CWM >  Words of the Mother–II >  Surrender to the Divine Will

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Surrender to the Divine Will

Surrender

Surrender: the decision to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. This is done either through the mind or the emotion or the life-impulse or through all of them together.

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To surrender to the Divine is to renounce your narrow limits and let yourself be invaded by It and made a centre for Its play.

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If you are truly surrendered to the Divine, in the right manner and totally, then at every moment you will be what you ought to be, you will do what you ought to do, you will know what you ought to know.

But for that you should have transcended all the limitations of the ego.

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True surrender enlarges you; it increases your capacity; it gives you a greater measure in quality and in quantity, which you could not have had yourself.

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Detailed surrender: a surrender which does not forget anything.

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108

Detailed surrender means the surrender of all the details of life, even the smallest and the most insignificant in appearance. And this means to remember the Divine in all circumstances; whatever we think, feel or do, we must do it for Him as a way of coming close to Him, to be more and more what He wants us to be, capable of manifesting His will in perfect sincerity and purity, to be the instruments of His Love.

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If man surrenders totally to the Divine, he identifies himself with the Divine.

13 May 1954

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Perfect surrender: the indispensable condition for identification.

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In the integrality and absoluteness of bhakti and surrender, we find the essential condition of perfect peace leading to uninterrupted bliss.

2 December 1954

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The path is long, but self-surrender makes it short; the way is difficult, but perfect trust makes it easy.

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Surrender to the Divine is the best emotional protection.

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The true repose is that of a perfect surrender to the Divine.

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Surrender.

13 October 1965

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109

To Will What the Divine Wills

Surrender: to will what the Divine wills is the supreme wisdom.

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To will what God wills—that is the supreme secret.

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Will one with the Divine will: a condition that triumphs over all obstacles.

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Divine Will—the will expressing the highest Truth.

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Let us do our best in all circumstances, leaving the result to the Divine’s decision.

20 May 1954

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We must be satisfied with what the Divine gives us, and do what He wants us to do without weakness, free from useless ambition.

27 June 1954

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Whenever there is any difficulty we must always remember that we are here exclusively to accomplish the Divine’s will.

5 August 1954

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And when our adhesion to the Divine’s will is total then also our peace and joy become total.

6 August 1954

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110

The Divine’s will is that we should be like channels always open, always more wide, so that His forces may pour their abundance into the mould.

16 October 1954

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Our will must always be a perfect expression of the Divine’s will.

17 October 1954

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Our constant prayer is to understand the Divine’s will and to live accordingly.

28 October 1954

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We must lie before the Divine always like a page perfectly blank, so that the Divine’s will may be inscribed in us without any difficulty or mixture.

20 November 1954

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At each moment may our attitude be such that the Divine’s Will determines our choice so that the Divine may give the direction to all our life.

22 November 1954

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We must see only through the Divine’s eyes and act only through the Divine’s will.

26 November 1954

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We must know how to depend for everything and in everything on the Divine. He alone can surmount all difficulties.

29 November 1954

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111

In a total surrender to the Divine there can be no longer errors or faults or any insufficiency since it is what the Divine has willed that he does and it is done as the Divine has willed it.

3 December 1954

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Always the Supreme Will remains the eternal mystery calling for all our wonder and marvelling.

16 December 1954

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Like the child who does not reason and has no care we trust ourselves to the Divine that the Divine’s Will may be done.

18 December 1954

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To do at each moment the best we can and leave the result to the Divine’s decision, is the surest way to peace, happiness, strength, progress and final perfection.

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The only thing you have to do is to remain quiet, undisturbed, solely turned towards the Divine, the rest is in His hands.

18 July 1955

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There is a Supreme Consciousness that governs the manifestation. His wisdom is certainly much greater than ours. So we need not bother about what will happen.

Blessings.

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The Lord is always victorious—in his own way, not in the human way—according to his own will, not according to the will of men.

The Lord is always present—only we do not realise it.

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We are always free to make our proposals to the Lord, but after all it is only His will that is realised.

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If one looks from high enough, whatever one does one never wastes one’s time since one acts according to one’s nature and—without knowing it—according to the will of the Lord.

16 August 1962

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Be quiet and offer yourself calmly and confidently.

All that happens is always the effect of the Supreme’s Will.

Human action can be the occasion but never the cause.

3 August 1968

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Difficulties of Surrender

It is rare that somebody can surrender entirely to the Divine’s Will without having to face one or another of the difficulties.

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How many efforts and struggles again to give ourselves, to surrender, once the individuality is constituted!

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For if the struggle is not an actual one, that does not mean that it will not come one day in one form or another.

For always, at least once in our life, we are placed in some circumstance to test whether we are ready for an entire surrender to the Divine Will; whether we are, before all, human beings striving to attain and manifest the Godhead; ready to renounce everything in the world—what seems to us good as well as what seems bad—for that supreme conquest. In that ascent towards the heights, both virtues and duties—that is to say our mental prejudices and preferences—stand far more in our way than our exterior weaknesses and faults. An error can always be used as a spring-board, whilst a virtue is more often a limit, a barrier that must be surmounted.

I will add, quoting a passage of The Synthesis of Yoga, “All these are within us waiting to wall in the spirit with forms; but we must always go beyond, always renounce the lesser for the greater, the finite for the Infinite; we must be prepared to proceed from illumination to illumination, from experience to experience, from soul-state to soul-state, so as to reach the utmost transcendence of the Divine and its utmost universality.”fnSri Aurobindo, SABCL, Vol. 20, p. 315.

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114

The way in which most people surrender:

Let God manifest his will but let it be the same as mine.

15 April 1931

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One thing you must know and decide:

It is if you want the True Divine as He is, or if you want a Divine in keeping with your own conception of what He ought to be.

And if you have decided to surrender sincerely and totally to the Divine and to be and do what He wants you to be and do according to His own will, or if you want the Divine to do what you want Him to do and to act according to your own will.

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I have forwarded your prayer to the Supreme Lord. But if you want to live in Ananda, you must not try to impose your will on the Divine, but, on the contrary, you must be ready to accept all that comes to you from Him, with an equal peace; because He knows better than we what is good for our progress.

13 August 1960

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The time is come to rely only on the Divine will and to let it work freely through you.

I repeat, the time has come at last not to rely any more on one’s own petty will, to hand over the whole affair to the Divine’s will and let it do its work through you, not only your mind and feelings but mainly through the body; and if you do it sincerely, all this body nonsense will disappear and you will be strong and fit for your work.

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115

When men will understand that the Divine knows better than they do what is the best for them, many of their difficulties will disappear.

1 April 1963

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If the Lord wills for you a hardship, do not protest. Take it as a blessing and indeed it will become so.

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The Lord is not an all-powerful automaton that human beings can move by the push-button of their will.

And yet most of those who surrender to God expect that from Him.

22 June 1963