How to surrender to God or the Spiritual Master

In terms of surrendering to God or surrendering to a spiritual Master, the best way is to have the feeling that you don’t know how to fulfil your wish—you’re not equipped, you don’t know the skill, you haven’t got the ammunitions, you haven’t got the stuff, to fulfil your wish—and the Master does. The Master has the stuff. The Master is very experienced at bringing others home, at guiding people to self-realisation.

So, you just know you can’t do it. How do you know you can’t do it? Because you’ve tried already, and you couldn’t do it yourself. That’s how you know, and you know you need a Master.

Then, when you go to the Master, naturally you will feel, “I tried myself, oh Master, I tried myself, I’m lost, I can’t do it, I need your help.” That’s why they say that the gayatri mantra is the greatest mantra, because the mantra says, “God, you know everything, you are supreme, I’m lost, guide me, please help me.” That’s the meaning of the gayatri mantra, the greatest mantra. Your attitude towards the Guru is, “I’m lost. I tried myself, I can’t do it. I need your help, please help me. Tell me what I need to do—I’ll follow whatever you say, whatever.”

Now, is surrender going to come automatically when you have that attitude? Yes. You won’t have the feeling, “Oh, I’ll listen to some things the Master says, but I’ll think about it, I’ll see how I feel.” Because the ‘see how I feel’ means you are still trying to work it out yourself.

If you don’t feel you really need the Master’s help, you don’t need God to help you, you’ll just feel, “I might need your help, I might need your help a little bit, maybe. But I’ll see how I feel.” Then it’s impossible to surrender because, “I can work it out. I’ve got a formula happening myself, but I’ll come and learn from you because I want to hear what you’ve got to say about that.”

Surrender is not about taking certain steps. There’s no formula, there are no steps to follow. It’s not like a sponge cake recipe where you follow the recipe and then you’ve got a sponge cake.

When you have that sincerity, your heart will recognise the Master’s capacity. Then when you see the Master, it’ll be nothing but reverence and surrender. There’ll be no fear. Once you decide, “That is the Master for me,” then you won’t have the attitude of testing the water and waiting to jump out if it’s cold.

To surrender to a Master is not like a marriage with a pre-nuptial agreement. There’s no agreement to “Try for three months and see how I go,” or “Try for a year and see how I feel, see if it works out for both of us.” That kind of cautious attitude in any field has never led to victory. And it will never lead to surrender because surrender is total.

Surrender is not checking something out. Why? Because checking out leads to chicken out! First, it’s checking out, and then chicken out.

Surrender is total, there’s no turning back. The heart just feels that way. It is an attitude, it’s not a contractual situation. It’s a trust, it’s a love, it’s a great feeling to surrender.

Surrender is not a scary feeling. If it feels scary, there’s something wrong. Because the nature of surrender is not forceful like a contract where someone says, “Sign here.” In a contract you always feel a bit nervous, but with surrender there’s nothing like that.

If you feel a bit nervous there must be some sort of forcefulness. There shouldn’t be any nervousness. If there’s some nervousness that means you’re still in the mindset of slowly checking it out, “We’ll see how it goes, and if it suits, if the moment’s right, if I’m clear, then I’ll surrender.”

I’m not saying either way is wrong or right.

So, there’s, “I might surrender,” and then there’s surrender.

And when you surrender all your problems—working out what to do with your life and worrying about your weaknesses and all those things—you just let them go to the Guru. All your weaknesses and strengths, you just surrender to the Guru. You don’t constantly talk about your weaknesses. You don’t try to solve things and work them out yourself. No, you just let go, feeling, “That’s my Guru’s problem, it’s not my business. I haven’t got the capacity to deal with that, my Guru will take care of it.”

That’s how I always felt when I was a seeker, after I surrendered to Amma—any problems with anything, my Guru will take care of it. If I die, my Guru will take care of it. I didn’t worry about anything. So therefore, I was peaceful. The actual result was my peacefulness. And I was happy, like a child running around playing when the mother’s taking care of the bills and the lunch box and everything. The child just goes to school and plays.

Surrender is not like the cowboy movies where they say, “Surrender,” and that means you put your hands up! Someone points a gun at you, and you surrender! No, it’s not like that. Surrender means to surrender all your problems, everything, everything. You let the person that knows how to take care of your problems, take care of your problems.

Let the professional take care of your problems. Like if you don’t know tax law, you give your information to the tax accountant, and they take care of it. You don’t worry about it. You surrender to the Guru.