Surrender and🔗

Completion

Please understand this is the first time I am going to connect these two sciences – the Science of Completion(completing with yourself, others, world, and God) and the Science of Surrender. In the traditional bhakthi (devotion) literatures, the great devotees like Meera, Andal, and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu finally evolve to the ultimate surrender. We call it Atma Sharanagathi. The Science of Completion is from the Advaita Sampradaya and Yoga Vedanta Sampradaya. The Science of Surrender is from the Bhakthi Sampradaya. We will see how both complement each other.

Ultimately the complete completion happens when you don’t even bother about complete completion. Even the desire or the effort for complete completion is surrendered. Even when that effort is surrendered at the feet of the Divine, the complete completion happens.

The science of surrender - the more and more and more completion you do, the more and more the surrender starts happening in you.I need to define surrender. Surrender no way starts with powerlessness or gives you the powerlessness experience or ends in powerlessness. Surrender starts with powerfulness, leads you from power to more powerfulness, ends in ultimate powerfulness. Surrender is in no way connected to powerlessness.

Many times, in your powerlessness, the “giving up”, you call it as surrender. No! Giving up is not surrender. Surrender doesn’t come by powerlessness; it comes by tremendous powerfulness.

The science of completion and the science of powerfulness, both complement each other. When you complete more and more, you become powerful. When you surrender more and more, you become powerful. More Completion leads to more surrender. More surrender leads to more completion.

Completion is nothing but falling in love with your higher self. Decide to reside in the higher self. Surrender is nothing but falling in love with the embodiment of the higher self, your Ishta Devatha (your chosen deity/God). Your Ishta is nothing but your higher self. Naturally, surrender leads you to more and more powerfulness, not powerlessness. It leads to more and more powerfulness, more and more joy, and more and more strength.

Understand, when you carry the space of surrender, everything in life listens to you. Even a plant drops all its thorns just by your request. How do you think just our gurukul kids are able to talk to plants and the plants are listening to them? And they are dropping their thorns. Understand, it is not a myth or story I am talking. We can show you in front of your eyes.

The surrender makes you deeply powerful; the space of completion makes you deeply powerful. Surrender is misinterpreted, given wrong meaning in the western thought trends. The word is used more like in war when you lose, you drop all your weapons and surrender. Here I am not using that meaning.

The word surrender has a totally different meaning. So, maybe, I may not even want to use the word surrender in English. I’ll use the word Sharanagathi just in Sanskrit, Sharana and Agathi. It’s such powerfulness. The powerfulness, the powerfulness radiated by the devotees. Andal was not weak. Akkamadevi was not weak. Meera was not weak. Kanakadasa, Purandara Dasa, Vittala Dasa, and all the great Dasa Sampradhaya devotees are not weak. They were never weak. They all lived in the space of powerfulness.

Even completion you can intellectually grasp it even if you don't practice it. But this Sharanagathi, this surrender, you need to see somebody experiencing and radiating it. You need to be around some great bhakta devotee(s). Because it is such a beautiful experience, you need to see that radiating in the body language.

Sharanagathi, surrender, can’t be understood just intellectually. Intellectually if you try to understand, it will only lead to that surrender that happens during the war period. It is

out of powerlessness, kind of like giving up, failure, and drop-out. But the kind of a surrender here will make you become more and more powerful, more and more strong, and more and more intelligent.

So, understand, the more and more practice of surrender leads to more and more experience of completion. The more and more experience of Completion leads to more and more practice of surrender.

Knowledge leads to power. If your way of thinking is leading you to more and more power, making you more and more powerful every day, you are thinking in the right direction. If your thinking is making you powerless every day, you are thinking in the wrong direction.

Violence is not power. It actually makes you powerless. That is why you become violent. The world, life, universe responds to you exactly the way you behave with it. If you are violent, constantly violence is given back to you. If you are peaceful, how many people try to disturb you wrongly, they will not be able to be successful; constantly you are given the peace and victory again and again.

When the science of completion connects with the science of surrender, the space you create becomes reality, because all your individual incompletions should be completed. When you are complete, your individual identity should be surrendered to the Cosmos. Then the Cosmos functions through you. Individual identity is made out of bunch of incompletions. When all those incompletions are complete, you surrender yourself to the Cosmos.

Whenever you do tapas, especially a sincere routine with integrity, like how we do everyday morning Yoga, completing with the body, then all the great spiritual truths, completing with the mind and the soul, creating the Vedic Mind, you will see, if we study, we are the largest community in the world with the lowest physical disorders - any illness, physical, mental, and both.

