Page 169 - Wisdom Unfurled

helpful in attaining the end. We will get a better understanding of the limbs of self-surrender if we examine why a person surrenders or feels an acute, compelling and inescapable need to surrender.
All of us human beings face some crisis or the other throughout our journey from cradle to grave and continue to be challenged by them. However there are situations characterized by dread, failing of the heart, confusion of the mind and collapse of all energy to strive or to live. Such may be caused by war, bereavement of some one very dear, treachery of a friend, threat to life, loss of honour, chronic ailment, failure of justice or acute deprivation of the very means to live with a consequent loss of faith in oneself and in one’s future. There is an acute helplessness before fate, all escape routes seem barred, no friends within reach or forces of sympathy accessible. In such a trying situation brought about by adverse circumstances caused by adyatmic (subjective psychological), adhibauthic (physical elemental) or adhidaivic forces (cosmic godly) one is compelled to bow down, forced to kneel down and humble oneself or in other words surrender himself expressing his abject helplessness before some power superior to him placing faith in the saving capacity of that power, taking that power as the ultimate refuge and implores that power to accept him and save him from the supreme predicament in his life. The best course would be to select the Supreme Lord as the ultimate refuge, ananya sarana feeling from the depth of one’s heart that there is no other alternative route than offering one’s entire being to Him, ananya gatih. Our scriptures declare that the all merciful Lord is prepared to accept such surrender from the helpless devotee who has taken Him as the last resort and protect him from all danger, save him from all sins and to those who surrender seeking union with Him as the sole objective He grants the state of union as well.
Lord Krishna exhorts Arjuna in the Gita to surrender his all to Him and Him alone giving up all other ways or means and assures him that He will liberate Arjuna from all sins of commission and omission in the course of performing his duty (sarva dharman parityajya—BG-Ch XVIII. 66). Lord Rama states that it is His eternal pledge to grant freedom from fear of all elements to any person who has surrendered his entire being at once and directly to Him (sakrudeva prapannaya—).
It may be noted in this context that the Lord reveals in two verses (BG-XVIII 61 & 62) prior to the above oft-quoted verse considered as the very epitome of the teaching of the Lord in the Gita, the supreme truth that the Great Lord of the universe is seated in the heart of all beings causing them to revolve as if mounted on a machine (of Nature) through the operation of His divine power, Mahamaya. The beings caught in the wheel of Prakriti have no rest and are