Surrender

SURRENDER

Meher Baba

One in love tastes the glories of life to the full. The blissful heights of joyousness and the buoyant feelings of heavenly delights are the steady steps towards divine oneness.

Love surrenders to the will of the beloved, gives all to the beloved, sacrifices all for the beloved, lives for the beloved, dies for the beloved. This supreme state of love is the God-state, for what is God but love - infinite, unbounded, eternal love?

Love annihilates the lower self, and expresses the higher self. So, dear soul, long for your divine beloved till you become one with your beloved.

January? 1937,
Nasik,
LA p165

Affirmation of the separative ego is the chief veil between man and his own divine self. But the doors of the heart have to be thrown open by the surrenderance of ego-affirmation, if God as the supreme beloved is to make his entry in the heart.

No one can realise God except through the grace and help of a God-realised Master, who is Truth incarnate. Only a God-realised Master can awaken this true love in the human heart, by consuming through the fire of his grace all the dross that prevents its release.

Those who have got the courage and the wisdom to surrender themselves to a Perfect Master are the recipients of his grace. The grace of the Master does come to those who deserve it. And when it comes, it enkindles in the human heart a love divine, which not only enables the aspirant to become one with God, but also to be of infinite help to others who are also struggling with their own limitations. There is no power greater than love.

14 November 1944,
to the Theosophical Society,
Nagpur,
Me p73

... If I am the highest of the high, my will is law, my wish governs the law, and my love sustains the universe. Whatever your apparent calamities and transient sufferings, they are but the outcome of my love for the ultimate good. Therefore, to approach me for deliverance from your predicaments, to expect me to satisfy your worldly desires, would be asking me to do the impossible - to undo what I have already ordained.

If you truly and in all faith accept your Baba as the highest of the high, it behooves you to lay down your life at his feet, rather than to crave the fulfillment of your desires. Not your one life, but your millions of lives would be but a small sacrifice to place at the feet of one such as Baba, who is the highest of the high; for Baba's unbounded love is the only sure and unfailing guide to lead you safely through the innumerable blind alleys of your transient life.

They cannot obligate me who, surrendering their all - body, mind, possessions - which perforce they must discard one day - surrender with a motive; surrender because they understand that to gain the everlasting treasure of bliss, they must relinquish ephemeral possessions. This desire for greater gain is still clinging behind their surrender, and as such, the surrender cannot be complete.

Know you all, that if I am the highest of the high, my role demands that I strip you of all your possessions and wants, consume all your desires, and make you desireless, rather than satisfy your desires. Sadhus, saints, yogis and walis can give you what you want; but I take away your wants and free you from attachments and liberate you from the bondage of ignorance. I am the one to take, not the one to give what you want or as you want...

7 September 1953,
Dehra Dun,
GM p212

I am happy to be in your midst. It is the deep love of some of my lovers in Dehra Dun that has drawn you all together today to have my darshan.

But to have my real darshan is not easy. To see me at close quarters, to do obeisance to me, to offer me fruits and flowers, to bow down to me, and then to return to your homes can never mean that you have had my darshan.

Having seen me with your own eyes, you have still not seen me as I am. You have not had even a glimpse of my true being, in spite of your having gone through the convention of so-called darshan.

To have my real darshan is to find me. The way to find me is to find your abode in me. And the only one and sure way to find your abode in me is to love me.

To love me as I love you, you must become the recipient of my grace. Only my grace can bestow the gift of divine love.

To receive my grace, you must obey me wholeheartedly, with the firm foundation of unshakeable faith in me. And you can only obey me spontaneously as I want when you completely surrender yourselves to me, so that my wish becomes your law and my love sustains your being.

Age after age, many aspire for such a surrender, but only very few really attempt to surrender themselves to me completely as I want. He who succeeds ultimately not only finds me, but becomes me, and realises the aim of life.

My being in your midst today would serve its purpose even if one from this multitude has understood what I want you all to know. I give my blessings to you all.

November 1953,
Dehra Dun,
MD p2
Another version:
LA p463-464

I want you to make me your constant companion. Think of me more than you think of your own self. The more you think of me, the more you will realise my love for you. Your duty is to keep me constantly with you throughout your thoughts, speech and actions.

They do their duty who, sincere in their faith and love, surrender to me, guided by the implicit belief in my divinity as Baba. They too do their duty who speak ill of me and condemn me through their writings, urged by their genuine conviction that Baba is a fraud. But they are the hypocrites who, not knowing their own minds, are constantly doubting. They are at times, through false emotions, inclined to believe in me, and at other times to indulge in slanderous gossip against me.

