Question: How can we surrender to the Supreme?

Sri Chinmoy: Let us say that as a child, when you were about three years old, you used to always listen to your mother. Perhaps you don’t always listen to her now; but when you were a child, there were many things your mother asked you to do or not to do. Did you do anything wrong at that time by listening to her? No. Your mother asked you not to touch fire and you believed her. If you had touched the fire, it would have burnt your hand. But just because you were obedient and you surrendered to your mother’s will, you escaped being burnt.

You have to have this same kind of faith in the spiritual life. You need to feel that your spiritual Master, like your mother, will not disappoint you or deceive you. You are now a child, a baby in the spiritual life. Your spiritual Master will not deceive you; your Inner Pilot will not deceive you. No! Surrender comes only when one has faith in somebody else, when one has more faith in that particular person than he has in himself.

You can also become a child just by unlearning. Ignorance and darkness have taught you many things which you have now to unlearn. A child knows practically nothing; he knows only how to love his mother and that is more than everything for a child. Everyone has to unlearn things that the mind has taught him. So when we pray, when we meditate, the first thing we should do is get rid of doubts, suspicions and other negative qualities.

If you please your parents when they want you to do something, then if you ask them for money or for some other material help, immediately they will give it to you.

They will give it to you because they have much more money than you have, much more capacity in various fields. But if you don’t please them, they will give you nothing.

When a child comes running to his father with a nickel he has just found in the street, he says, “Look, Father, I have found a nickel!” The father is so happy that his son has come to him. The child’s sole possession, his only wealth, is a nickel. With this nickel he could have gone to a shop and bought candy or used it some other way, but he didn’t do so. Instead, he came home to his father with this little nickel. Naturally the father is pleased and gives the child a quarter or dollar instead of the nickel.

In the spiritual life also, you give a little aspiration, which is your nickel, during your prayer or meditation for a few minutes early in the morning. Then immediately the spiritual Master will invoke so many things for you: Peace, Light, Bliss, Joy and Delight. But you have to give an iota of aspiration, for five minutes or half an hour of meditation in the morning.

God will never be indebted to you. You do have a little capacity; you meditate on God for a few minutes each day. The moment he sees that you are regular in your meditation, that you are sincere and earnest and have accepted the spiritual life wholeheartedly, God showers His boundless Compassion on you in the form of Light, Delight and Peace.

So give to God what you have: your childlike faith and inner cry. If you can give Him your inner cry and have implicit faith in Him, then surrender will automatically loom large in your life of aspiration.