I was studying the Gita in the light of Sri Aurobindo, where he mentions that as per Sri Krishna first you have to realize the Self and continue to work in a Yogic spirit and then surrender to me with love. I am bit confused here that whether one should focus on realizing the Self and then move towards Sri Krishna as we see in the life of Sri Aurobindo that he first realized Nirvana which was followed by Vasudevam sarvam iti? Or to start with surrender to Sri Krishna from the very beginning itself even prior to Self realization? The second alternative looks to me more appropriate than the earlier one, but just want to have your thoughts about my thought process?🪈🪶🌅📖

Sri Krishna and Sri Aurobindo both confirm that by surrendering to the Divine one will surely realise the Self as well as the Divine Personality in all details. When we surrender to the Divine Mother She Herself will take us through the Self and then to all that She is in her sheer transcendence. In the phrase Sri Krishna is only describing the distinction and not the process to arrive at it. As to the process one starts with surrender, procedes with increasing  surrender and culminates with complete detailed surrender. Here is a letter of Sri Aurobindo describing this.

‘There is no real contradiction; the two passages¹ indicate in the Gita’s system two different movements of its Yoga, the complete surrender being the crowning movement. One has first to conquer the lower nature, deliver the self involved in the lower movement by means of the higher Self which rises into the divine nature; at the same time one offers all one’s actions including the inner action of the Yoga as a sacrifice to the Purushottama, the transcendent and immanent Divine. When one has risen into the higher Self, has the knowledge and is free, one makes the complete surrender to the Divine, abandoning all other dharmas, living only by the divine Consciousness, the divine Will and Force, the divine Ananda.

Our Yoga is not identical with the Yoga of the Gita although it contains all that is essential in the Gita’s Yoga. In our Yoga we begin with the idea, the will, the aspiration of the complete surrender; but at the same time we have to reject the lower nature, deliver our consciousness from it, deliver the self involved in the lower nature by the self rising to freedom in the higher nature. If we do not do this double movement, we are in danger of making a tamasic and therefore unreal surrender, making no effort, no tapas and therefore no progress; or else we may make a rajasic surrender not to the Divine but to some self-made false idea or image of the Divine which masks our rajasic ego or something still worse.’

In other words one cannot use the word surrender to mask one’s laxity and inertia. That is why the Gita speaks of first delivering the lower self into the Higher Self so that true surrender can be done and not mistaken for inertia.

Affectionately,

Alok Da