Total Effort or Total Surrender

 

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Ishwarapranidhanatwa:

Effort or surrender, but the basic thing is the same: totality is needed. Paths differ, but they cannot differ absolutely. Their shape, their form, their direction, may differ, but their inner meaning and significance has to remain the same because both lead to the divine. Effort: your totality is needed. Surrender: again your totality is needed. So to me there is only one path, and that is: bring your totality.

Whether you bring it through effort - yoga - it is up to you, or you bring it through samarpan - surrender, let-go - it is up to you. But remember always that a totality will be needed; you have to stake yourself completely. It is a gambling - a gamble with the unknown. And nobody can say when it will happen - nobody can predict, nobody can give you a guarantee. You gamble. You may win, you may not win. The possibility of not winning is always there because it is a very complex phenomenon. It is not as simple as it looks. But if you go on gambling, it has to happen one day.

If you miss one time don't be depressed, because even a Buddha has to miss many times. If you miss, just get up and risk again. Some time, in some unknown manner, the whole existence culminates to help you. Some time and in some unknown way, you hit the target exactly the right time when the door was open. But you have to hit many times.

You go on throwing your arrow of consciousness. Don't bother about the result. It is very dark and the goal is not fixed; it goes on changing. So you go on throwing your arrow in the dark. Many times you will miss, and I say to you so that you don't become depressed. Many times everybody misses, that is how it is. But if you go on and on and on and don't get depressed, it will happen. It has always happened. That's why infinite patience is needed.

What is surrender to God? How can you surrender? How surrender will become possible? That too becomes possible if you make many efforts, and you go on failing. You make many efforts, you depend on yourself; effort depends on oneself. It is a willpower - the path of will. You depend on yourself. You fail and you fail and you fail. You stand up, again you fall, you stand up again, and you again start walking. And then a moment comes, when you have been failing and failing and failing, and you come to see that your effort is the cause, because your effort has become your ego.

That is the problem on the path of will. Because a man who is working on the path of will - making efforts, methods, using techniques, doing this and that - is bound to accumulate a certain sense of "I am": "I am superior, special, extraordinary. I am doing this and that - austerities, fasting, sadhana. I have done this much."

On the path of will one has to be very, very watchful of the ego, because the ego is bound to come. If you can watch the ego, and you don't accumulate ego, there is no need to surrender - because if there is no ego, there is nothing to surrender. This has to be understood very, very deeply. And when you are understanding - trying to understand Patanjali - this is a very fundamental thing.

If you make your effort continuously for many lives, the ego is bound to arise. You have to be very watchful. You should work, you should make all efforts, but don't gather the ego. Then there is no need to surrender; you may hit the target without surrendering. There is no need because the disease doesn't exist.

If the ego is there, then the need arises to surrender. That's why Patanjali says - after talking about being intense, sincere, with total effort, he suddenly says:

Ishwarapranidhanatwa:

If you feel continuously failing, then remember that the failure is not because of the divine. The failure is happening because of your ego, from where the arrow is being thrown, the source of your being, there something is happening - a diversion. Ego is collecting there. Then there is only one possibility: surrender it! You have failed with it so totally, in so many ways. You did this and that, you tried to do this and that, and you failed and failed and failed. When frustration becomes final and you cannot see what to do, Patanjali says, "Now surrender to God."

Patanjali is very rare in this sense. He does not believe in God; he is not a God-believer. God is also a technique. Patanjali doesn't believe in any God, that there is some God. No! He says God is a technique. Those who fail, for them this technique - the last. If you fail in that also, there is no way. Patanjali says it is not a question whether God exists or not; that is not the point at all. The point is that God is hypothetical. Without God it will be difficult to surrender. You will ask, "To whom?"

So God is a hypothetical point just to help surrender. When you have surrendered you will know there is no God, but that is when you have surrendered and when you have known. For Patanjali even God is a hypothesis to help you. It is a lie. That's why I told you Patanjali is a sly Master. It is just a help. Surrender is the basic thing, not God. And this difference you must note, because there are people who think God is the basic thing - because there is God, you surrender.

Patanjali says that because you have to surrender, posit a God. God is a posited thing. When you have surrendered, you will laugh. There is no God. But one thing more: there are gods - no God - a multiplicity of gods, because whenever you surrender you become a god. So don't be confused with Patanjali's God and Christian-Jewish God. Patanjali says God is the potentiality of every being. Man is as if a seed of God - every man. And when the seed flowers, comes to a fulfillment, the seed has become a god. So every man, every being, will become finally a god.