No amount of slander can ever affect or change me, nor any amount of admiration and praise enhance or glorify my divinity. Baba is what he is. I was Baba, I am Baba, and shall for ever more remain Baba. My blessings to you all.

November 1953,
Dehra Dun,
message for the opening of
Meher Centre in Kovvur on 20 November,
GG4 p181

I have often said that I have not yet found one who could love me. There are about 220 men and women from East and West who have surrendered to me in such a way as to do anything I say. It is a fact.

For example, Eruch. He is intelligent, has a good heart. If I order him to do anything, he will try 100%, even to cut himself to pieces. Pendu, Meherjee, Mandali who are with me since years together, they all are the same. Each of these 220 Mandali would lay down their lives.

What I want to point out is, to surrender is higher than to love. And paradoxical as it may seem, to love me is impossible, but to obey me is possible, though very difficult. So to call yourself my workers and yet not to obey is hypocritical...

From you Andhras, I want nothing. No surrender, no obedience, no mind, no body, no possessions. I want only love...

1-2 March 1954,
Rajamundry, Andhra,
AD p116, 119
Another version: GG5 p236-259

My message has always been, and always will be, love divine. When one wholeheartedly loves God, one eventually loses oneself in the beloved and enters the eternal life of God.

Like a tree, such love has branches: branches of wholehearted devotion, perfect nonviolence, perfect selfless service, self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-renunciation, truth, and self-annihilation. In this love is embodied all the yogas known to saints and seekers.

The highest aspect of this love, which surpasses that of love itself, is the aspect of complete surrenderance to the will of the beloved; that is, absolute obedience to his wishes, whatever the cost.

1954? India, MD p4

When one truly loves God, one longs for union with him, and this supreme longing is based on the desire of giving up one's whole being to the beloved.

When one loves a Perfect Master, one longs to serve him, to surrender to his will, to obey him wholeheartedly. Thus pure, real love longs to give, and does not ask for anything in return.

1954? India, MD p6

... For the fulfillment of the divinely ordained plan, it is necessary that humanity should throw away all its accumulated impediments, and surrender unconditionally to the abiding love of God, the unfailing and supremely universal beloved. God has to be accepted in all simplicity, and not by laboriously proved intellectual conclusions.

1954? India, MD p16-17

There are three types of lovers of God. The first is the mast, who loves and knows only God. He loses all consciousness of self, of body and the world. Whether it rains or shines, whether it is winter or summer, it is all the same to him. Only God exists for him. He is dead to himself.

The second type of lover is the one who lives in the world, attends to all worldly duties fully, yet all the time in his heart he knows that this is temporary, that only God exists, and he loves God internally, without anyone knowing it.

The third type, which is the highest, is very rare. Here the lover surrenders completely to Christ, to the Avatar, to the God-man. He lives, not for himself, but for the Master. This is the highest type of lover. Unless you have such love, merely to criticise and to judge others will take you nowhere.

14 September 1954,
Meherabad,
GM p230

Love is a gift from God to man.
Obedience is a gift from Master to man.
And surrender is a gift from man to Master.
The one who loves desires to do the will of the beloved, and seeks union with the beloved.
Obedience performs the will of the beloved, and seeks the pleasure of the beloved.
Surrender resigns to the will of the beloved, and seeks nothing.
One who loves is the lover of the beloved.
One who obeys is the beloved of the beloved.
One who surrenders all - body, mind and all else - has no existence other than that of the beloved, who alone exists in him.
Therefore greater than love is obedience, and greater than obedience is surrender. And yet, as words, all three can be summed up in one phrase: love divine.

One can find volumes and volumes of prose and poetry about love, but there are very, very few persons who have found love and experienced it. No amount of reading, listening and learning can ever tell you what love is. Regardless of how much I explain love to you, you will understand it less and less if you think you can grasp it through the intellect or imagination.

Hafez describes the bare truth about love when he says,

Janab-e ishqra dargah basi bala tar-azaq'l ast;

Kasi in astan busad kay jan der astin darad.

"The majesty of love lies far beyond the reach of intellect;

Only one who has his life up his sleeve dares kiss the threshold of love."

