SURRENDER’ AND HOW TO ACHIEVE IT?
Surrender has something of a negative implication.
You can never achieve surrender by deliberation. What you want is to surrender your attachment to objects. In other words, you want to forget objects (body, senses and mind).
If you start deliberately to forget them, they become more strongly manifest. Therefore the only means to achieve surrender is to turn your attention to the support or the background.
If the devotee gets more and more attached to his ishta-deva [chosen deity], surrender of all else will follow as a matter of course. You need not do anything special to attain it. An open and empty heart is the first requisite.
Surrender is an end in itself, and never a means. Surrender is something that has to come spontaneously, as a corollary to Self-realization.
Surrender is no surrender, in the strict sense of the term, if you happen even to remember the fact that you have surrendered. Surrender can never be accomplished objectively.
It is only by establishing oneself in one’s own Real nature, Atma, that real surrender obtains. Because you see that there is nothing else to be surrendered; and then, even the word ‘surrender’ becomes meaningless.
WHAT IS SURRENDER?
Surrender, so far as the ignorant man is concerned, is only of upadhi to upadhi [one personal expression to another], on the body level. But spiritual surrender means surrender of the [personal] ego to the Atma [impersonal Self] in one, Atma being represented by the Guru.
This is possible only at an advanced stage, when the disciple is capable of cognizing the impersonal. Therefore, real surrender is possible only after visualization of the Truth; and it can never be insisted upon as a qualification for realization, much less for initiation. It is said: ‘The Guru is immanent in all, as pure Atma. But he is immanent particularly in the disciple – to a much greater degree, on account of the relationship.’
WHAT IS THE MEANING AND PURPOSE OF SURRENDER?
To ‘surrender’ means strictly to ‘disown’. When all untruth is surrendered, you stand as the Truth itself.