Surrender: the decision to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. This is done either through the mind or the emotion or the life-impulse or through all of them together.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II : CWM, Vol. 14, p. 107
The first word represents:
the supreme invocation the invocation to the Supreme.
The second word represents:
total self-giving; perfect surrender.
The third word represents:
the aspiration, what the manifestation must become—Divine.
The Mother – Agenda, Vol. 6, p. 29
“Every thought of my mind, every emotion of my heart, every movement of my being, every feeling and every sensation, each cell of my body, each drop of my blood, all, all is yours, yours absolutely, yours without reserve. You can decide my life or my death, my happiness or my sorrow, my pleasure or my pain; whatever you do with me, whatever comes to me from you will lead me to the Divine Rapture.”
The Mother – Words of the Mother – III : CWM, Vol. 15, p. 209
A vast surrender was his only strength.
A Power that lives upon the heights must act,
Bring into life’s closed room the Immortal’s air
And fill the finite with the Infinite.
Sri Aurobindo – Savitri: CWSA, Vol. 33, Book Three, pp. 315-316
The effort demanded of the sadhak is that of aspiration, rejection and surrender. If these three are done the rest is to come of itself by the Grace of the Mother and the working of her force in you. But of the three the most important is surrender of which the first necessary form is trust and confidence and patience in difficulty….
Sri Aurobindo – The Mother with Letters on The Mother : CWSA, Vol. 32, p. 139
Detailed surrender: a surrender which does not forget anything. Detailed surrender means the surrender of all the details of life, even the smallest and the most insignificant in appearance. And this means to remember the Divine in all circumstances; whatever we think, feel or do, we must do it for Him as a way of coming close to Him, to be more and more what He wants us to be, capable of manifesting His will in perfect sincerity and purity, to be the instruments of His Love.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II : CWM, Vol. 14, p. 108
If you are truly surrendered to the Divine, in the right manner and totally, then at every moment you will be what you ought to be, you will do what you ought to do, you will know what you ought to know.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II : CWM, Vol. 14, p. 107
I have never said that Yoga or that this Yoga is a safe and easy path.…. One-mindedness (ekaniṣṭhā), surrender to the Divine, faith, true love for the Divine, complete sincerity in the will, spiritual humility (real, not formal)—there are so many things that can be a safeguard against any chance of eventual downfall. Slips, stumbles, difficulties, upsettings everyone has; one can’t be insured against these things, but if one has the safeguards, they are transitory, help the nature to learn and are followed by a better progress.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – IV : CWSA, Vol. 31, p. 674
The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy.
***
What is the secret of success in sadhana?
Surrender.
The Mother – Words of the Mother – II : CWM, Vol. 14, p. 108
…. Surrender will not diminish, but increase; it will not lessen or weaken or destroy your personality, it will fortify and aggrandise it. True surrender enlarges you; it increases your capacity; it gives you a greater measure in quality and in quantity which you could not have had by yourself. This new greater measure of quality and quantity is different from anything you could attain before: you enter into another world, into a wideness which you could not have entered if you did not surrender. It is as when a drop of water falls into the sea; if it still kept there its separate identity, it would remain a little drop of water and nothing more, a little drop crushed by all the immensity around, because it has not surrendered. But, surrendering, it unites with the sea and participates in the nature and power and vastness of the whole sea.
The Mother – Questions and Answers : CWM, Vol. 3, p. 114
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 or 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 – Questions and Answers : CWM, Vol. 3, p. 126
The three images of total self-giving to the Divine:
1) To prostrate oneself at His feet in a surrender of all pride, with a perfect HUMILITY.
2) To unfold one’s being before Him, to open entirely one’s body from head to toe, as one opens a book, spreading open one’s centers so as to make all their movements visible in a total SINCERITY that allows nothing to remain hidden.
3) To nestle in His arms, to melt in Him in a tender and absolute CONFIDENCE.
These movements may be accompanied by three formulas, or any one of them, depending upon the case:
1) May Your Will be done and not mine.
2) As You will, as You will …
3) I am Yours for eternity.
Generally, when these movements are made in the right way, they are followed by a perfect identification, a dissolution of the ego, bringing about a sublime felicity.
The Mother – Agenda, Vol. 1, p. 55
The most important surrender is the surrender of your character, your way of being, so that it may change. If you do not surrender your very own nature, never will this nature change. It is this that is most important. You have certain ways of understanding, certain ways of reacting, certain ways of feeling, almost certain ways of progressing, and above all, a special way of looking at life and expecting from it certain things—well, it is this you must surrender. That is, if you truly want to receive the divine Light and transform yourself, it is your whole way of being you must offer—offer by opening it, making it as receptive as possible so that the divine Consciousness which sees how you ought to be, may act directly and change all these movements into movements more true, more in keeping with your real truth….
The Mother – Questions and Answers : CWM, Vol. 4, p. 372
If part of the being surrenders, but another part reserves itself, follows its own way or makes its own conditions, then each time that that happens, you are yourself pushing the divine Grace away from you.
If behind your devotion and surrender you make a cover for your desires, egoistic demands and vital insistences, if you put these things in place of the true aspiration or mix them with it and try to impose them on the Divine Shakti, then it is idle to invoke the divine Grace to transform you…..
Sri Aurobindo – The Mother with Letters on The Mother : CWSA, Vol. 32, pp. 3-5
The core of this inner surrender is trust and confidence in the Divine. One takes the attitude, “I want the Divine and nothing else.” … “I want to give myself entirely to him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that I shall meet him and realise him. I ask nothing but that and his action in me to bring me to him, his action secret or open, veiled or manifest. I do not insist on my own time and way; let him do all in his own time and way, I shall believe in him, accept his will, aspire steadily for his light and presence and joy, go through all difficulties and delays relying on him and never giving up. Let my mind be quiet and turn to him and let him open it to his light; let my vital be quiet and turn to him alone and let him open it to his calm and joy. All for him and myself for him. Whatever happens, I will keep to this aspiration and self-giving and go on in perfect reliance that it will be done.” That is the attitude into which one must grow; for, certainly, it cannot be made perfect at once; mental and vital movements come across; but if one keeps the will to it, it will grow in the being. The rest is a matter of obedience to the guidance when it makes itself manifest—not allowing one’s mental or vital movements to interfere.
Sri Aurobindo – Letters on Yoga – II : CWSA, Vol. 29, pp. 70-71
Surrender
To will what the Divine wills is the supreme wisdom.
Rosa ‘Edward’
Rose
Medium-sized double highly fragrant pink flower. A large shrub.
The Mother – Spiritual significance of flowers
