The Significance of Sri Aurobindo’s Surrender from the First Principles of What Will Is
by Karmayogi
April 22,2001
In life, we know of the submission of one person to another who has superior strength.
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The vital resents, the mind has reservations, even if the body submits. Sometimes, even the body revolts.
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There are conditions where these resentments, reservations and revolts change into their opposites.
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He who surrenders at this stage, gets the strength of the one to whom he surrendered.
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In the spiritual tradition all over the world, it is well known that no question should be asked of the Guru.
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This is right, but it is only a refined superstition of sacred sentiments.
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To question is to know the unknown from a similar source, perhaps of equal strength.
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Questioning brings the Guru to an equal status, at least as the disciple approaches.
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In that condition, the best the disciple can get is what he already knows or at the level of his existing knowledge, not more, because he has practically equated the Guru to his level of comprehension.
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Other aspects of the context such as fear, self-sufficiency, tendency to endorse or differ and every other thing reduces a spiritual context to a social or mental occasion.
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Knowledge is a spiritual force that flows along a gradient. Where there is equality, there will be no flow. If equality should be there, it is the equal status of the Guru and the disciple before Truth in knowing further.
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Sri Aurobindo’s yoga needs a spiritual context where the disciple needs to feel fully equal to the Guru in Spirit, in spite of the fact that the above context will be very much in place in view of the social emotions that have not been fully shed.
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Without such total Freedom in practice, this knowledge will not flow from the guru to the disciple. In the absence of the disciple’s complete surrender to him, the Guru completes it or compensates it by his surrendering to the student, as He explains with Ishwara. Still, a pure, total surrender is in order.
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As no human guru is contemplated, this surrender is to the divine, but the principle holds good. The Divine adopts a posture of surrender to man, at least as It behaves towards him.
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The Gita’s surrender is a surrender of beliefs, of dharma, i.e. of the mind’s faith. It is for attaining moksha quickly. The surrender is offered to Purushothama, the transcendent Self.
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Sri Aurobindo’s surrender is for transformation.
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This surrender calls for the surrender of soul and nature.
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Behind this act of surrender is the conviction not of sacrifice but of expansion into the nature of the Divine. It is surrender for gain, not for loss.
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It is a SUPERSTITION to have one and only attitude in any human relationship and the relationship with the Guru allows several relationships, one of them is utter submission.
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Laws of existence states submission goes with domination. The disciple who offers unconditional surrender to the guru has already bargained for total domination.
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With the Divine, this law expresses itself as the sadhak becoming the Divine by his surrender confining the other saying that one becomes That to which he surrenders.
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In submission, one submits physically.
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Vitally it is giving up the will to release further energy.
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In the mind, it is knowledge and will. Will surrendering means the will disappears into knowledge, thus adding all the energy of will to the energy of knowledge when one fuses into another.
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That is the state of Supermind. When the mental will surrenders, it raises mind to the Supermind.
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Will is Force, Force issues out of consciousness.
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Surrender of the will results in the will disappearing into consciousness which is the origin of Mother. Thus, surrender enables man to become Mother.
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Man is under the social determinism an beyond that, under the psychological determinism. Surrender of will lifts him out of the society and not only is he not bound by the society, but the society is either led by him or mastered by him.
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Surrendering his psychological will makes him similarly free from the determinism of Nature and moves him into Cosmic Consciousness.
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One can go further to the will that objectifies.
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By surrendering the will to objectify or be subjective, he goes out of Time and Space and becomes the Pure Self at the gates of the Transcendent.
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Theoretically, by surrendering one’s will to exist, one returns to the Absolute.
Surrendering of one’s will means -- that will stands on the knowledge of being that will – surrendering that knowledge of the will. -
When Will and Knowledge are surrendered, the state in which one is left is the Pure Consciousness.
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When will is shifted from karma to faith, it brings in Grace. Will withdrawn from one’s capacities changes Grace into Super Grace.
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Surrender combines in itself Self-Conception, Self-limitation, Self-absorption, thus becoming in the act the Absolute in the measure they re resorted to.