More About Surrender

• Sri Aurobindo never explained why He chose Surrender as His method.
• As we know that surrender yields the end result in the beginning, it would be right for us to know how it is so.
• Is there anything we need to know about surrender that we have not known till now?
• Surrender gives the person who surrenders all the power of him to whom he surrenders. Why?
• How does surrender abridge a long time?
• If these are the characteristics of surrender, what is surrender really?
• Who surrenders what to whom?
• How does ego dissolve by surrender?
• What are the energies of surrender and their mechanism?
• We witness energy the first time Matter moves.
• It is the aspiration of Matter that releases excess energy which makes movement of inanimate Matter possible.
• Behind that aspiration, there must be a personality and a person.
• That person is unconscious in Matter and Life, but is not so in Mind, where, if he chooses, he can become conscious.
• In matter, it is the physical, inert, unconscious person.
• In mind, it is the mental, unconscious person which we call mentality.
• Mentality is ignorant. Becoming conscious is to emerge out of Ignorance into Knowledge.
• The movement from Matter to Mind is by natural evolution which can continue up to Overmind, as the spirit in mind and in the spiritual ranges can be unconscious.
• It is unconscious in the sense it is part of the Purusha which is immutable.
• Mind develops by thought, understanding, etc.
• Minds in the spiritual range develop by Silence, Light, Intuition and Knowledge, none of them conscious.
• Unconscious Silence, Light, Intuition and Knowledge belong to the plane of Timelessness. Therefore, they are not conscious of evolution.
• The soul in the mind has the option to use the faculties of the mind. In that case, it can develop by concentration but will remain unconscious in the Timeless plane.
• Only the plane of simultaneous Time is conscious of Spiritual evolution.
• The soul in the mind can exercise its option of not using the faculties of the Mind. It is surrender of the faculties of the mental plane by the conscious soul in the Mind.
• Man evolved from matter to mind and to spirit by the unconscious Natural evolution which has occurred over millennia.
• The moment the soul in the mind chooses to not  use its mental faculties, it becomes conscious. This is not done by concentration but by consecration that ends in surrender.
• Moving from unconsciousness to consciousness abridges Time.
• Man decided not to learn by doing, taking a long time. Mind can so decide or the soul in the mind can decide in a trice.
• The energy in Matter by its aspiration is an energy that moves, as the aspiration is to move.
• The energy in Mind is the energy of aspiration to know.

That energy comes from the emerging Knowledge out of Ignorance.

• When a work is to be done, we know we have several capacities. Not to exercise those capacities which we do have is not given to any part of our being including the Spirit. It is there only in the conscious soul, the Psychic. Therefore not exercising those faculties is surrender that lets the psychic emerge.
• The conscious soul is in the Simultaneous plane of Time where Time fleets. Therefore, Time is abridged.
• By surrender one becomes conscious of his soul. When he surrenders to anyone his conscious soul is aware of the other man's soul of which he is not conscious. While he is not and you are, his faculties come to you through being conscious.
• When the body submits to another in obedience, the body's opposition of resistance is given up or reversed. The body remains intact, but now it is the instrument of the new view.
• So also we see the corresponding stages in the vital.
• When we come to the Mind, it is subtle. Mind is not brain. Mind can change its attitude after surrender and be a new instrument of the new attitude or disappears if it chooses, as it is subtle. The reversal of consciousness in the mind makes it an instrument of Unity instead of division. This means the buried Supermind emerges in the Mind. For the evolution to be completed, Supermind must emerge from our bodies.
• Supermind emerging out of Mind is one aspect of evolution and the others are,

Knowledge emerging out of Ignorance.

Infinite emerging out of the Finite, and so on.

Knowledge for us is knowledge of the senses and the knowledge of the Mind which He says is seeking Ignorance. Knowledge above is Self-existent knowledge. There is another dimension. It is the Self-existent knowledge that emerges out of Ignorance as Self-expressive knowledge, expressing Brahman, the Absolute. Our knowledge is in Time. The Self-existent knowledge is in Timelessness. The knowledge that emerges out of Ignorance as Self-expressive knowledge, expressing the Absolute is in the Simultaneous integrality of Time-eternity as well as Timeless-eternity. This argument can be repeated for all the twelve aspects of the Spirit. How do we describe this emerging? The Absolute when it decided to create, became the Self-Conscious Being. It did so by Self-conception and moved into creation. It surrendered its status of being the Absolute. Knowledge buried in Ignorance emerges by another Self-conception surrendering all that it is, into evolution for the joy of self-finding. This is the attitude, movement, method which He calls surrender. The emerging knowledge surrenders its all to become the true knowledge.

