. That
I have to remind him that I am suffering. When we say, “He sees everything,
He is with me all the time,” how is it he does not know what I am undergoing
now, either in the way of pleasure or in the way of pain? If he does
not know that, what is he? If he is that, then where is the need for
my reminder? If he is that and let me undergo this or that, he wishes
me to undergo this or that. If he wishes it, who am I to deny it? This
is surrender in its real sense. And it is possible only when we can
become unselfconscious.
Different aspects of Surrender All that is essential for success is
contained in the abhyasis’ willingness to accept guidance from the Master,
and to pursue the path inexorably. If we examine this concept of ‘willingness’
carefully, we find that ultimately it points to the need for total surrender
to the Master. As Master has repeatedly emphasized, surrender is necessary
on the part of the abhyasi, if Master’s work is to succeed. In one of
Master’s writings he has given a pointer to this. What should be the
ideal abhyasi’s attitude? Master has used an illustration to emphasize
this point. He has stated that a carpenter can easily fashion whatever
he desires from timber, but if he is given a chair as raw material to
work with, what can he do? With timber he is free to do as he pleases,
and to fashion what he has decided to create, whereas with a chair he
is faced with severe limitations which cannot generally be overcome.
When we accept change, we accept the Master’s Will. When we accept
it totally and unreservedly, with the faith that it is essential for
all progress, the stage of Surrender sets in. Surrender, looked at in
this way, is a humble submission to the process of change that my Master
initiates in us, for our growth to the highest levels of spirituality
available to mankind.
My Master said, "It is an amazing thing, Parthasarathi, that the poor
do not beg. It is the rich who beg. And the richer they are, the more
they beg for. So this is another principle of invertendo that the needy
do not beg, they just surrender to existence, you see. You find them
in the poor countries of the world, they are lying by the street-side,
too poor even to beg, too weak even to ask, even from God. It is therefore
in the poor of the world that you find this attitude of surrender. You
may say, “Well, it is an enforced surrender.” Why not? Surrender in
whichever way it comes is desirable. And if you have to be poor and
made to suffer before you can surrender, that is also one of the ways
of God, one of the ways of destiny. In fact it is one of the ways that
the individual soul has evolved for itself from its experience arising
out of its previous life.
Really and truly speaking, surrender is only sitting in a boat
and allowing the current to take us with it. Now anybody who
has struggled against the current in a river knows, how much effort
is necessary, and how little progress we really make. Whereas if you
just sit back and allow the river to take you with it, it takes you
to your destination.
In the highest level of spirituality we can do without knowing anything.
We have to do without knowing anything. The doing is ours, the knowing
is His. And when we are able to accept this situation, and tell the
Master, “I am doing what you told me to do, the rest is your business,”
that is surrender – one way of thinking of surrender.
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