How to Surrender

oṁ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya...

We intone this invocation, offering our respectful obeisances to Vāsudeva. Vāsudeva is another name of Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Vāsudeva, Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, very mercifully appeared in this world five thousand years ago. Mercifully, very mercifully – [Kṛṣṇa-kṣetra Prabhu repeats in Polish] – we are trying, little by little, to learn this wonderful language. It will probably take at least three lifetimes. Still, one can begin. That does not mean that we want to take birth in Poland.

So, Kṛṣṇa appeared five thousand years ago. And the most important feature of His appearance was that He spoke the Bhagavad-gītā, the instructions known as Bhagavad-gītā. The Bhagavad-gītā is a kind of treatise on surrendering to God. This is the most essential subject for human society, and it is the least understood. Everyone knows something or has heard something about God, but if you were to ask someone on the street about his conception of God or his understanding of God, you would get astonishing answers. One day, go out on the street, stop someone and ask him, “My dear sir, would you kindly tell me who God is?”

Some people will look up into the sky and shrug their shoulders. Some will embark on some long, complicated explanations about who God is. And some will answer, “God? God is in the church.” Or, “God? There is no God. I am God!” Yes, some even go so far as to say such a foolish thing. Especially nowadays, people are very confused in their minds. Everyone has some conception of God, even if it is that He does not exist, but no one knows that God consciousness means surrendering to God.

How do you say that in Polish? Oh my! Pod-po-rząd-ko-wać się! [Kṛṣṇa-kṣetra Prabhu punctuates the syllables by beating the mṛdaṅga.] And when we hear the word “surrender,” we do not like it, because it is exactly what we are trying to avoid in this world. Everyone is trying to avoid submitting to a superior person. That is why we are in this world.

So, the Bhagavad-gītā is a treatise about surrender. It was spoken to a very special person—to Arjuna. Arjuna’s qualification was that he was a devotee of Kṛṣṇa. He was neither a scientist nor a particularly learned person. He was not known for his intellectual abilities or for his religiosity. In fact, he was a soldier, but he was a friend of Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa spoke the Bhagavad-gītā to him, and because he possessed this special qualification, he could understand the real meaning of Kṛṣṇa.

So I will briefly discuss the four most important verses from the tenth chapter of the Bhagavad-gītā. These verses are regarded as the essence of the Bhagavad-gītā. They very nicely describe what surrender to God is.

In the first of these verses, 10.35, Kṛṣṇa explains His position:

“I am the source of all spiritual and material worlds. Everything emanates from Me.”

This is a very great statement. In modern times it has become very popular that various kinds of yogīs coming from India to the West claim that they are God. So if you meet one of these persons, you should ask him: “Are you the source of all material and spiritual worlds, does everything emanate from you?” – “Well, you know, maybe not exactly like that...”

But Kṛṣṇa says, “Everything emanates from Me.” This is the definition of God. If you ask someone, “Who is God?”, and then that person asks you, “And what do you think, who is God?”, this is a very good definition: God is the source of everything. It is very simple, yet very complicated. He is the source of everything—this is a very significant statement.

On one side, it means that He is my source, the source of my existence. He is the source of everything I perceive. He is the source of all others with whom I have relationships. He is the source of all those elements on which I rely in order to stay alive. That means that I am completely dependent on Him.

Therefore Kṛṣṇa, in the second part of this verse, says: “The wise, knowing this perfectly, engage in My devotional service and worship Me with all their hearts.” So here we have an indirect indication of the fact that surrender is connected with knowledge or appreciation of the position of God. What do the wise, who know this perfectly, do? Do they shrug their shoulders and say, “Yes, this is very interesting. God is the source of everything. What’s new about that? What’s new on television?”

No! In someone who understands who Kṛṣṇa is, who God is, a natural reaction will appear.

[Sound of garbage containers being rolled. Kṛṣṇa-kṣetra Prabhu comments:]

That is the usra-iwirma. They work very hard even on Sunday. That is another topic.

