Questioner: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. I have had a burning question in my mind for many years. I have been trying to surrender, but it is so hard.
Surrendering to the divine is a familiar concept of our cultural and spiritual heritage, but have you ever stopped to consider the actual significance of surrender? In this article, Sadhguru clears common misconceptions about surrender and reveals what you really need to focus on.
Questioner: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. I have had a burning question in my mind for many years. I have been trying to surrender, but it is so hard.
Sadhguru: What is your idea of surrender? What do you want to surrender to? This is an Indian problem because there was a time when this country was spiritually alive, and almost the whole population was in some way engaged in a spiritual practice. Today, people still know all the jargon of “karma, prarabdha, mukti, moksha, atma, paramatman,” but no spiritual process.
Spiritual process is not about looking up or looking down, praying, or going to a temple. Spirituality means beginning to experience something beyond the limitations of one’s physiology and psychology. Most people’s lives are limited to the boundaries of their body and mind. If one is experiencing something beyond that, then that is called spiritual.
Now you say, “I want to surrender.” Suppose I tie you with a rope to a chair. If you say, “I want to become free like a bird in the sky,” it is not going to happen. You have to figure out how to undo the knots, or how to cut the rope. Freedom is a vague and wonderful idea which does not take you anywhere. Only if you understand what is binding you and undo that, can you come to a better level. If you keep on undoing various things that bind you, one day, they may run out of stock. When they run out of ways to bind you, then we say you are liberated.
You have got these ideas of surrender because the traditional terms of spirituality were common language. But now, the experiential aspect of spirituality is gone and only the vocabulary remains. With vocabulary, you can deceive or control other people, but it will not be a solution for your life. Vocabulary is only socially useful. Within yourself, there is simply no use for it.
Do not come up with ideas like, “I want to surrender; I want to get enlightened.” People who take these ideas seriously usually do the most stupid things in life. Do not do that. Your intelligence is the highest aspect of your life. It is a serious problem in the world that when people say “love,” they say “God is love.” You need love. How do you know he needs love? Maybe he is free from that.
Similarly, when people say “bliss,” they say “divine bliss.” And when they say “peace,” they say “heavenly peace.” People use these terms without understanding what they are doing to themselves. Everything that human beings are capable of has been exported to heaven. It is very important for your mind not to get into spiritual jargon and cause unnecessary confusion to yourself.
Do not ask yourself, “How do I surrender?” Obviously, you do not know what surrender means because you cannot surrender at will. If you have a will, how can you surrender? If you simply sit here and do not do anything, you have surrendered. Are you breathing? In many ways, you have surrendered to the bubble of this atmosphere. Can you say, “No, I am not going to breathe. I do not want to surrender to the ways of the air. I will simply sit here.” Is it possible?
If you pay attention to the nature of your existence, it is a deep surrender. There is no way you can exist even for a moment without all these things of which we do not know how they work, but they are all working for us. The planets, the Sun, the Moon, the galaxies, and the empty space, are all working for us. Can you understand all this and make it work? All this is happening by itself.
Survival is the only issue, and it does not take much intelligence to handle it. Every worm, insect, bird, and other animal is capable of handling their own survival. You have this much brain; you should be able to handle it. The problem is not that you cannot survive; it is that you want to survive better than someone else. Life is happening. You just have to keep yourself in the right way to receive the bounty of life.
