Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 3. 1936-37

Fragment ID: 17835

1936-37

Can’t I do it in the same way as surrender to the Force above? I am not always conscious of the Force.

It is then a sankalpa [resolution] of surrender. But the surrender must be to the Mother – not even to the Force, but the Mother herself.

If the psychic manifests, it will not ask you to surrender to it, but to surrender to the Mother.

Surrender and love-bhakti are not contrary things – they go together. It is true that at first surrender can be made through knowledge by the mind but it implies a mental bhakti and, as soon as the surrender reaches the heart, the bhakti manifests as a feeling, and with the feeling of bhakti, love comes. A surrender by any means is good, but obviously the impersonal is not enough – for surrender to that may be limited in result to the inner experience without any transformation of the outer nature.