Question: What is the art of surrender?

Sri Chinmoy: There are two types of surrender. One type of surrender comes under compulsion. This is the surrender of a slave to his master. He knows that if he does not serve his master, if he is not constantly at his master's beck and call, he will be punished. This surrender is based on fear. But the divine surrender is otherwise. Here we surrender our ignorance, incapacity and imperfection to the Inner Pilot, who is all-Light, all-Illumination, all-Perfection. When we enter into the spiritual life, we come to realise that when we surrender our ignorance, we are just surrendering our lowest reality to our own highest Reality. This surrender is based on love and oneness.

In the ordinary world, the servant is one individual and the master is another. There is a constant sense of separativity. But when we pray and meditate, we discover a kind of divine surrender within us which makes us feel that God and we are essentially one. He is our Eternal Father; He is our most illumined part, our Source, which we are now climbing up to and entering into. So, by surrendering, we do not lose anything; on the contrary, we return to our Source and become what we originally were. The finite consciously and cheerfully enters into the Infinite. Each one of us is now like a tiny drop. When it enters into the ocean, a tiny drop loses its individuality and becomes one with the infinite expanse of the ocean.