• The One becomes the Many in creation. The Many become the One in evolution. The One is the Being which cannot be divided. Even consciousness cannot be divided. The Force that emerges out of consciousness can be divided by the Mind.
• The One remains One when the Mind divided the Force into the many centres of existence. The One remains behind the Many, acting as their souls.
• The soul in the Many - the psychic - evolves to become the One, rather the being of the One which is evolution.
• Creation is Force emerging out of consciousness which is an extension of Being.
• Evolution is Force going back to Being via consciousness.
• This move occurs at various levels of Form, Silence, Manifestation, Time, Finite, Unity, and so on.
• The method, if we wish to call it method of the Finite going back not into Infinity but into the Infinity that appears finite in the dimension of Simultaneous Time is called by Him, 'Surrender'.

It is a moveless move,

a formless form,

Timeless Time,

Silence behind Silence that is activity.

• Man starts with physical, vital obedience and  mental subordination and matures to spiritual surrender, which The Gita speaks of. The Gita wants us to give up all dharmas, mental beliefs, so that the Spirit in us can merge with the Superconscient Spirit.
• Sri Aurobindo points out a further dimension, a dimension of spiritual evolution, a move from Time in Becoming to Simultaneous Time in the Being of Becoming and calls it Surrender.
• That is why Time vanishes, man becomes the Brahman in evolution. If we decide to seek it He, rather She offers to act on our behalf. Hence, He wants us to surrender to Her and says our reward, if any reward is needed, is Her accepting our surrender.
• Mind acts through thought. So, its surrender is voiced as a thought. Its surrender leads to Silence.
• The vital surrenders through the energy of feeling. Here, the result of surrender is an increase in the quality of energy. Surrender creates a quiet that is of more powerful energy.
• The surrender of the body is a surrender of its sensation which is felt as a thrill of gratitude or ecstasy.
• Beyond that lies the surrender of our being.
• The instrument of the being is motive.
• Motive surrendered is a motionless immensity.
• One can go beyond still as He speaks of the surrender of consciousness, delight and power after the being is surrendered.
• All of them rolled together is existence.
• The surrender of existence is a movement of evolution.
• Often we practise it in some measure with others.
• If we can call it by the name surrender, surrender to a good person gives an excellent human relationship.
• One can surrender to a bad person, too, if he is moving towards yoga.
• This opens up the subtle totality of the human personality.
• Surrender is to the Divine, not to man.
• Really it is surrender to the Mother in man.
• That is done only by The Mother in us, on Her own without our volition.
• At that point, Sri Aurobindo talks of surrender in two ways.
• One is the surrender of the Mother in us to God and the other to the Mother in man.
• The first is surrender of the Being and the other is surrender of Becoming.
• At this point, one stations himself or touches the movement of One becoming the Many.
• Man thus participates in the process of creation.
• Remaining there forever, he will also participate in the involution as well as evolution.
• Surrender thus gets completed.
• Surrender can be passive or active.
• When it is passive, the Force works through the passivity.
• This is like an army that is docile and disciplined.
• Active surrender is one where the power of one's temperament goes to express the Force.
• It is like a patriotic army fighting with passion.
• Of course, there is a higher passivity that transcends the active surrender.
• The double aspect of active and passive is found at all levels of personality from physical to the supramental.
• The active and passive states are transcended in one which includes both.
• It is said that when Indira launched an attack on East Pakistan, she was not tense or uneasy, but calm. Those who have seen her at that time say there was a buoyancy in her Spirit.
• Of course we know Mother was behind Indira and the war actively. Someone dreamt that soldiers in that war had Mother's face.
• Mother wanted the government to invade Pakistan and annex both wings.
• Such an initiative comes neither under passive or active surrender.
• The government must go against the world opinion to do that. Indira did that partially and released Bangladesh.
• Krishna crossed all rules of dharma and adopted ruses to win the war for Dharma.
• That was in a world of adharma, by an Overmental God.
• To obey a Supramental God, to be Her fit instrument is to disregard all rules of life which insincere governments do for their deceptive purposes.
• That is a surrender beyond the human instrument.
• The Token Act lets one hair breadth of that energy into our work.
• Even to contemplate surrender at that level is great. It is to be a great instrument.
• Involution that is creation and evolution are in opposite directions.
• Evolution begins when involution ends.
• Yoga chooses to stop the involution and reverse it into evolution or hasten the slow evolution into a quick one.
• The method or instrument it uses is surrender.
• Surrender sees the entire movement of involution inside it and reverses it inside first stopping it.
• The flow of traffic is formidable. Who can stop it? A policeman's whistle can, as he embodies the entire power of the society.
• The movement of commerce or social mobility is not movement that can be controlled or stopped, much less reversed.
• Still, we know of social powers that can momentarily stop them. Whether they can reverse them is a question. The dissent dictatorships try to stifle is never extinct.
• Beyond these are the forces of nature.
• The movements of human minds - the shaping thought - excels them in power or uncontrollable power.
• The expansion of the universe is material, but immense.
• Our topic is evolution, not natural evolution, but spiritual evolution.
• Surrender is to cry a halt to that movement and reverse it!
• The inner surrender achieves the outer reversal.
• Sri Aurobindo's Force began to change the universe and this world of human life. He did abridge a thousand years during his lifetime. He says He saw wars could not be avoided. Therefore, he decided to win them. The young Japanese imperialism, and the Germans who rose against the world twice not yet introduced to the rule of body by the mind, were two formidable forces. Had they won, the world, Sri Aurobindo says, could not have come out of the imperialistic yoke for five hundred years. That power came from surrender.
• The least of it is seen in Silent Will.
• Its height is seen in the transformation of man into a supramental being.
• Surrender at any level issues formidable forces at that level.

