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“Surrender” From The Fire Gospel
Author(s): Adi Da Samraj
THE FIRE GOSPEL
Chapter 3
Surrender
(1) MASTER DA: We are psychologically disposed to being
affected by the conditions of existence most profoundly only
when the conditions of existence seem conventionally most
profound. So when Andrew went over the falls today, what was
his point of view? “Im going with it! Ive got to do it!”
There was no returning, no alternative, only surrender. He
could just as well have surrendered in exactly that way
before he even came close to going over the falls. He could
be doing it right now, as perhaps to some degree he is. But
we do not seem to surrender as profoundly as in the moment
when we feel we have no options.
(2) As long as you feel you have an option, you do not
surrender completely. Your presumed options are the basis of
the drama of living, and thus the alternatives to sadhana
that you also want to fulfill turn your spiritual practice
into drama. That drama is karma. That is ego-bondage. The
ultimate principle of the spiritual process is the
realization that you have no options at any moment under any
circumstances. When you realize that, then you enter into
the same disposition you would otherwise enjoy under the
most conventionally profound or dramatic moments of life or
death.
(3) Most people only surrender in some sense when there
are obviously no options and when they find themselves in
the worst possible moment they could experience. Such
surrender is not sadhana. It is ordinary life. Real practice
is to regenerate the capacity for release under all
conditions so that existence becomes roleless, motiveless,
free renunciation. You simply do not live in that
disposition by tendency. By tendency you are trying to
survive against the apparent threat of existence, always.
The sense that you are fundamentally threatened at the same
time that you exist is the basis of the contraction over the
solar plexus, the knot of the navel. It is the basis of all
the knots in the being and the motivator of existence in any
form, whether you are flesh-born or existing in some subtler
condition. There is always the sense that you exist and that
existence is threatened, and you contract in the face of it.
You look for alternatives to merely being snuffed out, and
life becomes the attempt to generate alternative
motivations, responses, techniques, desires, goals, all of
which are efforts apart from the recognition that you have
no option but absolute surrender.
(4) Absolute surrender occurs only in the moment of such
recognition. In the moments of ordinary life, you feel
relatively good and you can try to surrender, but when you
are going over the falls and death is imminent, you do not
try to surrender. Surrender is the only natural recourse.
The moment of true surrender is motiveless. No contraction
stands behind it, because you are no longer struggling with
alternatives. This is the secret of wisdom, then, to realize
that you never have any alternative, that you are always in
the moment of death.
(5) When you discover that there are no alternatives and
simply exist in that surrendered state, you also tacitly
realize that existence is never threatened and that no one
is threatened. The sense of threat is a psychological
superimposition based on the apparent facts of experience.
When you enter into wisdom, you have entered into the native
capacity of surrender wherein you realize that there are no
alternatives. That wisdom is the natural state, the clear
state. It is true Samadhi, the state of clear comprehension
and clear consciousness. It is not only the disposition into
which we should enter when we are threatened absolutely,
when we know we are to die, but the disposition in which we
should always live. Then life would be another proposition
altogether.
(6) But, instead of living in that disposition, we live
by struggle, by problem. We all know that surrendering feels
good, that it is the best thing to do. We have a native
sense that surrender is good and that we really are trapped
somehow and have no alternative. But superimposed on that
native understanding in the mechanism of the extended
personality is another that thinks it can survive, beat the
odds, enjoy itself, that consoles itself with all kinds of
absurd opinions and hopes, that gives itself excuses, in
other words, not to surrender, not to live surrendered, not
to recognize the nature of existence.
(7) You tend to play upon or be played upon by that
superficial motivation. The degree to which you identify
with your superficial personality is the degree to which you
cannot really practice. To really practice is to be like
Andrew going over the falls, before he got the idea that he
could possibly survive and just slip into the water and miss
the rocks. That pristine will that acknowledges the
inevitable and goes with it has no content, no mind. It
knows no stress. It is the native disposition. Inherent in
it, deep within it, is all that is to be Realized. We must
enter into it fully and continuously, therefore, in order to
enter into it deeply.
