Exploring the Idea of Surrender

3 min read

Dec 12, 2025

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The idea of surrender invites a deeper kind of introspection. These are the thoughts that surfaced during one such moment of reflection.

We are discussing this subject in the context of the spiritual pursuit, which is a journey to realize the Infinite Cosmic Supreme.

What is surrender? We cannot fully answer this question without thinking of the following: What do we surrender? Who do we surrender to?

If we think of surrender as surrendering the body, mind, and intellect, and that too to someone, we end up becoming merely subservient at the level of the body, mind, and intellect.

The idea of just surrendering the body, mind, and intellect to someone only leads to obedience and servitude. And we end up implementing the idea of surrender by demonstrative “bodily” service.

This trivializes the profundity of the idea of surrender.

Let us remind ourselves again that our goal is to realize the Infinite Supreme.

Surrendering to an individual is limiting. It keeps our mind “limited” to the personality of the one we surrender to.

When we operate at the level of the mind, how then can we realize the Infinite that is beyond the mind?

When we continue to limit the mind with the limited notion of surrender, thinking of the “personality” of the one we are trying to surrender to, how can we realize that Infinite that is beyond all limitations?

If we continue to see the one surrendered to as someone with glorious attributes, how then can we realize that Infinite, which is attribute-less and beyond all descriptions?

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Even the traditional notion of surrender to a guru is not a surrender to the individual as a personality, but to that principle which represents the Infinite Supreme.

Remember, the idea of surrendering to someone or something reinforces the notion of duality. In that scenario, how then can we realize that Infinite Non-dual Supreme?

What then is the idea of surrender?

If at all one wishes to think of something to surrender to, it is to the Infinite Impersonal Supreme — the substratum that pervades everything. Whether we call it nature or the divine, it is the unbiased, impersonal cause behind all causes.

In life, we crave control. We seek to know the cause behind every outcome. We want to know why things happen. We want answers, reasons, patterns — something that lets us “connect the dots.” Not knowing becomes a cause of suffering.

To accept whatever has come to be, without resistance, is an act of surrender.

Surrender is the acceptance of that invisible order — the acknowledgement of an Infinite Supreme we have not yet comprehended.

True surrender is the dissolution of the separate self-identity. It is the recognition that the individual Self is none other than the Infinite Supreme.

The individual may appear distinct from the world, yet it is never distinct from the Supreme.

When this truth is realized, surrender is not a relationship between two entities; it is the recognition that the two were never separate. Any other form of surrender merely reinforces duality.

Here are words attributed to Hanuman, expressed to his Lord Rama: “At the level of body-consciousness, I am your servant. At the level of awareness as an individual personality, I am a particle or fragment of you. When I realize that I am nothing but the Self, in that level of awareness, I am you alone.”

It is not the annihilation of the self, but the realization that the Self was never separate from the Infinite Supreme to begin with — and that is surrender.

This truth is encapsulated in the cardinal statement of the Chāndogya Upanishad (6.8.7): “You are That.” (Tat tvam asi.)