So someone who understands who God is will very naturally and very eagerly surrender to Him, because he sees that God is everywhere. “Everything depends on God, my existence depends on God” – and thus naturally he will want to offer something to God. “Those persons who understand Me worship Me with their whole heart.”

I think it was Jesus Christ who pronounced such an ultimate commandment: “You should love God with all your heart.” Not with half your heart. Do you have such an expression in Polish, that you can do something with only half your heart? Do you know what I mean? In most cases, when we do something in this world, we do not put our whole heart into it. Sometimes we can notice that although we say to someone, “I love you,” it is not said with our whole heart.

It is said that a girl who is embracing a man and saying to him, “I love you,” is looking at a second man standing behind his back and thinking about a third. That is what goes on in this world. This is the so-called love of this world.

Let us go on to the next verse.

mac-cittā mad-gata-prāṇā bodhayantaḥ parasparam...

“The thoughts of My pure devotees dwell in Me, their lives are fully devoted to My service, and by enlightening one another and conversing about Me, they derive ever-increasing joy and happiness.”

So this is an elaboration of the point that the devotees surrender to God with their whole hearts. They do this, and it is a source of satisfaction for them. It is not that they suffer because of it. Everyone is looking for satisfaction in their activities. Everyone is looking for happiness, but no one finds it. And if someone does find it, it is temporary. And because of the fear of its temporariness, one becomes frustrated.

Therefore the living being travels from one body to another, from one life to another, seeking satisfaction, and through his activities he becomes entangled in the law of karma.

A few days ago, Indradyumna Swami gave an interesting example of how the law of karma works. He told how, when he was traveling and preaching in the Amazon, one day the boat got stuck by the riverbank. He had to get out, and there was quicksand. There is an interesting phenomenon connected with what we call quicksand: when you get stuck in quicksand, the more you try to get out, the more it pulls you down. It was terrifying. Indradyumna Swami became very frightened, because when he tried to get out, he was being pulled in even more, with terrible force. Only thanks to the efforts of seven other devotees were they able to pull him out and get him back into the boat.

So this material world is like quicksand. We come into this material world, and as soon as we come into contact with it, it pulls us more and more into the mire of ignorance. We think, “O.K., I’m struggling in this world and I have to get free.” Everyone is trying to get free. Everyone desires a certain freedom; they feel some kind of lack. To obtain this freedom, we make greater and greater efforts. And what is the result of these efforts? We become more and more entangled. That is how the law of karma works. For every action a reaction appears.

I would like to tell a story, to give you an example, to help you realize how exact the law of karma is. Last year, in one of the Italian newspapers, there was an article about a fire on one of the islands off the coast of Italy. The Italians had a certain fire-fighting system. They had helicopters with huge containers, which would descend over the water, dip the containers in and fill them. Then they would fly over the place of the fire and pour out the contents of the containers.

After they had put out the fire, some people found the body of a dead man in the middle of the island. What was more curious, the corpse was wearing a scuba-diving suit. What was a man in a wet suit doing in a forest in the middle of this island? I think some of you have already realized what happened. This man had been swimming in the ocean, in the vast ocean. The helicopter flew there, scooped him up together with the water, and dropped him right into the middle of that fire. A true story.

How did it happen? Was it an accident? Will anyone be satisfied with such an explanation: “Oh, it was an accident”? On the wide ocean... They could have taken water from any other place, but they chose exactly that place, and what happened, happened. This gives some idea of how precise the law of karma is. Here it is said what the devotees of God have (...)

Yes, sometimes they forgot to eat. What topic could absorb you so much that you would forget to eat? This means that topics about Kṛṣṇa, what we call kṛṣṇa-kathā, are very powerful. They are called kṛṣṇa-kathā in contrast to what we call grāmya-kathā. Grāmya-kathā means anything but kṛṣṇa-kathā. Gossip.

“What did your uncle’s sister’s friend answer to that? Pss, pss, pss... Oh, really? And then he said, and then she said... Really? What else is new? Bla bla bla bla bla...”

The whole day spent talking about things that are not at all important. Grāmya means “village.” In a village everyone talks about everyone else. Everyone worries, “What does she, he, they think of me?”

