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Abstract

The experience and posture of surrender has been espoused by religious traditions as key to spiritual life and development for millennia. Within psychology, on the other hand, surrender’s position has been likened to an “unwanted bastard child,” and its research has been neglected. Moreover, when occurring in the context of a relationship with another person, the terms “submission” and “obedience,” laden with negative connotations, have been commonly used. We propose that psychologically and spiritually developmental surrender is a common experience both when it occurs in relationship to “reality,” the Self or God, and in the context of relationship with another person, as in love, sex, patientship, followership, and discipleship. We focus on surrender to a spiritual master, which is in some respects the most extreme form of surrender to another person and the most challenging for the modern secular worldview to accept and suggest that, with all its complexity and potential pitfalls, it can be a powerful enabler and facilitator of the search for the sacred, self-transcendence, and spiritual integration.

Keywords

surrender spiritual master self-transcendence agency spiritual integration spirituality religion psychology of religion

We all have secrets in our hearts. I will tell you one of mine. All my life I have longed to say yes, to give myself completely, to some Ultimate Someone or Something. I kept this secret for many years because it did not fit the image I wanted to present—that of an independent, self-sufficient man. The desire to surrender myself had been at least partially acceptable when I was a child, but as a man I tried to put away childish things. When I became a physician, and later a psychiatrist, it was still more difficult to admit—even to myself—that something in me was searching for an ultimate self-surrender.

—Gerald May in Will and Spirit (1982)

Introduction

The experience and posture of surrender has been espoused by many religious traditions as key to spiritual life and development for millennia. “The satisfaction found in absolute surrender to the larger power,” pointed out William James (1917, p. 119), is a “fundamental mystery of religious experience.” Within psychology, on the other hand, surrender’s position has been likened to an “unwanted bastard child” (Wallace, 2001, p. 1), of whose existence everybody knows but few acknowledge. Although recognized as playing a significant role in diverse psychotherapeutic contexts (Atwood et al., 2002; Branscomb, 1991, 1993; Ghent, 1990; Hidas, 1981; Holmberg et al., 2014; LaMothe, 2005; Safran, 2016), most notably in the philosophy of Alcoholic Anonymous (Tiebout, 1949, 1953, 1954), it has been mostly neglected in psychological research. Thirty years after Emmanuel Ghent (1990) stated, at the beginning of his seminal paper Masochism, Submission, Surrender, that “Surrender . . . is a word that is seldom encountered in the psychoanalytic literature, and even then it often bears an ambiguous meaning” (p. 108), the statement still holds true.

The reasons for this neglect and ambiguity are not difficult to understand. Modern secular individualism and humanism place self-mastery, agency, free will, and self-sufficiency at the pinnacle of human development, and accepted and desired psychotherapeutic goals are “increasing personal power, strengthening ego functioning, and helping clients to take charge of their lives” (G. Wallace, 2009, p. 143). Surrender, on the other hand, is a letting go of mastery, control, and belief in one’s self-sufficiency and adopting a more self-abnegating, out-of-control, receptive, and humble approach. Seen from the modern secular perspective it is reminiscent, therefore, of military surrender—acceptance of defeat and loss of autonomy.

If such has been the attitude in the psychological literature toward surrender in general, the attitude toward surrender to another person has been downright negative. In the context of a relationship with another person, the terms “submission” and “obedience,” with their connotations of regression and disempowerment, have been commonly used to distinguish it from progressive, empowering surrender or “active acceptance.” Ghent (1990), for example, emphasized that, in his view, one may surrender “in the presence of another,” who serves as a guide but never “to another.”

In the present article, we propose that surrender to another person is common and that it can be psychologically and spiritually developmental and conducive to self-transcendence and spiritual integration. Some of the forms in which surrender is played out (e.g., love, followership, and patientship) are more culturally acceptable than others (e.g., masochism and discipleship). In this article, we focus on surrender to a spiritual master, which is in some respects the most extreme form of surrender to another person and the most challenging for the modern secular worldview to accept.

We would like to further suggest that, with all its complexity and potential pitfalls, surrender to a spiritual master can be a powerful enabler and facilitator of the search for the sacred, self-transcendence, and spiritual integration. Not only that, but it can also be a gateway to a field of spiritual experience and insight, which may otherwise be inaccessible to the surrenderer. That may be the case even if the relationship of the seeker-disciple with the spiritual master ends with bitter disillusionment, as is evident from the following excerpt, taken from an interview with integral philosopher and activist Terry Patten (Freimann, 2018), about his relationship with his former teacher, self-made American guru Adi Da Samraj (aka Da Free John):

I have a huge body of experience that makes no sense except in the mode of grateful surrendered adoration of my guru. And I have another huge body of experience that makes no sense except when, having summoned up my autonomous self-discernment and self-responsibility, I am saying “No” and giving the finger to the many ways I was violated and victimized by the unhealthy dynamics . . . Those states are incompatible; they are mutually exclusive. So I’ve been forced to live with the fact that I will never be able to contain the totality of the experience I lived in this body, because of my encounter with Adi Da. It’s a profound and paradoxical teaching.