(8) Go with the flow! Not the flow of events, but the
flow of Being, very existence, the Mystery of existence, no
holding on, no clinging, no difference, no self-possession,
no contraction, no philosophy, nothing but the native state.
That is Samadhi. Well-you can glimpse it, you can think
something or other about it, you can be different from it,
in other words, consider it, contemplate it, think about it,
hope for it, but somehow or other, through the process of
hearing and seeing in the context of your life, you must
again become capable of it. You must recapture the awareness
that it is your fundamental and inherent capability. You
must enter into Samadhi. Then follows life in Samadhi,
existence in Samadhi while you live in human form, in the
transition of death and after death, but it is another kind
of existence altogether than the one marked by the usual
human struggle. The difference is the difference between
surrender and self-contraction.
(9) When there is no self-contraction, when there is only
the Divine Reality, Realized in native surrender, then there
is wisdom. Such Realization is the principle of true or free
existence. It is the principle of true renunciation.
Conventional renunciation is not that at all. Conventional
renunciation is something we build on the distinction
between surrender and self-possession. We try all kinds of
techniques to break through to Reality. Conventional
renunciation is just one of many techniques, including all
the techniques of ordinary life, religious techniques,
mystical techniques, and on and on. Until we Realize this
simple Awakening to the native disposition, all we are doing
is struggling with the difference, looking for an
alternative, trying to work it out. And so we are
afraid.
(10) Tonight you all have been telling stories about your
experiences with death. They are horrible. You can die as
miserably as any wretched animal, you see. Anybody could.
You could die suddenly or you could die many years from now.
Who knows when death will happen to you? And in the
meantime, all kinds of other calamities could befall you
that would not in any sense be enjoyable. Yet in spite of
these facts, you have the subtle feeling that there is an
alternative, that you can struggle against death and
troubles and preserve yourself. Thus, you bind yourself and
make fear the necessary vehicle of all your changes.
(11) It is not necessary to be afraid. It is not
necessary to suffer in the midst of limitations. There is
another disposition altogether that is founded on wisdom,
the native freedom. It is in that disposition that you
should live and not only die.
(12) DEVOTEE: Master, I was thinking how perfect an
expression of that disposition is the “Easy Prayer.”
(13) MASTER DA: Like easy death, it is the simplest
presentation of the fundamental attitude of being. To
fulfill that prayer most perfectly is the same as
Enlightenment or Samadhi. It is also intended for beginners,
because it is easier for them to do than the complicated
versions of the meditative cycle.
(14) DEVOTEE: Master, I was feeling today that once I
recognize something about that disposition toward surrender,
no matter what occurs or what circumstances impinge upon
this bodily being, I can continue to perform that action and
need not fear becoming attached again or drawn into the
contraction you are talking about. I felt that would be
profound freedom.
(15) MASTER DA: Even if you are afraid, you can always
understand your fear. Once you have truly understood, then
fear is not just a something, like an object or a force
outside yourself that you must endure. It is merely the
psychological, emotional, even physiological expression of
something you are doing. Enquiry is the expression of that
understanding. You can always understand or recognize the
self-contraction, which always has the same force. Every
moment of suffering, unhappiness, dilemma, or pain is built
upon the same mechanism of self-contraction, or the
avoidance of relationship.
(16) Once you understand, therefore, you can always
recognize the essential content of every moment of suffering
and feel beyond it, transcend it, be established beyond it.
Understanding is great arms against difficulty and a great
power in time of trouble.
(17) DEVOTEE: It feels that I have finally realized a
kind of mastery over this condition that before now never
seemed possible.
