KKS Lecture Surrendering to Guru

Lenasia Ratha yatra 2005

But for many of us it’s a gradual process

because we are not so determined. So
gradually step by step we try to become more
serious with our relationship with our
spiritual master. The scriptures tell us again
and again, this is the essence, that one must
surrender in this relationship.
One must somehow or other make it in the
It is possible to surrender in one moment, it’s
relationship with our spiritual master.
possible.
 And like every year we’re having his Vyasa
puja celebration and every year we’re making
an offering and then every year besides
glorifying the spiritual master, we also focus
on our own lack of surrender.

So therefore, one must dedicate one’s life to

serving a spiritual master as good as possible.
And then: “Again I totally failed. I tried to be
a descent disciple although I tried again for
another year but it didn’t work because…”
So every year we sort of try to be conscious
of our shortcomings and try to improve. So
we have a system of gradually purifying
ourselves in that way and that is the…we
should try and turn on the light of surrender
and not tell ourselves, “Well, it’s a gradual
process. I don’t have to…”. No we have to
surrender as soon as possible. There’s an
urgency!
We might die and the process maybe
incompleted. What if we have not fully
surrendered? Imagine we die? It can always
happen. Some people die at young age.
What if we die at young age and then we sit
outside the body and think, “what a fool I am!
I didn’t surrender!”
Actually there were many of Srila
Prabhupada’s disciples who somehow or
other were lamenting like this, “If only I had
been a more serious disciple...” So we must
me good disciples and must be serious now
and not bad disciples. And not go like, “I’m
the worst of the worst. What can I do? I’m
the bottom of the bell.”
No, no one should stay the bottom of the bell
but we have to come up and become… we
can change.
So we must do something about that
relationship. Not hesitate. We must go
forward and give ourselves in the relationship
with our spiritual master and the more we do
so, the more we rise above the modes of
material nature and the more we actually
become close to Krsna. By surrendering to
the spiritual master we become closer to
Krsna.