"God" means just the ultimate culmination, the ultimate flowering. There is no God, but there are gods - infinite gods. This is a totally different conception. If you ask Mohammedans, they will say there is only one God. If you ask Christians, they also say there is only one God. But Patanjali is more scientific. He says God is a possibility. Everybody is carrying that possibility within the heart. Everybody is just a seed, a potentiality to become a god. When you reach to the highest beyond which nothing exists, you become a god. Many have reached before you, many will reach - and many will be reaching alter you.

Everyone becomes a god finally, because everyone is a god potentially, infinite gods. That is why it becomes difficult for Christians to understand. You call Rama a god, you call Krishna a god, you call Buddha a god, you call Mahavira a god. Even a Rajneesh you can call a god.

For a Christian it becomes impossible to understand. What are you doing? For them only one God exists who has created the world. For Patanjali nobody has created the world. Millions of gods exist, and everybody is on the path to become a god. Whether you know it or not, you carry a god within your womb. And you may miss many times, but how can you miss it ultimately? If you carry it within you, some day or the other the seed is going to flower. You cannot miss it absolutely - no.

This is a totally different conception. Christian God seems to be very dictatorial, dominating the whole existence. Patanjali is more democratic - no despot, no dictator, no Stalin, no czar sitting on the top of the throne, with his only begotten son, Christ, by the side and the apostles around. This is nonsense. The whole concept is as if in the image of an emperor it has been made - on the throne. No, Patanjali is absolutely democratic. He says godliness is everybody's quality. You carry it; it is up to you to bring it to its totality. If you don't want it, that too is up to you.

Nobody is sitting as a despot on the world; nobody is forcing you or creating you. Freedom is absolute. You can sin because of freedom, you can move away because of freedom. You suffer because of freedom, and when you understand this, there is no need to suffer; you can come back, that too because of freedom. Nobody is bringing you back, and there is going to be no judgment day. Nobody is there to judge you except your own being. You are the doer, you are the judge, you are the criminal, you are the law. You are all! You are a miniature existence.

God is a state of consciousness. It is not a person, really, but "individual", so you will have to understand the difference between personality and individuality. Personality is the periphery. As you look to others, that is your personality. You say, "Nice personality, beautiful personality, ugly personality" - as you look to others. Your personality is the decision, the opinion of others about you. If you are alone on the earth, will you have any personality? No personality, because who will say you are beautiful, and who will say you are stupid, and who will say you are a great leader of men? There is nobody to say anything about you. The opinion will not be there, you will not have any personality.

The word personality comes from the Greek word "persona". In the Greek drama, the actors had to use masks. Those masks were called persona. From that persona comes the word personality. The face that you wear when you look at your wife and smile, that is personality - persona. You don't feel like smiling, but you have to smile. A guest comes and you welcome him, and deep down you never wanted him to come to you and deep down you are disturbed - "Now what to do with this man?" - but you are smiling and welcoming and you are saying that "So glad".

Personality is that which you pose, a face, a mask. But if there is nobody in your bathroom, you don't have any personality unless you look in the mirror. Then immediately the personality comes because you yourself start doing the work of the other opinion. You look in the face and say, "Beautiful". Now you are divided, now you are two, giving opinion about yourself. But in the bathroom when nobody is there and you are completely unafraid, that nobody is looking from the keyhole... Because if somebody looks from the keyhole, personality comes in, you start behaving.

In the bathroom only you drop the personality. That's why bathroom is so refreshing. Out of the bath you come so beautiful, fresh, no personality; you become an individual. Individuality is that which you are; personality is that which you show that you are. Personality is your face; individuality is your being. God, in Patanjali's conception, has no personality. He is an individual unit.

If you grow, by and by, opinion of others becomes childish. You don't bother about them; what they say is meaningless. It is not what they say that carries meaning. It is you, what you are, that carries the meaning, not that they say, "Beautiful". This is useless. If you are beautiful, that is the point. What they say is irrelevant. What you are - the real, the authentic you - that is your individual.

When you drop personalities, you become a sannyasin. When you renounce personalities, you become a sannyasin: you become an individual unit. Now you live through your authentic center. You don't pose. When you don't pose, you are not worried. When you don't pose, you are unaffected by what others say. When you don't pose, you remain detached. Personality cannot remain detached. It is a very fragile thing. It exists between you and the other, and it depends on the other. He can change his mind; he can destroy you completely. You look at a woman and she smiles, and you feel so beautiful because of her smile. And if she simply turns with hatred in her eyes, you are simply crushed. In fact, you are crushed because your personality has been thrown under the shoes. She walked over you; she didn't look even.

