Page 181 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

Lecture -12
I was speaking about prayer last week. I also mentioned about the form which we have to worship. The most important aspect in all worship is, I suggested, surrender which develops into "devotion" when we surrender to the Master and place ourselves entirely at his training. We will have to surrender all our being, the physical, the vital, the mental and the spiritual. It is, of course, difficult to do all of them at the same time, but we feel that it is more easy to prostrate with the body than with our vitality or with our mind, though we are loquacious about the matter. We almost utter continuously "I surrender, I surrender" but the real surrender does not normally take place. Therefore, it is necessary to feel that the surrender will be accomplished and completed by the Master Himself. That is why, I think, the Upanishad rightly puts it in this form.
"Om Krato smara Krutham smara;
Krato smara Krutham smara".
"O lord of Sacrifice or Surrender! Remember what I have done and the second statement "Remember what I have done" means God will have to complete the act of surrender Himself. Now this is a very difficult point to explain and many people want to be lazy enough to say "let Master surrender. Why should I surrender, let Master do everything and I shall be the recipient". I do not think that is the meaning. If we go a little way, God takes us a long way. If we make total surrender, He will complete the surrender by taking us up. That is, we are enabled to surrender more and more willingly to His treatment and training without any protest, without resistance and without egoistic self assertions that we have done the surrender and that he has not done it. The whole point therefore is that our devotion will develop when we observe that not only our physical body is prostrated before the Master every day or every hour, but our vital bodies which are full of desires, cravings and other tendencies, get controlled. "Sama" and "Dama" equally follow it. Then, the mind also ceases to wander and we find constant remembrance and our spiritual faculties begin to develop. In other words, we find that we are more and more absorbed even