A devotee does not care what anyone else thinks of him. He cares only what Kṛṣṇa thinks.

Let us go on to the next verse:

teṣāṁ satata-yuktānāṁ
bhajatāṁ prīti-pūrvakam
dadāmi buddhi-yogaṁ taṁ
yena mām upayānti te

"To those who are constantly devoted to serving Me with love, I give the understanding by which they can come to Me."

So here we have a picture of the Lord’s sweet reciprocation with those who are trying to surrender to Him. It is not an easy thing to surrender to God. We have been avoiding surrender to God for many, many lifetimes. We are not even able to count those lives.

kṛṣṇa-bhuliyā se jīva anādi bahir-mukha... – from time immemorial we have been forgetting Kṛṣṇa, and therefore we suffer from repeated birth and death.

Therefore it is not so easy to suddenly change our “policy.” Our policy is to forget Kṛṣṇa; that is why we are trying to enjoy without Kṛṣṇa. But a person who makes the effort to understand his dependence on Kṛṣṇa will certainly try to bring Kṛṣṇa into the “policy” of his life.

Kṛṣṇa explains here that He reciprocates with such a person – He helps him. In these particular times it is especially difficult to surrender to Kṛṣṇa. This is Kali-yuga, and we are lazy when it comes to spiritual life. We also allow ourselves to be misled by false egos and false teachers. In addition, our life is very short; we do not have much time for self-realization.

And besides that, we are very quarrelsome. As soon as someone disagrees with us, we are ready to argue. Nowadays people start fights over the smallest things. Because people are not even able to listen properly, misunderstandings constantly arise. Someone says something, another person does not hear it correctly and thinks that he said something else, and immediately a fight begins.

The first person says, “But I didn’t say that!”
“Yes, you did!”
“I didn’t!!!”

Back and forth. And suddenly one hits the other straight in the nose.

On top of this, we are always disturbed in our minds. When a big truck drives down the street—we are disturbed. Or we remember that someone offended us last week—and we are very disturbed in our mind. Or we worry whether we will pass our exams—and again there is disturbance in the mind. Whatever you call it, it always produces anxiety in the mind.

In the Bhagavad-gītā it is described that the mind of one who is not disturbed is like a candle in a windless place.

yathā dīpo nivāta-stho
neṅgate sopamā smṛtā
yogino yata-cittasya
yuñjato yogaṁ ātmanaḥ

Who has such a mind? So, in this age it is very difficult to surrender to Kṛṣṇa. But dadāmi buddhi-yogaṁ tam — God is so merciful that He gives the intelligence by which one can understand Him. And in this age He makes it especially easy; He appears as Lord Caitanya and says: “Just chant Hare Kṛṣṇa and in this way surrender to God.”

In Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam it is said:

kṛṣṇa-varṇaṁ tviṣākṛṣṇaṁ
sāṅgopāṅgāstra-pārṣadam
yajñaiḥ saṅkīrtana-prāyair
yajanti hi su-medhasaḥ

Those who are endowed with intelligence will accept Lord Caitanya’s advice. In fact, the instructions of Lord Caitanya on how to surrender to God are our only chance. As I said earlier, everyone has some conception of God, but no one has any idea how to surrender to Him. So Lord Caitanya is God Himself. He appeared 500 years ago and said: “Here is the way to surrender:”

harer nāma harer nāma harer nāma eva kevalam
kalau nāsty eva nāsty eva nāsty eva gatir anyathā

He repeated three times: “There is only one way. One way, one possibility.” As soon as we hear this, we think we’ve heard it somewhere before—that there is only one way. The Christians say, “There is only one way.” Everyone claims, “Our way is the only way.”

In Yugoslavia a certain woman complained: “You all claim that your way is the best.” I replied to her: “We are not claiming that. We are claiming that Kṛṣṇa is the best.” There is a difference between saying that we are the best and saying that Kṛṣṇa is the best. Who can claim to be as wonderful as Kṛṣṇa? We challenge anyone to find someone better than Kṛṣṇa.