The difference between love and intellect is something like that between night and day; they exist in relation to one another and yet as two different things. Love is real intelligence capable of realising Truth. Intellect is best suited to know all about duality, which is born of ignorance and is entirely ignorance. When the sun rises, night is transformed into day. Just so, when love manifests, not-knowing (ignorance) is turned into conscious knowing (knowledge).

In spite of the difference between a keenly intelligent person and a very unintelligent person, each is equally capable of experiencing love. The quality which determines one's capacity for love is not one's wit or wisdom, but one's readiness to lay down life itself for the beloved, and yet remain alive. One must, so to speak, slough off body, energy, mind and all else, and become dust under the feet of the beloved. This dust of a lover who cannot remain alive without God - just as an ordinary man cannot live without breath - is then transformed into the beloved. Thus man becomes God.

November 1955,
Meherabad,
LH p17-18
Another partial version: EN p5

About thirty years ago, before I started observing my silence, and when Meherabad was a colony of hundreds of seekers, servers and sufferers who lived in the ashrams, asylums, schools, dispensaries and the hospital here at that time, a visitor came to surrender to me.

He could not help weeping when I told him that what he intended was very, very difficult, since surrenderance means obedience, and obedience has but one meaning, and that is to obey. He said he knew that, and was prepared to obey me implicitly.

When I inquired if he would cut his own child to pieces if I asked him to do so, he even agreed to that. But when I asked him to remove his clothes and walk about naked in the streets of Ahmednagar, he began to protest, and ultimately went his way.

I am not going to ask you to do that. I never expect anyone to do the impossible.

November 1955,
Meherabad,
LH p22

He who genuinely surrenders to a Perfect Master surrenders completely without asking for permission to do so.

He does not even expect acceptance of his surrender from the Master.

Complete surrender in itself embodies the acceptance of one who has surrendered completely as he ought to have done.

1958, GM p330

Do you realise what it means to follow me? It means to leave all and follow me. And do you know what it is to leave all? It is to leave everything, even your self, behind you.

This means that, having left everything behind, you have to follow me, and not run ahead of me. And to do this is so very difficult because it is so very simple.

If you let your will guide you, so that you walk ahead of me, you become your own obstruction to my leading you. And since you are ignorant of the pitfalls on the way, I have to keep a constant watch lest you fall. What this amounts to is that, instead of you following me, I have to follow you.

I am not limited by form. I am within everyone, and within you, as the real guide. So following me does not mean that you have to leave everything and stay near me. It also does not mean that you are to use me as a dumping board for your worries, nor that you are to expect me to fulfill your wants. It means that you are to be completely resigned to my will, and abide in a spirit of total surrender.

To follow me is to obey me and to do as I want. When my will becomes your way, you are truly following me, and then you are safe and you are saved. I know the way and its labyrinths, for I am the way and I am the goal.

January 1959,
Poona, to an individual,
AO p167

When lust goes, love appears. And out of love comes longing. In love there can never be satisfaction, for longing increases till it becomes an agony which ceases only in union. Nothing but union with the beloved can satisfy the lover.

The way of love is a continual sacrifice. And what gets sacrificed are the loverÕs thoughts of 'I,' until at last comes the time when the lover says, 'O beloved, will I ever become one with you and so lose myself forever? But let this be only if it is your will.' This is the stage of love enlightened by obedience.

Now the lover continuously witnesses the glory of the beloved's will. And in the witnessing does not even think of union. He willingly surrenders his entire being to the beloved, and has no thought of self left. This is the stage when love is illumined by surrender.

Out of millions, only one loves God. And out of millions of lovers, only one succeeds in obeying, and finally in surrendering his whole being to God the beloved.

I am God personified. You who have the chance of being in my living presence are fortunate and blessed.

c.1960? EN p4

I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple. Although it is in love that you have built this house of stone, I am only in it when your heart brings me here.

Always remember that ceremonies cover me, but pure worship reveals me...

All those who surrender themselves in love to me will see and adore and realise the reality behind my form.

November 1961,
messages given for Meher Dham
Nauranga, Hamirpur,
LC p109-110, also Mu p372

Desires and longings are the root-cause of all suffering.

The only real desire is to see God, and the only real longing is to become one with God. This real desire and longing frees one from the bondage of birth and death. Other desires and longings bind one with ignorance.

To desire the real desire and to long for the real longing, you need my grace. And you cannot have that until you surrender all other desires and longings to me.

Your love for me will help you to surrender these desires and longings, and my love for you will help you to desire the real desire and long for the real longing, which are by my grace.

December 1966,
India,
LA p645

Index - Book One