The Practice of Yoga Through Surrender, Self-Giving and Consecration

The challenge faced by the aspirant trying to bring about the action of a new basis of awareness and action, is that continued reliance on the habitual means and methods of mind, life and body, inhibits the free active intervention of this new consciousness. The process of exceeding the framework of the present requires a methodology that shifts the focus and reliance to that new stance and allows it to determine the modus and timing of the steps along the way. The more we try to control the process, the less opportunity we provide for the higher force to act. Sri Aurobindo describes the yogic development based on leaving the past habits behind and relying on the Divine to bring about the evolutionary development in a receptive mind-life-body vessel.

Sri Aurobindo notes: “What I mean by surrender is this inner surrender of the mind and vital. There is, of course, the outer surrender also: the giving up of all that is found to conflict with the spirit or need of the sadhana, the offering, the obedience to the guidance of the Divine, whether directly, if one has reached that stage, or through the psychic or to the guidance of the Guru. “

“The core of the inner surrender is trust and confidence in the Divine. One takes the attitude: ‘I want the Divine and nothing else. I want to give myself entirely to him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that I shall meet and realise him. I ask nothing but that and his action in me to bring me to him, his action secret or open, veiled or manifest. I do not insist on my own time and way; let him do all in his own time and way; I shall believe in him, accept his will, aspire steadily for his light and presence and joy, go through all difficulties and delays, relying on him and never giving up. Let my mind be quiet and trust him and let him open it to his light; let my vital be quiet and turn to him alone and let him open it to his calm and joy. All for him and myself for him. Whatever happens, I will keep to this aspiration and self-giving and go on in perfect reliance that it will be done.”

“That is the attitude into which one must grow; for certainly it cannot be made perfect at once — mental and vital movements come across — but if one keeps the will to it, it will grow in the being. The rest is a matter of obedience to the guidance when it makes itself manifest, not allowing one’s mental and vital movements to Interfere.”

“All can be done by the Divine, — the heart and nature purified, the inner consciousness awakened, the veils removed, — if one gives oneself to the Divine with trust and confidence and even if one cannot do so fully at once, yet the more one does so, the more the inner help and guidance come and the experience of the Divine grows within. If the questioning mind becomes less active and humility and the will to surrender grow, this ought to be perfectly possible. No other strength and tapasya are then needed but this alone.” Sri Aurobindo, Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo’s Teaching and Method of Practice, Chapter 5 Bases of Yoga, Surrender, pp. 100-105