The word surrender frightens me. WHy surrender and how to do it ?

Answer by HH Radhanatha Swami

Thank you very much. This is a very honest and sincere question. You see, in this material world, the conception of surrender is horrifying. Isn’t it? Just like when Napoleon met Waterloo, what happened? Everything was hopeless around him. So he had to surrender. He had to give up. It’s terrible. In World War II, the United States dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and various places in Japan. Because their whole civilization was in strife and their armies were defeated, they had to surrender. The material conception of surrender is against our will, but we have no other place to go. We just give up, but when we talk about surrender to God, it is a completely different principle. Surrender to God is a surrender of love. It is an offering of our free will for the pleasure of the one person in whom we have the greatest trust, the greatest faith, and the greatest devotion to. Just like when a child is playing and the child comes in a dangerous condition, the child surrenders to its mother. What is the feeling during and after the child surrenders to the mother? The feeling is protection, pleasure arid love. Right? When you surrender to your enemy, like Napoleon or like the Japanese, surrender is bitter and horrible. It’s distasteful. It’s unwanted. Correct? But when a child surrenders to its mother when it’s in a fearful condition, that surrender is out of love, out of faith that ‘my mother can protect me.’ This is the type of surrender that has to be offered to the Lord. Surrender is sweet. There is nothing so sweet, there is nothing so pleasing to the body, to the mind, to the soul than surrender. It means the giving of yourself to the Supreme Shelter of your life, to the Supreme Object of the love of your life. Without surrender, there is no question of real love. Surrender is the expression of the highest manifestation of our desire to love God. Therefore when we understand the real meaning of surrender and the real nature of surrender in the spiritual sense, it’s a beautiful thing. If we associate with persons who are surrendered, then we naturally realize the beauty of surrender to God, but if we associate with persons who are constantly acting against the will of God, trying to avoid surrendering to God, then by that association, surrender seems bitter and horrible. So you become like whom you associate with. Therefore, association of pure-hearted souls, spirituallyminded souls, is really the door that opens into our life the real beauty of spirituality in our life. You say that we are living in the material world and we do have a body. It is a fact. We do have a mind.

It is a fact. Jesus said, “We should be in this world, not of this world.” It is not that we neglect our senses from activities, but we simply utilize our senses for activities that purify our consciousness. Just like when we were speaking before, everyone has to eat to maintain this body. If you eat foods that are a product of violence, it creates a violent consciousness within you. If you eat food that is full of God’s mercy, it fills your heart with God’s mercy. It awakens your natural compassionate, loving, merciful qualities. So don’t give up eating. Simply eat for God. Similarly, we like music. Everyone likes music. It’s a natural tendency. You see, the natural tendency of the soul is to enjoy eternally, unlimitedly. We have to learn to use our sense of hearing to hear that sound vibration which brings us closer to God, rather than farther from God. Just like tonight we are dancing, we are chanting, but this sound vibration is purifying our heart and bringing us closer to the Lord. We all have our hobbies and our professional abilities. There’s no need, necessarily, to give them up, but learn that art of offering whatever you do in the service of the Lord. In other words, when we are chanting the Holy Names of God, we are surrendering our process of hearing to the Lord. We our surrendering our process of talking to the Lord. Isn’t it joyful? Tonight, did you have our dinner? Was it nice? Did you enjoy it? How many people enjoyed it? If you have any suggestions on how we can do it better, we will try better tomorrow. You enjoyed the dinner tonight. So there’s nothing wrong with enjoying food. But actually what you did, whether you liked it or not, what you did tonight was you surrendered. Ha, ha! (Laughter) By eating prasad you surrendered to God. Now was it so bad? You liked it. It was nice. It’s better than surrendering at McDonald’s or Murder King, isn’t it? (Laughter) Some people are surrendering their money to Murder King and some people are surrendering to prasad. But surrender is sweet. We all have to eat. If we eat for God, that is beautiful. Similarly, Nara Narayana was a professional guitar player. He was playing rock and roll and all these different types of music, and now he plays beautiful songs in the glorification of God. He even plays the same chords and the same notes, but the theme is glorification of God rather than glorification of ungodly things. So he has this natural talent. Don’t give up your natural talents. Make God the object. Make the pleasure of God the object of whatever you do. That is surrender. Of course, that surrender becomes easy and clear in our minds when we approach a guru. The guru is a person who gives us the understanding of how, in a very practical way in day to day life, we can offer everything we do in the service of God, for the pleasure of God; and how everything we do, everything we say, everything we think brings us closer to God. This body is not a bad thing. This body is a good thing, if we simply understand its connection to Krishna