Surrender yourself and be secure.

when we speak word ‘surrender’, it doesn’t mean being defenseless, being powerless.. But in eastern mysticism when we use the word ‘surrender’ then it means being in love so much that you don’t doubt a little bit, you are in love so much that a trust is produced, not faith, trust. And when this trust happens, you know that no harm is going to happen to you. So you let go of yourself. Just like a child who leaves himself in the arms of his mother or father. You don’t say that the child is defenseless. You don’t say that the child is powerless. You don’t even say that the child is weak. But the child knows that his mother or his father loves him and will take care of him. So he just surrenders himself to his parents.

I still remember, once I saw this six or seven years old child holding his mother’s hand. They were standing on the side walk waiting to pass the road. There was lots of traffic and noise. This child was happily sleeping. So when there was green signal, mother walked, the child was just being dragged. He was just walking but he was not ready to open up his eyes. This I would call is trust. He knows that mother is holding the hand so why should I worry. So he doesn’t has to bother to go left and right, watch the signal, whether its time for him to walk or not. It was such a pleasing scene to see that.

You know the sense of the child, the trust he has for his mother and a time came when he was literally dropping in sleep and at that junction the mother just picked him up and now he was just sleeping on the mother’s shoulder. So we use trust in this sense.

And it’s very, very important that a learner has to change into a student. A learner has to move into another stage where we call him student. Being a student is very good. You learn to grow. But just being a student is never enough in spirituality because learning is very technical, very casual. You don’t have a feel, in any kind of relationship, other than the teacher and a student and the motto is to learn. And you pay the teacher and that’s it. So as long as one is a student, can have a very theological study of religion or of any other subject concern.

But the Indian spirituality says ‘just being student won’t be enough’. Because students can never be truly respectful to their teachers because they know they are paying that gentleman. That if they don’t pay, the teacher won’t teach. Teacher has the selfish motive, he wants the money and student has the selfish motive, he wants to learn. So it is a mutual give and take. Sheer economical laws are being practiced. So just being a student of spirituality is never enough.

In our eyes, we say that one has to change into the third stage and that stage is of disciple-hood. The difference between a student and a disciple is that,. for a student is just a casual give and take situation and wants to be in a win situation. So if one teacher is not good enough, he would move to another and to third and to fourth and to fifth. Doesn’t has to be respectful, you know it in U.S how the things are. Guns and the drugs and the threats are there. So hardly any student who would, who you can say is really respectful towards the teacher. And the teacher, I met few of them, the teachers who are scared to go to school because they never know what kind of reaction or what kind of student would be there for them to handle. So they are really feared for their life and so in a way the western culture has even lost the goodness of the teacher-student relationship also.

Fortunately we still have it here in India. I don’t know how long it would be because Indian generation is fast mimicking the western culture. So we don’t know how fast we will loose that. But still the roots are pretty deep enough, so I believe that it may continue for some more, more time.

For a disciple the relationship is from heart. Its not that you give and you take, for a disciple its just give, give. ‘I give my love’, ‘I give my ego’, ‘I give my myths’, ‘I give my misconceptions’, ‘I am giving my darkness also’. And for the master, I won’t use the word ‘teacher’ now; I’ll use the word ‘master’ now. And for the master, its not that the master is selfish because disciple is giving, giving, giving so the master says ‘ok give, give, give.’ Master on the contrary is again giving. Master is not ready to take, is again ready to give the light, the knowledge, the love, the trust, the mutual trust in which they grow. A trust is formed, when you don’t have to fear.

A disciple and master have one thing, which none of these so-called social relationships are today having and that is ‘trust.’ With the foundation of this trust and with the foundation of this love, the disciple listens to the words of the Master. Now see the whole scenario is changed. If you don’t have the trust, the love, the faith, surrender won’t happen.

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Be dust and bloom like a flower.

A boy was sweeping the courtyard of the khanaqah. A dervish saw him and said, “Be like the dust ball that rolls before the broom, and not like the rock left behind.” With these words the shaykh showed the young disciple that to advance on the path, one must be like the dust, which has no will of its own but goes wherever the broom (the spiritual master) commands and must not be like the rock (ego), which asserts its own will and resists the direction of the perfect guide.

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