Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #4, Find the Ever-Present Flower Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

IS SURRENDER TO ISHWARA -- GOD -- AND SURRENDER TO THE GURU THE SAME?

Surrender doesn't depend on the object. It is a quality that you bring in your being. To whom you surrender is irrelevant. Any object will do. You can surrender to a tree; you can surrender to a river; you can surrender to anything -- to your wife, to your husband, to your child. The problem is not there in the object, any object will do. The problem is to surrender.

The happening happens because of surrendering, not because to whom you have surrendered. And this is the most beautiful thing to understand: whomsoever you surrender, that object becomes the God. There is no question of surrendering to God. Where will you find God to surrender? You will never find. Surrender! And to whomsoever you surrender, the God is there. The child becomes the God, the husband becomes the God, the wife becomes the God, the guru becomes the God, even a stone can become God.

Even through stones people have attained, because it is not a question at all to what you surrender. You surrender, and that brings the whole thing, that opens the door. Surrendering, the effort to surrender, brings an opening to you. And if you are open to a stone you become open to the whole existence, because it is only a question of opening. How can you be open to a stone and not open to the tree? Once you know the opening, once you enjoy the euphoria that it brings, the ecstasy that happens just by opening to a stone, then you cannot find such a foolish man who will close immediately to the remaining existence. When even opening to a stone gives such ecstatic experience, then why not open to all?

In the beginning one surrenders to something, and then one is surrendered to all. That is the meaning that if you surrender to a Master, in the experience of surrendering, you have learned a clue; now you can surrender to all. The Master becomes just a passage to be passed through. He becomes a door, and through that door you can look at the whole sky. Remember, you cannot find God to surrender, but many people think that way; they are very tricky people. They think, "When God is there, we will surrender." Now this is impossible because God is there only if you surrender. Surrender makes anything God. Surrender gives you the eyes, and everything that is brought to these eyes becomes divine. Divinity, divineness, is a quality given by surrendering.

In India, Christians, Jews and Mohammedans laugh about Hindus, because they may be worshipping a tree or they may be worshipping a stone -- not even carved, not even a statue. They can find a stone by the side of the road, and they can make a god out of it immediately. No artist is needed because surrender is the art. No carving, not a valuable stone is needed, not even marble. Any ordinary stone, discarded -- it cannot be sold in the market and that's why it is Lying there by the side of the road -- and Hindus can make immediately a god out of it. If you can surrender, it becomes, divine. The eyes of surrender cannot find anything else than the divine.

Others have laughed; they couldn't understand. They think that these people are stone worshippers, idol worshippers. They are not! Hindus have been misunderstood. They are not idol worshippers. They have found a key, and that key is that you can make anything divine if you surrender. And if you don't surrender then you can go on searching for God for millions of lives. You will never meet him, because you don't have the quality which meets, which can meet, which can find. So the question is of a subjective surrender, not of the object to whom to surrender.

But, of course, there are problems. You cannot so suddenly surrender to a stone because your mind goes on saying, "This is just a stone. What are you doing?" And if the mind goes on saying, "This is a stone; what are you doing?" -- then you cannot surrender, because surrender needs your totality.

Hence, the significance of a Master. A Master means somebody who is standing on the boundary -- boundary of the human and the divine. One who has been a human being like you, but is no more like you -- something else has happened -- who is a plus, a human being plus. So if you look to his past, he is just like you -- but if you look to his present and the future, then you look to the plus. Then he is the divine.

It is difficult to surrender to a stone, to a river -- very, very difficult -- even to surrender to a Master is so difficult. Then surrendering to a stone is bound to be very difficult, because whenever you see a Master, then again your mind said that this is a human being like you, so why surrender to him? And your mind cannot see the present; the mind can see only the past -- that this man is born like you, eats, sleeps like you, so why surrender to him? He is just like you.

He is, and yet he is not. He is both Jesus and Christ -- Jesus the man, the son of man, and Christ, the plus point. If you watch only the visible, then he is the stone; you cannot surrender. If you love, if you become intimate, if you allow his presence to go deep in you, if you can find a rapport -- that is the word; rapport with his being -- then suddenly you become aware of the plus. He is more than human. In some unknown way, he has something that you have not got. In some invisible way, he has penetrated beyond the boundary of the human. But this you can feel only if there is a rapport.

That is what Patanjali says, shraddha -- trust; trust creates rapport. Rapport is an inner harmony of the two invisibles; love is a rapport. With somebody you simply fit as if you both were born for each other. You call it love. In a moment, even at the first sight, somebody simply fits with you, as if you were created together and were separated; now you have met again.

In the old mythologies all over the world, it is said that man and woman were created together. In Indian mythology they have a very beautiful myth. The myth is that a wife and husband were created in the very beginning as twins, brother and sister. Together they were born -- wife and husband as twins, fitting together in one womb. There was a rapport from the very beginning. From the first moment there was a rapport. They were together in the womb holding each other, and that is rapport. Then, due to some misfortune, that phenomenon disappeared from the earth.

But the myth says that still there is a relationship. A man and a woman... The man may be born here and the woman may be born somewhere in Africa, in America, but there is a rapport, and unless they find each other there will be difficulty. And it is very difficult to find each other. The world is so vast, and you don't know where to seek and where to find. If it happens, it happens by accident.

Now scientists also believe that sooner or later we will be able to judge the rapport by scientific instruments, and before somebody goes for marriage, the couple has to go to a lab so that they can find whether their bio-energy fits or not. If it is not fitting, then they are in an illusion. This marriage cannot... They may be thinking that they will be very happy, but they cannot be because the inner bio-energy does not fit.