Surrender personal and impersonal

• The impersonal is the universal.
• If I am efficient and doubly productive, I do not think of going to the management for greater pay on that score. It comes as promotion.
• In private companies often one is paid incentive.
• In a company where there is no such incentive scheme, one can sometimes get an additional pay for additional productivity.
• The help of the family, society, and so on has that limit.
• A child that refuses to go to school can be taken there for some time. It must be taken up by the child at some time or other. Otherwise, the help is meaningless.
• The same rule applies to prayer and the help from grace.
• Initially prayers answered must also go to build up personality that needs no prayer in the future. Skills must accrue capacity.
• Sri Aurobindo was not able to help Bengal when she was not asking for help.
• It is like foreign aid. It has to stop sometime. One has to develop self-reliance. Aid has a way of destroying self-reliance and developing a sense of dependence.
• As elsewhere, prayer, surrender, and so on, are subject to this rule.
• Prayer must move to surrender at some stage.
• Man finds the transition bitter.
• Life develops capacities by offering comforts. By denying comforts, She helps develop greater capacities. To those who receive the initial comforts also in order to learn from them, life never denies them.
• A moment comes in one's life when one has to shift from prayer to surrender. At that point, prayer is not answered.
• It is a moment of grace for one to shift.
• We consecrate the problem first. Later we must consecrate the energy behind that consecration. The answer is to all those whom we represent.
• Such shifts continue to the end when we emerge as the evolving soul in the plane of Simultaneity of Time.
• Another way of stating it will bring another dimension of comprehension.
• We have small anxieties and great ones.
• Both are only anxieties.
• Instead of surrendering the problems created by these anxieties, if we surrender the anxieties, what will dissolve is not the problem, but its very source. It amounts to saying that by surrendering small anxieties, great ones too will dissolve. It appears irrational. A boy who steals a pencil, gives up stealing in toto when he realises his stealing the pencil was wrong. Returning the pencil will retain the habit of stealing. The act is physical and personal and the attitude is impersonal and subtle.
• To be complete, surrender has to move from the gross fact to subtle sensations and finally to the causal vibration.
• If the habit of stealing, the intensities of anxieties are subtle, we see their gross forms. Behind the act of stealing lies the vibration of the human urge that is pressed from behind by the Force. Stealing is an act. Anxiety is an emotion. The act is forced by a need devoid of moral values. The same Force in another man may act to help another. The Force remaining the same, the turn it gets is decided by swabhava, one's own nature. To get behind the subtle plane to the causal plane one has to go behind the swabhava, which means what is to be surrendered is swabhava.
• Swabhava is the force expressed by swarupa, the form.
• Creation is the Infinite Being expressing its Principles and Powers through form and force (swarupa and swabhava). The aim is not to shed the form and force, but the aim is to express the Force through the perfect Form.
• That form in Mind is Supermind, in Life it is consciousness, and in Matter it is the Delight of existence.