And to know the inner one has to relax, one has to forget anxiety, anguish, tension. One has to be non-competitive; will is not needed. To conquer the world, will is needed; to conquer God, will is not needed.

To conquer God means to be conquered by God; to conquer God means to relax and surrender unto his feet. Now this will seem very difficult, very illogical. I am an illogical person. My understanding is this: that only strong egos can surrender; weak egos cannot surrender.

Every day I come across weak egos. Whenever a weak ego comes, he hesitates: to surrender or not to surrender, to take sannyas or not to take sannyas. And why is he afraid? He is afraid because he knows he has a very weak ego; if he surrenders he is gone, he will not be able to stand. He is afraid of his inner weakness. He pretends on the outside, but he knows his inner reality – that he is ready. So he becomes defensive; he defends.

Whenever a person of strong ego comes he says, “Okay, let us see. Let us try this too.” He knows, he is confident enough that even if he goes into some unknown path he can still protect himself. And if he decides to come back, he can come back; he has enough trust, enough self-confidence, he has enough will.

Remember, surrender is the last and the greatest act of will. Surrender is not a cheap and easy thing. It is not something that because you cannot stand you surrender; because you were already falling you say, “Okay, I surrender” – because you were not able to stand on your feet. Surrender is not impotence.

Surrender is not out of impotence, it is out of tremendous power. You have lived the ways of the will and you have found nothing. You have looked into all the possibilities of the ego and you have only suffered; it simply hurts. Then you decide, “Now let us try the ultimate: dropping of the ego.”

To drop the ego you will need a great will; otherwise it is not easy to drop the ego. It is the greatest act in the world, the last. Only very courageous people can do it. You will be surprised: in India, all the great saviors, avataras, are warriors. This is not coincidental. Both Krishna and Rama belong to the warrior race, kshatriya; Buddha, Mahavira, the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas are kshatriyas. This has to be not only a coincidence. Why have all these great people come from the warriors – and they talk about surrender? And they say, “Surrender is the way.” They had the will to surrender. A brahmin has not yet come to the state of a Buddha or Mahavira. Why? The brahmin has no will. He has thought, from the beginning, of surrender. He has not arrived to a will that he can surrender.

Or take it from a different angle: a poor man wants to renounce – what will he renounce, what has he got to renounce? What does his renunciation mean? Then a Rockefeller decides to renounce: his renunciation will mean something. It carries weight; he has something to renounce.