In the last of these verses it is said:

teṣām evānukampārtham
aham ajñāna-jaṁ tamaḥ
nāśayāmy ātma-bhāva-stho
jñāna-dīpena bhāsvatā

“I, dwelling in their hearts, destroy with the shining lamp of knowledge the darkness born of ignorance.”

Śrīla Prabhupāda explains in the purport that Lord Caitanya taught the chanting of:

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare
hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare

And thousands of people followed Him. He was accused of being sentimental: “You are just chanting the names of God!” But here Kṛṣṇa states: “Those who are My devotees are not ignorant fools. With the intense light of knowledge I bring the lamp of knowledge to dispel their darkness.”

This material world is a world of darkness, of ignorance. Just as at night, when the sun is hidden beyond the horizon, it is dark everywhere. If the sun did not appear, it would always remain dark. But the spiritual world is not like that. In the spiritual world everything is self-effulgent. Everything and everyone shines—not with some ordinary light, but with the light of knowledge and self-realization.

In fact, in the spiritual world everything is wonderful, because everything is personal. The problem in this world of darkness and ignorance is that we are situated in an atmosphere of impersonality. If I speak to this harmonium, will it answer? No, it will just stand here. In the spiritual world, if you speak to a stone lying by the road, “My dear stone, would you kindly move aside?”—it will move. Yes, Śrīla Prabhupāda gave this example.

In the spiritual world everything is personal: the sky, the trees, the mountains, the rocks, the water of the Yamunā—everything. And of course, the persons in the spiritual world are the most wonderful persons, because they are absorbed in service to the Supreme Person—Kṛṣṇa. Kṛṣṇa reciprocates with each of the innumerable living beings residing in the spiritual world.

Here in this world we do not feel any reciprocation from God. Sometimes we may cry out with great sincerity, “God, speak to me!”—but we do not hear any answer. We do not hear any voice from the sky. So we may become frustrated and come to the conclusion that there is no God.

This material world is in fact a place of punishment. Our punishment is that we are separated from God; we are lonely. We are in great loneliness. Everyone in this world is lonely. People look for friendship, for love. We are all looking for love. So we have a handful of friends. In reality, most people do not have very many friends. And when we find ourselves in some exceptional situation, when we really need help—who will prove to be our friend? If we are fortunate, perhaps one person will come to our aid.

But Kṛṣṇa says, “I am situated in your heart.” Jesus Christ also said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” What does this mean in practice? We know that God is our best friend, our true friend. But how can we call forth His friendship, how can we experience that friendship? To achieve this we must surrender to Him.

And surrendering means to find out what His desire is. Of course, in one sense, God has no desires. God is the Supreme Independent, the all-powerful Person, and always self-satisfied. But He has one very strong desire—that we surrender to Him.

Someone might say, “That sounds like a causal circle. In order to surrender, I have to find out what God’s desire is. And God’s desire is that I surrender to Him.” But God wants us to surrender to Him in a particular way, doing particular things. This specific way of surrendering to Him is, first of all, to chant His holy names and to arrange our life in such a way that we can place Kṛṣṇa in the center.

That does not mean that we have to change our lives, but rather adjust them so that Kṛṣṇa is in the center.

Once Lord Caitanya and His devotee Rāmānanda Rāya had a very interesting discussion. Lord Caitanya encouraged Rāmānanda Rāya to come to the ultimate conclusion about surrendering to God. At first, Rāmānanda Rāya was quoting various verses from the Bhagavad-gītā. Lord Caitanya said, “Yes, this is all right, but you can say something more.”

At a certain point Rāmānanda Rāya quoted a famous verse spoken by Lord Brahmā: jñāne prāyāsam udapāsya...—to surrender to God, one must first of all give up speculative ideas about God. Remain where you are, but engage your mind, your intelligence, and your words in the service of the Lord. In this way you can conquer God, who is unconquerable.

Jita and ajita. God is ajita—that means you cannot conquer Him. But if you simply engage in service to Him, you can conquer Him. It is not difficult. You can chant; everyone can chant. Who cannot chant? We all have tongues and ears and we can chant Hare Kṛṣṇa at any time of day or night. Where is the difficulty? Is there any difficulty? So let us chant:

hare kṛṣṇa hare kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa kṛṣṇa hare hare
hare rāma hare rāma rāma rāma hare hare

…and let us be happy.