(18) MASTER DA: Until you understand, you always relate
to the self-contraction as something outside yourself, a
substance, a thing, a machine, an object, something over
which you have no control, something you can only endure and
put up with. But truly, as I have mentioned a number of
times, it is a little bit like pinching yourself and not
realizing you are doing it. You feel pain in the body, a
little bit like fear. A terrible feeling of pain overcomes
you. When you realize you are pinching yourself, you look
beyond the pain into the act of which the pain is only an
effect or a sign of something else. Getting in touch with
that something else is like taking your hand away. When you
stop pinching yourself, the pain disappears mysteriously, no
matter what the immediate origin of the pain may be. The
operative effect of this wisdom, this simple understanding,
will always demonstrate itself as liberation, a return to
equanimity or fundamental Happiness.
(19) DEVOTEE: I have been considering your description to
us recently about how our relationship to you is basically
the process of allowing ourselves to be interfered with. I
see how this ties in with the consideration of release.
Allowing the ego to be interfered with constantly provides
what you have described as the pristine release.
(20) MASTER DA: I find you all to be a bunch of funny
people! You come around me, and I ask, “Whats happening?”
and you give me all your problems and your difficulties, and
you are always seriously rapping your view of it all to me
and to one another and being interviewed about it year after
year after year. You come and sit around me and I hear it or
sense it, you communicate it somehow or other in this solemn
voice, this serious, self-involved attitude. But to me you
are very funny. You are all sitting around here pinching
your ass and describing the pain to me! I see you pinching
your ass, but you are so involved with the pain and all your
subjective ruminations about it that you do not even realize
what you are doing, nor do you see that everyone else in the
room is sitting around pinching his or her own ass!
(21) Ultimately I call your attention from this pain and
all your subjective gaming about it. I grant you sufficient
free attention so that you can see. “Look! Look!” That is
when you start laughing. That is the moment of humor. You
see what it is. You are no longer dwelling on the pain and
trying to get rid of it. You see that you are just pinching
yourself, sticking your nails in your ass. Well-stop doing
it! When you see what you are doing, it is a laughing matter
and you stop doing it. You are no longer involved in the
whole affair of the self-contraction. You are not pinching
yourself.
(22) To say you are pinching yourself is to use a
metaphor, but what you are doing is just as obvious as that,
just as crude, just as foolish, just as laughable. To get
the laugh, however, you must be able to observe yourself, to
move your attention away from your subjective gaming and
attachments and self-meditation. Just to get your attention
off all of that is a trick in itself.
(23) To say that I am functioning in a manner to
interfere with you is simply to say that I am breaking the
train of your attention from this sensation of pain and the
mountain of subjectivity you are building on it, in effect
calling your attention to the simple act that is the basis
of all this stress, all this thought, all this fake
philosophy, all this suffering, all this seeking. When you
have observed yourself to the degree that you are not merely
watching the sensations of pain and thinking about them, you
can look down and see your nails digging into your hip.
(24) You can see the self-contraction just that directly.
It is even a laughing moment. Suddenly there is a resource
that you always have and that is always usable. You can
magnify it, and you must then live it, of course, but it
gives you the greatest arms there are, the greatest source
of power or release or freedom. You are associated then with
this moment of existence and every possible moment of
existence in a uniquely free manner that has nothing to do
with the ego.
(25) The ego is the pinch, you see, the self-contraction,
the self-know, the fear, the resistance, the non-surrender.
Until you see the pinch, however, you can try to surrender.
Rudi said, “Surrender! Surrender! Rip your guts out!” (The
Master takes deep breaths to mock Rudis way of using the
breath to surrender) “Break through it!” And so forth. But
that is just something you do when you are feeling the pain,
when you have not seen the source of it yet, when you are
not yet responsible. You can work on your pain, your
self-contraction, your presumed disease, your imaginary
disease, every day of your life, and create the struggling
you all endure to try to be spiritual and to become
Enlightened. But effort has nothing to do with
surrender.
(26) When Andrew went over the falls, he did not make an
effort of surrender. Surrender was inevitable and natural.
That effortless or natural surrender is the essence of
meditation and real practice. You must realize true
self-observation and self-understanding. You cannot
surrender otherwise. The futile effort of surrender is made
before and in the absence of real self-understanding. That
is why it is not sufficient.
