Q: If we surrender to you, our master, will our ego be taken care of?
First of all, if you really surrender, you will become enlightened. There is no question of 'when I surrender' etc. But for argument sake, if you decide to allow me to work on you, I will prune your ego and keep it like a bonsai tree until such time you totally lose it and become enlightened.
You will have enough ego to run your business, and do your daily activities, not to hurt other people and yourself. Your ego will be like roasted seeds that do not grow any more.
Understand that a man who is not yet enlightened has ego in him in some form or the other. But whether you have active ego or passive ego, the more you start being the observer, the more your ego will dissolve. That's enough understanding for now.
With ordinary people, you can easily shield your ego and get away with it. With a master, you can never deceive him. You can only deceive yourself into thinking that you have deceived him. However deeply hidden and well covered you keep your ego and cunningness, they will be simply bare under the master's gaze. While you struggle to shield it, the master tries to heal it. Only he knows what a cancerous disease ego is.
Let me tell you a few things from the Bhagavad Gita. The Bhagavad Gita was Lord Krishna's teaching to the world.
When the Bhagavad Gita starts, Arjuna is confused.
He says, 'Oh Lord! I don't know what to do in life. Please guide me.'
Krishna explains to him the Sankhya Yoga – the way to reach the soul.
He then explains the Karma Yoga, then the Bhakti Yoga, then the Karma Sannyasa Yoga, then the Gnana Karma Sannyasa Yoga, then the Raja Vidya Yoga and so on.
He explains different meditation techniques through 700 verses in 18 chapters.
At the end of it Arjuna says, 'Krishna, I am more confused than what I was when you started explaining. Which technique do I follow? Which is the technique that is best and the quickest? Which is the shortcut method, the ultimate technique?'
Krishna replies to this in the concluding 18th chapter.
With any master, the words that he concludes with, are the final, firm and ultimate truth.
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Krishna says, Sarva dharman parithyajya mamekam sharanam vraja, aham thva sarvapapebhyo mokshayishyami ma suchaha.
This line that he says is such that if we imagine all the religions, philosophies and spiritual books to be a pot of milk, this is the butter extracted from it all.
He says, 'I have explained all the forms of justice to you. Simply surrender everything to Me. Surrender to Me and I will take care of you. I will free you from all your sins and lift you to liberation.'
Krishna is actually making a beautiful promise in this stanza.
Through this stanza, Krishna shows the world that surrender, is the final, firm and ultimate technique – the shortcut to the egoless state, to liberation.
Another beautiful story about Krishna and Arjuna:
One evening, Krishna and Arjuna were spending time together.
Krishna suddenly pointed out to a crow and said, 'Arjuna, look at that green crow!'
Arjuna looked in that direction and said, 'Yes Krishna, I see it!'
A few minutes later, Krishna exclaimed, 'Arjuna, see that black crow!'
Arjuna said, 'Yes Krishna, I see it!'
Krishna asked just to test Arjuna, 'Arjuna, how idiotic you are! There is no green crow ever. How could you have seen it in the first place?'
Arjuna replied, 'Krishna, when you said it was a green crow, I saw it as a green crow.'
Arjuna's very senses had surrendered to Krishna. Surrendering the senses to the master is the most difficult surrender ever. The master is Existence itself; he is the formless in form. When your senses perceive only what the master says, you have reached the highest point in surrender.
What is surrender? The word surrender has a very deep meaning. If we don't understand it correctly, we will misunderstand it! We will be committing a grave mistake. We will be misunderstanding deep truths.
A small story:
One night, 2 drunkards were walking down a street past a halogen lamp.
One of them saw it and exclaimed, 'Look, the sun has come out for us!'
The other replied, 'No, it is nighttime; it is the moon.'
The first one continued, 'It is yellow in colour and therefore it is the sun.'
A third man who was drunk, walked past them.
They asked him, 'Sir, please tell us whether this is the sun or the moon.'
The man replied, 'I am new to this neighborhood; I do not know.'
So, when you ask someone who does not know, you will either not get an answer or you will get the wrong answer.
Only those who have experienced can explain clearly. If you ask the meaning of surrender to a person who has not experienced it, he will say, 'Just give everything to God, that's all.'
That is not surrender.
One man came to me and asked, 'If I surrender everything to God, will everything be alright?'
I replied, 'Yes, if you truly surrender everything to God, everything will be alright.'
He returned after 3 days and told me, 'Swamiji, I have surrendered everything to God.'
I was happy and asked him, 'Where are you going now?'
He replied, 'To the bar.'
He continued, 'Whatever I do, God is only responsible from now on.'
This is actually a method of fooling oneself. If he has really surrendered, he would have surrendered the drinking habit also. He would not have even been able to drink any further.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, the enlightened master from Bharat beautifully says, 'When real surrender comes from your heart, God will guide you in every step of your life and you can never do wrong.' When surrender does not blossom from inside you and is only at the lip level, you will fool yourself and others.
Surrender will keep you thinking of Existence all the time. You will slowly lose your own identity, your own ego. In the Bhagavatam, an ancient Hindu epic, there is a verse wherein a Gopi (name given to a group of ardent female devotees of Krishna) says, 'I am not able to think of anything other than Krishna. I have surrendered my mind to Him. If I have to think of anything else, I will have to take back my mind from Him. How can I?'
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa suffered from cancer during his last days.
He had healed many people of many diseases.
Someone asked him, 'Why can't you keep your mind on your own disease for a moment and heal it?'
He replied, 'I have surrendered my mind to the infinite energy. How can I take it back to keep it on my disease!'
This is true surrender.
The cosmic energy will take care of us. You might ask, 'Will this cosmic energy take care of all my problems if I surrender?' In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna beautifully answers or rather promises, 'Without any other thought, when a man thinks only of Me, I will take care of his gifts as well as retention or enjoying of them. For those who surrender with commitment to Me, I will take care of their income as well as their prosperity. Their problems will dissolve.'
Commitment and maturity of mind are needed for real surrender to happen. You need not surrender to God or any master. You can surrender to anything. Surrender itself is a virtue and has a great power in itself. When you surrender, you are acknowledging that there is a life force greater than your ego, that's all.
Actually, God is only an excuse for you to surrender. The act of surrendering is what is important. God is not the goal; surrender is the real goal. When you surrender or when you lose your ego, you are no longer a separate entity from Existence; you merge with Existence or God. You will then understand that there is no God sitting above. There is only Existence that fills everything in this universe including you!
A small story:
A man decided that he was going to surrender but did not know to whom to surrender.
He decided that he would go to the forest and surrender to the first person who came his way.
He went and waited in the forest.
The first person to appear was a burglar who was escaping from policemen.
The man caught his feet and declared that the burglar was his guru and that he had surrendered to him.
The burglar was perplexed and did not know what to do.
He replied hastily, 'Alright, if it is so, then close your eyes and remain here until I come back,' and he ran away.
The man was a very committed person and remained there without food or sleep for a very long time.
The story goes that just by seeing his commitment, the Lord appeared before him and gave him liberation!
It is not important to whom you surrender; it is the thought of total surrender that has the power to change your life into a blissful one. When you surrender, you become a possessor of the inexhaustible energy that is Existence, and you handle anything that comes your way.
You become strong and unshakeable, come what may. People around you will find you to be a pillar of strength. They will be able to feel the invisible hand of Existence through you.
If you have not surrendered, it means that your ego is still holding you back from merging into the infinite and you automatically become finite in your resources and energy.
A master is a device to help you surrender. Surrender does not mean that you are dependent on someone. It simply means that you are taking that person's help in dissolving your own ego, that's all.