I Am Helpless – In Gita Verse 11.21 All the hosts of demigods are surrendering before You and entering into You. Some of them, very much afraid, are offering prayers with folded hands. Hosts of great sages and perfected beings, crying “All peace!” are praying to You by singing the Vedic hymns.
Arjuna while seeing Krishna’s opulence form he understands two things one is everyone is surrendering to Krishna before entering into him. Means one can unite with existences only in surrender. Another thing he found is that there is fear of the unknown in everyone before they enter into existence or unite with existence.
In my Bhagavad Gita Verse 6.10, blog I wrote Surrender is the quantum leap from mind to no-mind, from ego to egolessness. And in a single step the whole journey is contained.
When you surrender to a master it is one of the miracles, because you do not know what is going to happen and what this man is going to do to you. And you can never be certain whether he is real or not. You cannot know to whom you are surrendering and where he is going to lead you. You will try to make certain, but the very effort means that you are not ready to surrender.
If you are absolutely certain before you surrender that this man is going to lead you somewhere – to a paradise – and then you surrender, it is not a surrender at all. You have not surrendered. Surrender is always to the unknown. When everything is known, there is no surrender. You have already checked that this is going to happen, and that two and two are going to make four, then there is no surrender. You cannot say “I surrender” because the four, is already made certain.
In uncertainty, in insecurity, is the surrender. Because of the uncertainty, insecurity we have fear. So it is easy to surrender to God because really, there is no one to whom you are surrendering and you remain the master. It is difficult to surrender to a living master because then you are no longer a master. With God you can go on deceiving, because no one is going to ask you…
I was reading a Jewish anecdote. One old man was praying to God, and he said, “My neighbor ‘A’ is very poor, and last year I prayed to you but you have not done anything for him. My other neighbor ‘B’ is crippled, and I prayed last year also, but you have not done anything.” And so on and so forth, he continued. He talked about all the neighbors, and then in the end he said, “Now I will pray again this year. If you forgive me, I can also forgive you.”
But he was talking alone. Every talk with the divine is a monologue; the other is not there. So it is up to you; what you are doing is up to you, and you remain the master. That is why there is so much insistence in tantra to surrender to a living master, because then your ego is shattered. And that shattering is the base. That shattering is the base, and only then something can arise out of it.
But do not ask the master what you can do to surrender. You cannot do anything. Or, you can do only one thing: be aware of what you can do by doing, what you have gained by doing – be aware! You have gained much: you have gained many miseries, anguishes, nightmares. You have gained! That is what you have gained through your own effort, this is what ego can gain. Be aware of it – of the misery that you have created – positively, actively, without surrendering. Whatsoever you have done to your life, be aware of it. That very awareness will help you one day to throw it all and to surrender. And remember that you will be transformed not by surrender to a particular master, but by surrender itself.
So the master is irrelevant; he is not the point. People go to the master and they say, “I want to surrender, but to whom?” That is not the point, you are missing the point. It is not a question of to whom. Just surrendering helps, not the person to whom you have surrendered. He may not be there or he may not be authentic or he may not be an enlightened one. He may just be a rogue; that is not the point. It is irrelevant! You have surrendered – that helps because now you are vulnerable, open. You have become feminine. The male ego is lost, and you have become a feminine womb.
The person you have surrendered to may be bogus or he may not be. That is not the point! You have surrendered; now something can happen to you. And many times it has happened that even with a false master disciples have become enlightened. You may be surprised, even with a false master, disciples have become enlightened!
It is reported of Milarepa that he went to a master and he surrendered. Milarepa was a very faithful man, very trusting, so when the master said, “You will have to surrender to me, only then can I help,” he said, “Okay, I surrender.” But many people were jealous. The old followers of that master were jealous of Milarepa because Milarepa was such a different type of man. He was a very magnetic force. They became afraid that if this man remained there he would become the chief disciple, the next master. So they said to their master, “This man seems to be false, so first check whether his surrender is real.”
The master said, “How should we examine him?” They said, “Tell him to jump from this hill” – they were sitting on a hill. So the master said, “Milarepa, if you have really surrendered, jump from this hill.” So he did not wait even to say yes, he jumped. The disciples thought he would be dead; then they went down. It took hours for them to go to the valley. He was just sitting under a tree meditating, and he was happy – as happy as he had never been.
So they gathered, and the disciples thought that it must be a coincidence. The master was also surprised… How could this happen? So he asked Milarepa privately, “What did you do? How did it happen?” He said, “When I surrendered, there was no question of MY doing. YOU have done something.”
The master knew well that he had not done anything, so he tried again. One house was on fire, so he told Milarepa to go in and sit there and only to come out when the whole house had become ashes. Milarepa went in. He stayed there for hours, then the house was just ashes. When they reached there he was just buried in the ashes – but as alive and as blissful as ever. Milarepa touched his master’s feet and said, “You are doing miracles.”
So the master said, “It is difficult to think that it is again a coincidence.” But the followers said, “This is nothing but a coincidence. Try again. At least three trials are needed.”
They were passing through a village and the master said, “Milarepa, the boat has not yet come and the ferryman has not kept his promise, so you go – walk on the water, go to the other bank and tell the ferryman to come.” Milarepa walked, and then the master really thought it was a miracle. He walked and went to the other bank and brought the ferry.
The master said, “Milarepa, how are you doing it?” He said, “I just take your name and go on. It is your name, master, that helps me.”
So the master thought, “If my name helps so much…” He tried to walk on the water also, but he drowned – and no one has ever heard about him again.
How did it happen? Surrender is the thing – not the master, not the thing to which you surrender. The statue, the temple, the tree, the stone – anything will do. If you surrender, you become vulnerable to existence. Then the whole existence takes you into its arms.
This story may be just a parable, but the meaning is that when you surrender, the whole existence is for you. The fire, the hill, the river, the valley – nothing is against you because you are not against anything. The enmity is lost.
If you fall from a hill and your bones are broken, it is the bones of your ego. You were resisting; you didn’t allow the valley to help you. You were helping yourself. You were thinking yourself more wise than the existence. Surrender means you come to realize that whatsoever you do will be stupid, foolish. And you have done many stupid things for many lives.
Leave it to the existence itself. YOU cannot do anything! You have to realize that you are helpless. This realization that “I am helpless” helps the surrender to happen.
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