So I will end here, and then I will present a slide show from our preaching in China.
[The translator makes a mistake. Kṛṣṇa-kṣetra Prabhu says:] “We have the same problem on the farm—translation!”

There will also be prasādam. I hope you are all familiar with prasādam. But I must warn you about this prasādam. I can fast, because I ate prasādam before the program, and I know something you don’t know. Namely, our cook received a delivery of fresh chili, and it seems he was very happy that he got this chili. So all I can say is: be careful! There are a few preparations that… well, you’ll see for yourselves. Very refreshing for all your systems. They cleanse all the senses.

In any case, we hope that Kṛṣṇa has accepted this offering and that we will be able to take prasādam. So now we can go on to the next point. Are there any questions?

So, does everyone agree to surrender to Kṛṣṇa?

QUESTION: In the spiritual world, is it possible that all persons can have darśana of Kṛṣṇa at the same time?

ANSWER: There is no problem. God is not like us, that He can only be in one place at a time. The Lord expands Himself into innumerable forms. This is explained in detail in that book with the golden cover lying there on the shelf. There it is explained how the Lord expands into various forms.

Powerful yogīs can expand themselves, but only up to eight forms. But those forms will be exactly the same, just as on television you can get identical images. But Kṛṣṇa can simultaneously expand Himself into so many forms, doing so many different things.

It is described that Kṛṣṇa expanded Himself into 16,108 forms in order to act simultaneously as 16,108 husbands in 16,108 palaces. Nārada Muni visited Lord Kṛṣṇa in these various palaces to see what He was doing. In one palace Kṛṣṇa was speaking with His wife, in another He was playing with His children, and in a third He was playing chess with a friend.

QUESTION: In the last part of the Mahābhārata there is a story saying that after Kṛṣṇa forbade drinking alcohol, the Pāṇḍavas broke this prohibition and for that reason Kṛṣṇa could not help them. Later Kṛṣṇa was killed by a hunter. So it seems there is some inconsistency between Kṛṣṇa at the end of the Mahābhārata and Kṛṣṇa of the Bhagavad-gītā?

ANSWER: There is no contradiction. This is explained in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, which is the ripened fruit of Vedic literature. It is called the mauṣala-līlā.

After the battle on the field of Kurukṣetra, in which almost all the warriors were killed, only a few survived. These were not the Pāṇḍavas, but members of the Yadu dynasty, Kṛṣṇa’s family.

It all began when one of the younger members of the Yadu dynasty wanted to make a joke. His name was Sāmbha. So Sāmbha dressed up as a young woman and, together with his friend, went to some sages. Sāmbha pretended to be a pregnant woman. His friend asked the sages: “Will this woman give birth to a boy or a girl?”

You can imagine these teenagers standing there, snickering among themselves: “What will these sages say?” They thought the sages would say, “It will be a girl,” or “It will be a boy,” and then they would laugh: “Ha, ha, ha, ha!”

But the sages, because they were sages and not fools, did not take this as a joke. They decided to sober these boys up. One of them said: “She will give birth to an iron club which will cause the destruction of the Yadu dynasty.”

Sāmbha had in fact put an iron club under his cloth to look like a pregnant woman. Then the boys became frightened: “What have we done? The sages have cursed the entire Yadu dynasty to be destroyed because of this iron club!”

So they returned to Dvārakā and went to King Ugrasena. They told him everything that had happened. Ugrasena also became very alarmed and decided that this club should be ground to powder and the powder thrown into the ocean.

When they did this, a small piece remained which could not be ground down any further, so they threw it into the forest. And the iron powder was thrown into the ocean. That iron powder was later washed up on the beach and there, by Kṛṣṇa’s arrangement, it became seeds of bamboo. And the piece that had been thrown into the forest was found by a hunter, who made it into the tip of an arrow.

At that time, the members of the Yadu dynasty went on a picnic to the place where the bamboo was growing, and they began to drink rice wine…