(27) The Adept has a unique Siddhi or Work to perform in
relation to others, but everyone who enters into the
Enlightened disposition Awakens into a similar capacity. It
is the disposition of compassion or love. Love is not
attachment, romance, or conventional passion. It is just
this spontaneous regard, and it becomes, therefore, a
disposition that would release everyone and everything. It
is a spiritual passion, but it is inherently, already free,
and it sees everyone else also as already free.
(28) It is not an attitude that expresses itself within
the framework of problems. It expresses itself differently
from the characteristic personality that is still
self-involved, still working on his or her problem, doing
all kinds of spiritual stuff in isolation, meditating, and
doing everything people do to somehow break free. It is
another kind of activity and it is essential to our Way from
the beginning.
(29) Everyone who hears the Teaching enters into this
Enlightened disposition in some fundamental sense. Thus, I
have considered with you that it is expressed through
service, through a unique quality of relational life. In the
seventh stage of life, that disposition is magnified most
profoundly and perfectly, but it is the same disposition
that should characterize all devotees. Those who hear me are
not self-concerned anymore. They already possess the arms of
wisdom. They already enjoy the Siddhi of the Divine and deal
with whatever may arise in the apparent individual
experience. They do that creatively and responsibly, but
they do not stand as fear. So, where is their attention?
Their attention is free. It deals freely with personal
circumstance and is not troubled. It is thrown out of the
sphere of the body into the environment of all relations and
all possibilities, the environment of total existence, not
merely of self-existence.
(30) Therefore the true Adept is not just exclaiming,
“me-free,” “See me sitting in my cave! See how bright I am!”
The true Adept is extraordinarily active. He is concerned
for others, not problematically but freely, and
compassionately oriented to the total sphere of
existence.
(31) When you realize existence, existence is not you
independent of anything. All of this exists. All of this is
characterized by the One Being. How, in the case of
Enlightenment, therefore, can you settle into a medium calm
in your cave of meditative pleasures? It is not necessary.
You need not be isolated anymore. Because of this expansive
quality of compassion, a unity with all Being, the Adepts
take on the “Crazy” form. Such compassion is the origin of
the Adepts willingness to do anything, not speaking now in
terms of the potential to do something terrible and
negative, but the willingness to do anything outrageous yet
benign for the sake of liberating beings.
(32) The compassionate Maha-Siddha does not do for others
everything he can do within the bounds of propriety. The
compassion of the Maha-Siddha is such that he will do
everything, whether in the realm of propriety or not, for
the sake of Awakening others. Therefore, the Crazy Adept
looks crazy. He or she does what is not within the realm of
conventional religious propriety. The Crazy Adept is not
bound by propriety or any dualistic conceptions.
(33) This compassionate, “Crazy” disposition is the
essence of all practice. It is the essence of this Way. It
certainly takes a different form in the case of the Crazy
Adept than in general it takes in the case of devotees, but
it is not a difference in kind absolutely. Siddhis are
operative in the case of the Crazy Adept, remarkable powers,
extraordinary psychic abilities, all kinds of marvels that
have nothing to do with the willful effort of the Adept. I
have observed in my own case the arising of siddhis of all
kinds that are spontaneously operative under all kinds of
conditions, even though my actions seem to be ordinary and
natural.
(34) These powers are not the results of effort or any
yogic activity on my part that intended to create them. No
self owns these powers. They are the inherent powers of the
Transcendental Reality. They are unique to the Adept, but
the power of compassion, the expression of Enlightenment
that always works to Awaken everyone, is a characteristic of
all individuals who are truly practicing this Way, because
you are immediately lifted out of the realm of self-concern,
self-contraction, the fear relative to your own potential
destinies, as soon as you truly understand. That
understanding becomes your arms in every moment, and
attention is released from the bond of the self-contraction
and gravitates into the Universal Field of Being. The Adept
is more effective than merely gesturing toward others
through the attitude of help. The Adept is aware of being
others, of actually and literally being others. This unique
awareness is a reflection of the extraordinary siddhis
associated with the Adepts life.
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