Surrendering to Him

Do we really believe that our Master is taking care of our lives? Or is it that we are a little afraid to allow him to do it? Perhaps we are so used to taking charge that it is hard to believe that all we need to do is our meditation and everything else will work out perfectly. And yet this is exactly what our Master tells us over and over again. So why not just let go and surrender completely to him? What do we mean when we say we want to surrender to the Master?

There seems to be two kinds of surrender. First is the one that occurs when we turn our lives over to the Master for him to take care of everything for us. This may be what Maharaj Jagat Singh is talking about when he encourages us to lean on the Master:

So long as we lean on others, he lets us do so, but when after repeated disappointments we surrender to him completely, regarding him as our only sheet anchor he comes to our succor instantly.
_{Science of the Soul}

Leaning on the Master in our daily lives, seeing him as the sheet anchor that holds us fast in the turbulent waters of the world, this is one kind of surrender. But there is another kind - one that is purely spiritual in nature.

In Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, a questioner asks, “Can you talk to us about the unconditional surrender to the Master?” Maharaj Charan Singh replies:

First what is surrender? Surrender is when we take our ego and I-ness out of us. As long as the mind dominates the soul, there can be no surrender. When the soul dominates the mind, then you can say that we are in a position to surrender to somebody.

This second kind of surrender comes about when the soul dominates the mind, a very high stage in our spiritual evolution, but there can be signs that we know how to surrender even in our worldly lives. Hazur continues:

We feel that we have surrendered, even in physical love, when we submerge our will into the will of the other person. We try to merge our happiness into the happiness of the other person. We always try to do what pleases the other person, and never try to assert ourselves or to adjust the other person to us. We always adjust ourselves to the other person’s will. That is what we always like to do in love, even in this world. We always try to cooperate and to submit ourselves to the other person.

This description of physical love is a model of the way love should be. Each person in the relationship submits his will to the other, wants only to give and expects nothing in return. We love the person irrespective of their good or bad qualities. This is unconditional love, which is the kind of love that the Masters show us. But they, unlike us, can see beyond the physical to who we really are: soul. The Master’s love is spiritual. In spiritual love, there is no ego, no separation, no lover and beloved; there is only one, as Maharaj Charan Singh further explains:

[Surrendering to the Master] means that we have to take our ego out of us and blend our whole heart with his heart. He is already merged into the Lord, and by merging ourselves into him we are automatically merged into the Lord. That can be done only by meditation. The more we meditate, the more we are driving out ego. By doing so, we will be drawn towards the Master, and we are automatically surrendering to him; and through him, we are surrendering to the Lord himself.

This surrender - when we lose our identity and merge in the Lord – can only be experienced through meditation because meditation dissolves duality. Meditation reveals to us who we truly are: not mere drops, but the ocean itself - the ocean of love. This is our highest goal: God-realization, to realize that we are one with God, that we are love.

As we meditate, even before we reach that highest stage of oneness, we see signs of our changing nature as we become more loving, more giving, more compassionate. The closer we draw to the eye centre, the closer we draw to the Master and the more we begin to imbibe his qualities.

In Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III, Maharaj Charan Singh says:

If you have a kind and loving heart, you are kind and loving to everybody, you are helpful to everybody…. It happens automatically if we are filled with love and devotion for the Father. Then all such qualities come like cream on the milk. You don’t have to strive for them; they become part and parcel of you, because then you see the Lord in everyone. You are humble before everyone.

We become loving automatically when we are filled with love and devotion for the Father. First comes love for the Master, then the Father, and finally comes love for the people of the world. As our relationships improve, as we become softer, we can see that we are making progress on our spiritual path - this is a natural process. We sit down, close our eyes and repeat the five holy names we are given at initiation by our Master. Just sit down, close our eyes and let go. Every time we do this, we are driving out our ego and coming closer to merging with, to surrendering to our inner Master.

Hazur continues in Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III:

So we can surrender unconditionally only when we go inside, see the Radiant Form of the Master, merge ourselves in him and then go ahead. This is the real unconditional surrender. But we have to work for that while living in this world. To attain that real surrender, which we call sharan, we have to remain within the dictates and principles that were told to us at the time of initiation.

Attaining sharan, or surrender, is a very high goal that we can achieve in this very lifetime, but as Hazur says we have to do it while living a normal life. This is not easy because it seems that everything around us is designed to pull our attention away from the eye centre. But the Master gives us a framework of the four vows in which to live; and if we remain within these principles, we can succeed.

Following the vows is an essential part of the path. Every time we make a conscious choice based on our vows, we are thinking of the path and the Master. Doing seva, reading the books, doing simran when our minds are not busy during the day, and remembering our Master keep our minds in check and make the Master happy. Actively choosing to do what pleases our Master is showing our love for him, showing devotion, showing that we want to surrender.

Maharaj Charan Singh ends his answer in Spiritual Perspectives, Vol. III:

We have to put forth our honest efforts to remain on the path, to give time to meditation. That, in a way, is surrender to the Master, and this surrender will lead to the internal surrender, the real or unconditional surrender. That will be when we see the Master inside, forget our self and merge in his will, in his love.

This is our goal, to merge with the Master - to lose our identity in him. This is true love. And with this true love, we become perfect just like our Master. Then all our interactions in the world will be driven by unconditional love.

Just give yourself to Him. To love somebody means to give yourself without expecting anything in return. To give yourself, to submit yourself, to resign to Him is all meditation. We are losing our own identity and our individuality and just merging into another being. We have no expectation then…. In love you don’t exist. You just lose yourself, you just submit yourself, you just resign to His will…. The more we give, the more it grows, the more we lose ourselves, the more we become another being.
_{Maharaj Charan Singh, Die to Live}