Page 175 - Wisdom Unfurled

Thus to be an instrument of the Master, one must have love for Him and which extends naturally to His objectives, namely the overhauling of human consciousness and restoring order and balance in the Cosmos and emancipation of pining souls and this love makes for laya with Him leading to the possibility of working for Him or participating in His work as He deems fit. That is also the way of expression of our gratitude to Him for all that He does for us out of His unconditional love and divine compassion and it may be noted that such expression is also willed and enabled by Him alone. The Master says that the unshakeable faith placed in the Master of the highest caliber and who is devoid of all feelings of attachment and pride shall lead the person to the farthest limit of spiritual attainment for then the aspirant will be associating himself with Reality.
The Master extols real faith as described above as a lively link connecting the mortal with the Immortal which is no doubt effected through the medium of the Master who Himself is connected to the Immortal. The link once connected cannot be broken under any condition and subsists all along the entire course of our march up to the final point. The worthy Master never relies upon the preliminary or artificial faith of the aspirant which is formed, lost or regained for a variety of reasons and shall put up with all his emotional outbursts till such time the faith matures to the level of mahaviswasa as articulated above. The essence of self surrender consists then in mahaviswasa and absolute helplessness (kripanatva).
It is to be noted that all the angas in surrender mentioned in the beginning including atmanikshepanam (placing the ‘self’ entirely at the disposal of one’s Master or preliminary state of surrender) must be gone through before one comes up to the level of ‘maha viswasa’. The state of real ‘prapatti’ is entered into only after the stabilization in ‘mahaviswasa’. In this context we may consider the two stages of surrender as discussed elaborately in the traditional literature connected with surrender. The first one has been compared with the attitude and behaviour of the kitten which are carried by their mother and are totally dependent on her and similarly the aspirant is dependent on the Master all the time and for everything and allows Him to do whatever He wants to do with him. The other one is the baby monkey approach which tries to cling to its mother and gets dropped in case it leaves its hold even for a moment. This stage of surrender is inferior to the previous one. It is not possible to cling to divinity always and in all circumstances. It is our good fortune that the Divine is yawning towards the circumference that is towards us and which we all feel as Pranahuti and this forms ultimately the basis of Mahaviswasa. The person who has achieved the stage of the first type (the kitten analogy) should not however give up his sadhana thinking that his Master to whom he has surrendered his all will take care of everything including the sadhana. That