Every moment you are afraid somebody may crush your personality. Then the whole world becomes an anxiety. A god has an individuality, but no personality. Whatsoever he is, that's what he shows. Whatsoever he is in, he is out. In fact, in and out have disappeared for him.

In English it is translated, GOD IS THE SUPREME RULER. That's why I say there exists a misunderstanding about Patanjali. In Sanskrit he calls him purush-vishesh - a supreme being, not a ruler. I will like to translate God as the supreme. He is an individual unit of divine consciousness - individual, remember, not universal, because Patanjali says every individual is a god.

Why? Because the more you become individual, the more life takes a different quality. A new dimension opens - the dimension of play. The more you are concerned with the personality and the outer, the crust, the periphery... Your dimension of life is that of work: worried about the result, worried about whether you will attain the goal or not, always worried whether things are going to help you or not, what will happen tomorrow.

A man whose life has become a play is not worried about tomorrow, because he exists only today. Says Jesus, "Look at the lilies. They are so beautiful," because for them life is not a work. Look at rivers, look at stars. Except man, everything is beautiful and holy because the whole existence is a play. Nobody is worried about the result. Is the tree worried about whether flowers will come or not?

Is the river worried whether she will reach to the ocean or not? Except man, there is no worry. Why man is worried? Because he looks life as work, not as play - and the whole existence is a play.

Says Patanjali: when one becomes centered into oneself, one becomes a player; he plays. Life is a game and it is beautiful; no need to worry about the result. Result doesn't matter, it is simply irrelevant. The thing which you are doing in itself has value. I am talking to you; you are listening to me. But you are listening with a purpose, and I am talking purposelessly. You are listening with a purpose, because through listening you are going to attain something - some knowledge, some clues, some techniques, methods, some understanding, and then you are going to work them out. You are after a result. I am talking to you purposelessly; I simply enjoy.

People ask me, "Why you go on talking every day?" I enjoy; it is just like birds singing. What is the purpose? Ask the rose why it goes on flowering? What is the purpose? I am talking to you because this sharing of myself with you is in itself a value, it has intrinsic value. I am not looking at the result; I am not worried whether you are transformed through it or not. There is no worry. If you listen me, that's all. And if you are also not worried, then transformation can happen this very moment. Because you are worried how to use it - whatsoever I say, how to use it - what to do about it...

You are already in the future. You are not here; you are not playing the game. You are in a workshop. You are not playing the game You are thinking to gain some results out of it, and I am absolutely purposeless. It is how I share myself with you. I am talking not to do something in the future: I am talking because right now, through this sharing, something is happening, and that's enough.

Remember the words "intrinsic value", and make your every act an intrinsic value. Don't bother about the result - because the moment you think about the result, whatsoever you are doing becomes the means and the end is in the future. Make the means themselves the end; make the path the goal. Make this very moment the ultimate; there is no beyond it. This is the state of God and whenever you are playing, you have some glimpses of it.   

Children play, and you cannot find anything diviner than children playing. Hence, Jesus says, "Unless you become like children, you will not enter into the kingdom of my God." Become like children. The meaning is not to become childish, because to be childish is totally a different thing; to be like children is totally a different thing. Childishness has to be dropped. That is juvenile, foolish. To be like children has to be increased. That is innocence - purposeless innocence. Profit brings the poison in; the result poisons you. Then innocence is lost.

You can become a god right now because you are already that - just the thing has to be realized. You are already the case. It is not that you have to grow into a god. Really, you have to realize that you are already that. This happens through surrender.

Patanjali says you believe in a God, you trust in a God there, somewhere, high in the universe, at the top, and you surrender. That God is just a prop to help surrender. When the surrender happens you become a god, because surrender means, "Now I am not concerned with the result, I am not concerned with the future, I am not concerned with myself at all. I surrender."

When you say, "I surrender", what is surrender? I - the ego And without the ego how can you think about purpose, result? Who will think about it? Then you are in a let-go. Then you go wherever it leads. Now the whole will decide; you have surrendered your decision. Patanjali says there are two ways. Make effort total. If you don't accumulate ego, then that total effort will become a surrender in itself. If you accumulate ego, then there is a way: surrender to God.

Existence is perfect; nothing at all is needed to be done. If you understand this then surrender is enough. No effort, no pranayama, no bhastrika, no shirshasana, no yoga postures, no meditation, nothing, if you understand this - that existence is perfect as it is. Look in, look out: everything is so perfect that nothing can be done except celebration. A man who surrenders starts celebrating.