Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 3
It was never my intention to suggest that there was only a faint hope of your sadhana depending on the if of surrender. I have always said the contrary, that since your soul wants the Divine truly, you are sure to reach him; only if you give up – and that is why I strongly object to these despondencies apart from the suffering they inflict, because they try to drive you to that – can it be frustrated or rather postponed to a far future.
What I wrote was in answer to your statement about your former idea of the Yoga that if one wanted the Divine, the Divine himself would take up the purifying of the heart and develop the sadhana and give the necessary experiences. I 
meant to say that it can and does happen in that way if one has trust and confidence in the Divine and the will to surrender. For such a taking up involves one’s putting oneself in the hands of the Divine rather than trusting to one’s own efforts alone and it implies one’s putting one’s trust and confidence in the Divine and a progressive self-giving. It is in fact the principle of sadhana that I myself followed and it is the central part of the Yoga as I envisage it. It is, I suppose, what Ramakrishna meant by the method of the baby cat in his image. But all cannot follow that at once; it takes time for them to arrive at it – it grows most when the mind and vital fall quiet.
What I meant by surrender was this inner surrender of the mind and vital. There is of course the outer surrender also, the giving up of all that is found to conflict with the spirit or need of the sadhana, the offering, the obedience to the guidance of the Divine, whether directly if one has reached that stage, or through the psychic or to the guidance of the Guru. I may say that prāyopaveśana [a very long fast generally leading to death] does not seem to me to have anything to do with surrender; it is a form of tapasya of a very austere and to my opinion very excessive kind, often dangerous. But what I was speaking of in my letter was the inner surrender.
The core of this inner surrender is trust and confidence in the Divine. One takes the attitude, “I want the Divine and nothing else”. (I do not know why you should think that you can be asked to give up that – if there is not that, then the Yoga cannot be done.) “I want to give myself entirely to him and since my soul wants that, it cannot be but that I shall meet him and realise him. I ask nothing but that and his action in me to bring me to him, his action secret or open, veiled or manifest. I do not insist on my own time and way; let him do all in his own time and way, I shall believe in him, accept his will, aspire steadily for his Light and presence and joy, go through all difficulties and delays relying on him and never giving up. Let my mind be quiet and turn to him and let him open to it his Light; let my vital be quiet and turn to 
him alone and let him open it to his calm and joy. All for him and myself for him. Whatever happens, I will keep to this aspiration and self-giving and go on in perfect reliance that it will be done.” That is the attitude into which one must grow; for certainly, it cannot be made perfect at once; mental and vital movements come across; but if one keeps the will to it, it will grow in the being. The rest is a matter of obedience to the guidance when it makes itself manifest – not allowing one’s mental or vital movements to interfere.
It was not my intention to say that this way is the only way and sadhana cannot be done otherwise – there are so many others by which one can approach the Divine. But this is the only one I know by which the taking up of the sadhana by the Divine becomes a sensible fact before the preparation of the nature is done. In other methods the Divine action and help may be felt from time to time, but it remains mostly behind the veil till all is ready. In some sadhanas the Divine action is not recognised; all must be done by tapasya. In most there is a mixing of the two; the tapasya finally calling the direct help and intervention. The idea and experience of the Divine doing all belongs to the yogas based on surrender.
But whatever way is followed, the one thing to be done is to be faithful and go to the end. You have so often taken that decision – stand by it, do not let the storms of the vital quench the aspiration of your soul.