The Synthesis of Yoga - Super school Auroville - The Synthesis of Yoga 1105

The word surrender is a very important word. There is a science and art of surrender. This is the symbol of the Divine and this is the symbol of jivatman. This is more complex and this is less complex, but it is the image of the Divine. It is like the Divine looking at Himself in a small mirror. This mirror also is fabricating by Him. It is He who fabricates the mirror, it is he who looks into the mirror, it is a partial manifestation of Himself. Usually in your ordinary circumstances when you look to your mirror your face confronts you. You are on one side and on the other side there is your image. In other word we have got two important words subjective and objective. There is a difference between these two only to this extent -- this is subjective, this is objective. This objective, however, is not (and this is very important point), like a puppet of the subjective. Usually in the mirror your reflection is a puppet, whatever you do is reflected there automatically. So the analogy is not complete: in the mirror whatever the subject does the object does, it simply reflects. In a sense it is only puppeting the original subject. But in this process something more happens in the objectivisation. His objective consciousness is also brought into this. This reflection is not only an objective reflection of the content of the subjective but it is also a reflection of the subjective that is the element also present here. The objective is not only objective. The objective also contains in itself a subjectivity. And therefore the object behaves as if it is the subject. It is like a mother giving birth to a child -- that is a better analogy than a mirror. The child when it is born is a reflection of the mother. It is a subject giving rise to object. Very similar to the mother but the child is not the puppet of the mother it is not as if whenever the mother does something the child does something. The mother has a power of initiative action; the child also has a power of initiative action. This initiative action has a different angle, that is, to say while the angle of this subjective is turned this way the angle of this is turned that way. Just as this angle is free; similarly this is also free. The freedom of the subject is also transmitted to this object therefore it is also free. This is the real meaning of what is called the play. Mere puppetry is not play. Subject becoming an object and repeating in the object whatever it is, is no play. The object also repeats the subject completely, not only contains but the subjectivity is also present in the objectivity. So every object has subjectivity. Each one of us is also subjective. It regards the Divine as its object. It does not create the object but there is a sense of objectivity with regard to the object. This is the complexity of subjectivity and objectivity.

As a result there is a very important psychological condition which is created. There is a very interesting story that Mother has given. This is in the context of Durga. Durga is one of the manifestations of the Divine, a power of the Divine, like many others powers of the Divine who are called Gods and Goddesses. All God and Goddesses are the powers of the Divine. They are all instruments of the Divine. And surprisingly Mother one day said: “I taught Durga how to surrender herself to the Divine.” What is the meaning of it -- Durga is always an instrument of the Divine, where is the question of surrendering herself to the Divine? She already knows that she is the instrument of the Divine. The knowledge of being an instrument of the Divine is not sufficient. There is something much more to it. There is a play in which you are not merely a puppet of the Divine but you offer yourself to the Divine and this offering of yourself to the Divine is not an act of puppetry. It is creative. It is Himself but in that form. It is the Divine Himself surrendering, offering Himself to the Divine but from this side. This objectivisation also transcends this subjectivity. This objective is also subjective in character. This subjective character offer himself to the Divine and this conscious offering is surrender. Conscious offering of the objective figure of the Divine, in its subjective consciousness, offering itself to the Divine, is surrender. To know that there is a big force behind is one realisation. But to turn back again to the Divine and offering all that comes from the Divine to the Divine again is the method by which ego can be abolished. The abolition of the ego is not only a realisation that there is a Divine force which is working you still have the egoism of being the instrument of the Divine. Egoism is not abolished. It is only a partial success. From your side knowing all this, subjectivity comes back again and offers itself to the Divine. It is the child smiling at the mother. The mother has produced the child; it is an objective figure of the mother but having come there the child behaves in interplay. Even when the mother is not smiling the child may smile. It is not only puppetry. And by the child’s smile the mother heart gets much more fulfilled. Uninvited the child smiles at the mother and the mother feels greatly fulfilled. Uninvited, because the child himself feels happy and that happiness pours out and manifests as a smile. The child must not really do what the mother tells him. On his own the child feels like offering. This is the condition in which surrender is obtained. It is that which Sri Aurobindo speaks in the last sentence. “The self-abnegation of the ego in the Divine is its self-fulfilment; its surrender to that which transcends it is its liberation from bonds and limits and its perfect freedom.” We shall come to this subject again when we will come to other chapters but this is only a kind of an apercu, a glimpse of the real meaning of surrender: the subjective becoming objective and objective expressing itself as subjective and returning to the object with a tremendous sense of submission -- happy submission. Not willy-nilly like a slave under compulsion but freely offering itself to the Divine. That is its perfect freedom.