If we start recording, we may even be able to create a Guinness record: the largest community living together with the lowest physical or mental sickness, with such minimum food, so much intense thinking and working! You guys take health for granted. Do you know that people living outside in the world regularly fall sick and go to doctors? But this integrated routine, when you follow it so authentically, automatically your body and mind goes to the space of completion. From that space of completion, if you surrender, any space you create becomes reality. God supports you, and God protects you!

Experiencing the science of surrender and completion is what I call Kalpataru (creating your reality).

Complete Surrender

This is one of the important prayers you should carry in your heart. "God, even if I don’t understand whatever purification I should go through, let it happen even by force”. I am defining surrender. Giving the GPA (General Power of Attorney) to Existence/Cosmos/God saying - “Whether I understand or not, appreciate or not, what my life needs to go through; how I need to experience the flow of life and law of life in the ultimate intelligence of life, let that become reality. Whether I understand it or not, appreciate it or not, I give you the GPA.’

This is surrender. And when He does it, enjoying it is Bhakti (devotion). Giving the GPA to Him is surrender. And when He does His job, enjoying it, is Bhakti.

Understand, that constant death which is supposed to happen in you, if you enjoy it, it becomes celebration and revelation. Everyone should carry this truth as the context of life. Every time when existence/cosmos rolls you, like the stones in the Ganga (river), in the flow of life, if you appreciate what life is doing to you, you will experience constant rebirth. Rebirth. Rebirth. If you don’t, you will constantly experience death. Death. Death. A stone that allows itself in the flow of Ganga becomes God and is worshiped by everyone. The stone can take the cleaning, chiseling, polishing as death for it or rebirth for it.

‘Why me?’ is looking at life only as death. Then constantly you will only be dying. You will associate yourself with the small pieces that get chipped off, and you will never be worshiped as Shiva. If you look at life as constant rebirth you will identify yourself with the main portion of the stone that will become a Shiva Linga.

Constantly appreciating life, enjoying life, and celebrating life. Even if it brings out some part of you from you - some person, pleasures, wealth, something that you want, don’t want or some part of your mind. Even if it is forcibly removed, celebrating life, appreciating life, will make you understand life is a constant rebirth. Anyone carries the context ‘life is bliss’ is constantly reborn.

This is the greatest gift a Guru can give to a disciple. I am giving it to you. Even if you are not able to have the longer vision life has for you. Don’t be a tantrum-throwing manager who has to be convinced about the whole vision of the company to move a file from one table to another table. Maybe one or twice it can be done. After that they will have to carry on without you.

Don’t miss the larger vision of life again and again and throw tantrums. Your tantrum will not be responded to. Remain with the larger vision of life and appreciate what is done to you every moment. Many things you may never renounce are taken away from you forcibly. Many polishing you may never do is done. It is all for YOU to be worshiped as a Shiva Linga. Man who constantly celebrates, who sees life as a constant rebirth, is worshiped. Man who constantly complains ‘why me?’, who feels life as death, is suffocating himself.

You are not the small part that is getting chiseled. You are the bigger part that is getting polished. Life is just all about from ‘why me?’ to ‘wow! me!’ Life is so compassionate, only the minimum chipping is done. And maximum polishing is done. You are in the hands of the most compassionate sculptor: Existence/Cosmos. Especially when He himself comes as a Guru.

Blessed are those who get Him as Guru. The best thing that can happen to you has already happened. Having HIM as Guru. Whoever feels negative with life feels constant death is happening. Whoever looks at life with understanding and reverence feels constant birth is happening.

Below is a powerful meditation technique.

ABOUT THE TECHNIQUE

We are always afraid of emptiness. We are afraid to become empty. That is why we constantly try to fill ourselves with possessions, with relationships, with identities.

Do you know, you are actually an emptiness! You are just a pure, silent emptiness. Whatever you think of as you is just flowing through this emptiness. You cannot be touched or stained by anything that flows through you.

When you experience yourself as pure emptiness, you will no longer identify with that which is simply flowing through you and you allow Existence to work through you.

DURATION: 21 minutes

INSTRUCTIONS

Sit down in a relaxed manner. Do not put your weight on the spinal cord. You can support yourself with your hands. Feel yourself as flowing... relaxed.

Now, visualize energy leaving your body through all your twelve indriyas - your eyes, nose, tongue, ears and other sense organs. You are becoming completely empty. Visualize that you have now become empty. Feel that you have become empty. Whatever you think of as you is moving out of you.

It has left you.

Whatever you thought of as you is already gone. You are completely empty. When you feel you are completely empty, stop visualizing.

Be a witness. Witness your thoughts and the gap between your thoughts. Do not create any thought or destroy any thought. Just witness the thoughts flowing in you, flowing in the emptiness.