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→What is Surrender?
Surrender is the decision taken to hand over the responsibility of your life to the Divine. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/surrender-self-offering-and-consecration#p1</ref>
<center>~</center> Surrender may be defined as the giving up of the limits of your ego. To surrender to the Divine is to renounce your narrow limits and let yourself be invaded by it and made a centre for its play.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/knowledge-by-unity-with-the-divine-the-divine-will-in-the-world#p3</ref> <center>~</center>
Surrender means to look to the Divine Mother only—to reject all desires and do only her will, not to insist on one's own ideas and preferences, but to ask for her Truth only, to obey and follow her guidance, to open oneself and become aware of her Force and its workings and to allow those workings to change the nature into the divine nature.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/surrender-to-the-mother#p30</ref>
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Your surrender must be self-made and free; it must be the surrender of a living being, not of an inert automaton or mechanical tool.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-i#p12</ref>
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...to surrender is to accept whatever is the result of your action, though the result may be quite different from what you expect.
<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/21-april-1929#p24</ref>
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But Sri Aurobindo has said … that surrender is the first and absolute condition for doing the yoga. So, if we follow what he has said, this is not just one of the necessary qualities: it is the first attitude indispensable for beginning the yoga. If one has not decided to make a total surrender, one cannot begin. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/08/25-january-1956#p60</ref>
==Essence of Surrender==
The essence of surrender is not to ask the Mother before doing anything—but to accept whole-heartedly the influence and the guidance, when the joy and peace come down to accept them without question or cavil and let them grow, when the Force is felt at work to let it work without opposition, when the Knowledge is given to receive and follow it, when the Will is revealed to make oneself its instrument. It is also, no doubt, to accept the guidance and control of the Guru who is at least supposed to know better than oneself what is or is not the
Truth and the way to the Truth.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/surrender-to-the-mother#p13</ref> <center>~</center>
Surrender is the main power of the Yoga, but the surrender is bound to be progressive; a complete surrender is not possible in the beginning, but only a will in the being for that completeness,—in fact it takes time; yet it is only when the surrender is complete that the full flood of the sadhana is possible. Till then there must be the personal effort with an increasing reality of surrender.
One calls in the power of the Divine Shakti and once that begins to come into the being, it at first supports the personal endeavour, then progressively takes up the whole action, although the consent of the sadhak continues to be always necessary. As the Force works, it brings in the different processes that are necessary for the sadhak, processes of knowledge, of Bhakti, of spiritualised action, of transformation of the nature. The idea that they cannot be combined is an error.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-central-processes-of-the-sadhana#p1</ref> <center>~</center>
...The path of surrender, is safe and sure. It is here, however, that the Western people find their difficulty. They have been taught to fear and avoid all that threatens their personal independence. They have imbibed with their mothers' milk the sense of individuality. And surrender means giving up all that. In other words, you may follow, as Ramakrishna says, either the path of the baby monkey or that of the baby cat. The baby monkey holds to its mother in order to be carried about and it must hold firm, otherwise if it loses its grip, it falls. On the other hand, the baby cat does not hold to its mother, but is held by the mother and has no fear nor responsibility; it has nothing to do but to let the mother hold it and cry ma ma. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/14-april-1929#p4</ref>
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The most important surrender is the surrender of your character, your way of being, so that it may change. If you do not surrender your very own nature, never will this nature change. It is this that is most important. You have certain ways of understanding, certain ways of reacting, certain ways of feeling, almost certain ways of progressing, and above all, a special way of looking at life and expecting from it certain things—well, it is this you must surrender. That is, if you truly want to receive the divine Light and transform yourself, it is your whole way of being you must offer—offer by opening it, making it as receptive as possible so that the divine Consciousness which sees how you ought to be, may act directly and change all these movements into movements more true, more in keeping with your real truth. This is infinitely more important than surrendering what one does. It is not what one does (what one does is very important, that's evident) that is the most important thing but what one is. Whatever the activity, it is not quite the way of doing it but the state of consciousness in which it is done that is important. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/28-april-1951#p26</ref>
<center>~</center> A total consecration signifies a total giving of one's self; hence it is the equivalent of the word "surrender", not of the word soumission which always gives the impression that one "accepts" passively. You feel a flame in the word "consecration", a flame even greater than in the word "offering". To consecrate oneself is "to give oneself to an action"; hence, in the yogic sense, it is to give oneself to some divine work with the idea of accomplishing the divine work.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-february-1951#p6</ref> <center>~</center>
Surrender has no value if it is painful, if it is a sacrifice. Surrender must be truly a joyous offering (I am using the word soumission in the sense of surrender, but it is not quite surrender—surrender is between soumission and abandon). One gives up something, surrenders oneself, but without sacrifice. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/14-april-1951#p7</ref>
<center>~</center> Detailed surrender means the surrender of all the details of life, even the smallest and the most insignificant in appearance. And this means to remember the Divine in all circumstances; whatever we think, feel or do, we must do it for Him as a way of coming close to Him, to be more and more what He wants us to be, capable of manifesting His will in perfect sincerity and purity, to be the instruments of His Love. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/surrender#p7</ref>
==Surrender and Offering ==
You can give for the joy of giving, without any idea of surrender. In a movement of enthusiasm, when you have glimpsed something infinitely higher than yourself, you can give yourself in an élan, but when it is a question of living that every minute, of surrendering oneself every minute to the higher Will and when every minute requires this surrender, it is more difficult. But if by "offering" you mean the integral offering of all your movements, all your activities, that is equivalent to surrender, without implying it necessarily. <ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/22-february-1951#p13</ref>
<center>~</center> Even for the smallest thing, something that is not in keeping with what you expected, what you have worked for, instead of an opposite reaction coming in—spontaneously, irresistibly, you draw back: "No, not that"—if you have made a complete surrender, a total surrender, well, it does not happen like that: you are as quiet, as peaceful, as calm in one case as in the other. And perhaps you had the notion that it would be better if it happened in a certain way, but if it happens differently, you find that this also is all right. You might have, for example, worked very hard to do a certain thing, so that something might happen, you might have given much time, much of your energy, much of your will, and all that not for your own sake, but, say, for the divine work (that is the offering); now suppose that after having taken all this trouble, done all this work, made all these efforts, it all goes just the other way round, it does not succeed. If you are truly surrendered, you say: "It is good, it is all good, it is all right; I did what I could, as well as I could, now it is not my decision, it is the decision of the Divine, I accept entirely what He decides." On the other hand, if you do not have this deep and spontaneous surrender, you tell yourself: "How is it? I took so much trouble to do a thing which is not for a selfish purpose, which is for the Divine Work, and this is the result, it is not successful!" Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it is like that.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/20-may-1953#p9</ref>
==Tamasic Surrender==
A tamasic surrender refusing to fulfil the conditions and calling on God to do everything and save one all the trouble and struggle is a deception and does not lead to freedom and perfection.<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/32/the-mother-ii#p8</ref> <center>~</center>
Tamasic surrender is when one says, "I won't do anything; let Mother do everything. Aspiration, rejection, surrender even are not necessary. Let her do all that in me." There is a great difference between the two attitudes. One is that of the shirker who won't do anything, the other is that of the sadhak who does his best, but when he is reduced to quiescence for a time and things are adverse, keeps always his trust in the Mother's force and presence behind all and by that trust baffles the opposition force and calls back the activity of the sadhana.