Question: How can you surrender when your vital does not want to?

Sri Chinmoy: Think of your vital as a tennis ball. The tennis ball is in your hand. You have played with this ball for some time and you are very familiar with it. Usually you throw it against the wall and it comes back to you. But now all of a sudden you feel that you can throw it very hard and very far. Feel that you have thrown the ball out into the sea. That sea is the sea of ignorance. Just throw your vital there and forget about it. Also feel that you do not know how to swim. The sea of ignorance will take care of your vital. You just remain in the heart. The best thing is not to think of your vital; don't even think that you have a vital. But if you see that you do have a vital, throw it immediately into the sea of ignorance. Then forget about it and remain in the heart. That is one way.

There is also another way to control the vital so that you can make surrender. Each time you are tempted, observe the fulfilment that you get from your vital as you do the thing that you are tempted to do. Do what you want to do, but then be an impartial judge. The moment you become an impartial judge, automatically your divinity will come to the fore. Your soul will give a mark of zero out of a hundred to your vital demand. But if you don't become a judge, then you quickly become one with your action. You listen to the vital and your very willingness to accept the vital's demands is your surrender. When you become the judge you give zero out of a hundred to your action. Again, when you are ready to stand in judgement, you have to feel that there is something superior to your action which has inspired you to become the judge. The action you have performed, but you are no longer one with the action. When you become a judge, at that time you are totally separated from the action, you are a neutral party. Since you are neutral, whether your action is good or bad you will think that somebody else has done it, not you.

A judge has two parties to deal with. He himself does not belong to either party. When you become the judge, immediately you will see that the two parties are the vital and the heart; two members of the same family are both claiming you. The vital is claiming you as its very own and the heart is also claiming you as its very own. It is up to you to be partial to one of them. Immediately you will say, "O my heart, I want you and not my vital." In that way you separate yourself from the vital the moment you become the judge. You put the heart on one side and the vital on the other side. In this way you can make your surrender.

Ultimately it is the heart that will win, never the vital. And when the heart wins, the heart will illumine the vital; it will not destroy the vital. Our heart never destroys anything, it only illumines. If the vital is impure, then it will be purified; if it is unlit, then it will be illumined. Nothing is ever destroyed, it is only transformed — transformed and illumined.

From:Sri Chinmoy,My self-giving is my God-becoming, Agni Press, 1974
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/sgg