So you may like the nose of the woman and the woman may like your eyes, but that is not the point. Liking the eyes won't help, liking the nose won't help, because after two days nobody looks at the nose and nobody looks at the eyes. Then the problem is of bio-energy. The inner energies meeting and mixing with each other; otherwise they will repel. It is just like if you transfuse blood; either your body accepts it or rejects it, because there are types of blood. If it is the same type, only then the body accepts it; otherwise it simply rejects.

The same happens in a marriage. If the bio-energy accepts, it accepts, and there is no conscious way to know about it. Love is very fallacious, because love is always focused on something. The voice of the woman is good, and you are allured. But that is not the point. It is a partial thing. The whole must fit. Your bio-energies should accept each other so totally that deep down you become a one person. This is rapport. It happens in love rarely because how to find? -- it is still difficult. Just falling in love is not a sure criterion. Out of one thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine times it fails. Love has proved a failure.

Even a greater rapport happened with a Master. It is greater than love. It is shraddha -- trust. Not only your bio-energy meets and fits, but your very soul fits together. That's why, whenever somebody becomes a disciple, the whole world thinks he is mad; because the whole world cannot see what is the point. Why are you going mad after this man? And you cannot explain it also, because it cannot be explained. You may be even not aware consciously what has happened, but with a man, suddenly, you are in trust. Suddenly something meets, becomes one. That is rapport.

It is difficult to have that rapport with a stone. Because it is even difficult to have that rapport with a living Master, how can you have it with a stone? But if it happens, immediately the Master becomes a God. For the disciple, the Master is always a God. He may not be a God for others; that is not the point. But for a disciple he is the God, and through him the doors of divineness open. Then you have the key -- that this inner rapport is the key, this surrender. Then you can try it: surrender to a river...

You must have read Hermann Hesse's "Siddhartha". He learns many things from the river. You cannot learn from a Buddha, just watching the river, so many moods of the river. He has become a ferryboat man just watching thousands of climates around it. Sometimes the river is happy and dancing, and sometimes very, very sad, as if not moving at all -- sometimes very angry and roaring, against the whole existence, and sometimes so calm and peaceful like a Buddha. And Siddhartha simply a ferryman -- passing the river, living near the river, watching the river, with nothing else to do. It becomes a deep meditation and a rapport, and through the river and the "riverness" of it he attains: he attains to the same glimpse as Heraclitus.

You can step in the same river and you cannot. The river is the same and not the same. It is a flow, and through the river and the rapport with it he comes to know the whole existence as a river -- a "riverness".

It can happen with anything. The basic to remember is surrendering.

IS SURRENDER TO ISHWARA -- GOD -- AND SURRENDER TO A GURU THE SAME?

Yes! Surrender is always the same. It is just up to you to whom you can be able to surrender. Find the man, seek the river, and surrender. It is a risk -- the greatest risk possible. That's why it is so difficult to surrender. It is a risk! You are moving in the unknown territory and you are giving so much power to a man or to something you surrender.

If you surrender to me you are giving total power to me. Then my yes is your yes, then my no is your no. Even in the day I say it is night, you say, "Yes, it is night." You are giving total power to somebody. The ego resists. The mind says, "This is not good. Keep the control yourself. Who knows where this man will lead you? Who knows, he may say, 'Jump from the hilltop,' and then you will be dead. Who knows, this man may manipulate you, control you, exploit you." The mind will bring all these things. It is a risk, and the mind is taking all the security measures.

The mind is saying, "Be watchful. Watch this man a little more." If you listen to the mind, surrender is not possible. Mind is right! It is a risk! But whenever you take, it is going to be a risk. Watching won't help much. You can watch forever, and may not be able to decide because the mind can never decide. Mind is confusion. It is never decisive. You have to bypass mind someday or other, and you have to tell the mind, "You wait. I go: I will take the jump and see what happens."

What you have got to lose really? I'm always wondering what you have got that you are so afraid to lose, what exactly that you are bringing when you surrender. You have nothing. You can gain out of it, but you cannot lose because you have nothing. You can always be profited out of it, but there is no possibility of any loss because you do not have anything to lose.

You must have heard Karl Marx's famous maxim, "Proletarians of the world unite because you have nothing to lose but your chains." That may be true, may not be true. But for a seeker this is exactly the thing. What you have got to lose except your chains, your ignorance, your misery? But people become very much attached to their misery also -- to their very misery they cling as if it is a treasure. If you want to take their misery away, they create all sorts of barriers.

I have been watching these barriers and these tricks with thousands of people. Even if you want to take their misery, they cling. They indicate a certain thing because they don't have anything else, this is the only treasure that they have. Don't take it away because it is always better to have something than nothing. That is their logic: it is always better to have something -- at least this misery is there -- than nothing, than to be completely empty, than to be nobody.

Even if you are miserable, you are somebody. Even if you have a hell within you, at least you have something. But watch this, observe this, and when you surrender remember you have nothing else to give. A Master is taking your misery, nothing else. He is not taking your life because you don't have. He is taking only your death. He is not taking anything valuable from you because you don't have it. He is taking only the rubbish, the junkyard that you have collected through many lives, and you are sitting on the heap of the junkyard and you think this is your kingdom.

He is not taking anything. If you are ready to give your misery to him, you will become capable to receive his bliss. This is the surrender, and then the Master becomes a god. Anything, anybody you surrender becomes divine. Surrender makes divineness, surrender creates divineness. Surrender is a creative force.

Chapter-4

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

Find the Ever-Present Flower

Second Question