Surrender in Religious Traditions

The slaves of Time are slaves of slaves;

The slave of God alone is free.

(Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi)

In religion, to surrender is to hand over control and personal will and power to the guidance or command of an absolute or divine will and power. It is also a “joy to which the mystics of all religious traditions testify” (Charme, 1983, p. 229). Abraham, the common patriarch of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is asked by God to prove his ultimate surrender by slaying his only son, Isaac (Genesis 24). In Christianity, the battle cry of surrender is “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22: 42), with Jesus himself exemplifying a “supreme mouthpiece” to the will of God (de Caussade, 1861/2007). In Islam, the word “Islam” itself means surrender in Arabic and the word “abd,” “slave” in Arabic, is a common element in Muslim names, followed by one of God’s divine names. In Judaism, the Mishna (a major work of rabbinic literature) proclaims: “Make [God’s] will as your will, so that He may make your will as His will” (Mishna, Abot 2.4). In Confucianism, the I Ching says that “The superior man . . . adheres firmly to Heaven’s decrees” (I Ching, 1991, p. 50). In Buddhism and Hinduism, surrender of the “small” or “egoic” self is a prerequisite for the realization of the Self Absolute or Atman as one’s true nature (Batchelor, 1997; Cole & Pargament, 1999; Epstein, 1995; Puhakka, 1995), and in the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, “Fix your mind on Me, be devoted to Me, offer service to Me, bow down to Me, and you shall certainly reach Me . . . Setting aside all noble deeds, just surrender completely to the will of God” (Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 18, Verses 65-66) (Prem, 1958). Many religious traditions not only espouse surrender but also offer different practices intended to “invoke a purposeful sense of giving away personal control and let the mind be ‘taken over’ by religious and spiritual forces” (Vail & Routledge, 2020, p. 343). These include observance of commandments and prohibitions, prayer, prostrations, ritualistic sacrifice, induced trance-like states, austerities and obedience to superiors.

The roots of surrender are firmly planted in the soil of religion, in which context it is to an absolute or divine will and power. The very longing to surrender to “something or someone who so totally transcends our experience, whose presence is so total and affirming that we will take a chance on surrendering” (Ghent, 1990, p. 111) did not diminish, however, with the diminishing hold of religion on culture and the correlating rise of spirituality and psychology but rather adopted its expression and manifestation.

Surrender in Spirituality

The single individual does not live his life to the full and fails to grasp its purpose, if he is incapable of putting his “I” at the service of a spiritual and superhuman order.

(Jung, 1953, p. 145).

While currently there is no widely agreed on definition of spirituality (Koenig, 2012), and surveys of the use of the term in scholarly research showed a broad range of definitions (McCarroll et al., 2005), a common thread for many of them is the individual’s affinity to, relationship with or search for the transcendent or sacred (George et al., 2000; Kiesling et al., 2006; Pargament, 2013; Rabin & Koenig, 2002; Thoresen, 1999). Among them, an increasingly influential definition of spirituality is “the search for the sacred,” proposed by Kenneth Pargament (1999, p. 12). In presenting this definition, Hill et al. (2000, p. 66) specified that “the term ‘sacred’ refers to a divine being, divine object, Ultimate Reality, or Ultimate Truth as perceived by the individual.” Pargament and Mahoney (2005) and Pargament et al. (2017) further elaborated that “sacred” refers also to “aspects of life . . . that have been perceived as manifestations of God or infused with divine-like attributes” (p. 730) such as transcendence, ultimate value and purpose, and boundlessness.

Several modern-day thinkers and researchers referred to surrender as inherent to spirituality, as in Benner’s (1989) definition of spirituality as “our response to a deep and mysterious human yearning for self-transcendence and surrender” (p. 20). Although the terms they used for the surrenderer and the surrenderee (the one to whom a surrender is made, the recipient of surrender) somewhat differ from those used in the religious traditions, common to them is the surrender of the “survival self of instrumental consciousness” (Deikman, 2000), the “I,” the “small self” or the “personality,” to the “mystical hunger for ultimate truth, meaning, and love” (Egan, 1988, pp. xiv-xv), the demands of the human spirit or the “transcendental precepts” (Lonergan, 1972; Helminiak, 1996), or the “spiritual self of receptive consciousness” (Deikman, 2000).

Surrender’s place in spirituality can be further understood in relation to spiritual development (Assagioli, 1991; Atchley, 1997; Friedman et al., 2010, 2012; Wink & Dillon, 2002). Relying on theologian Sandra Schneiders’ (1986, 1998, 2005) work in this article, we refer to spiritual development as a process of spiritual integration through self-transcendence.

Self-transcendence is, according to Lonergan (2004), our human ability to grow beyond ourselves, which is ultimately fulfilled when we give ourselves to it in “total surrender” (p. 268). It was characterized by Maslow (1971) “the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating” (p. 269). The “self” that is transcended is the ego-self or the collection of limited and limiting self-concepts, self-images, and roles (Perrin, 2007; Walsh & Vaughan, 1993) and the movement of self-transcendence takes one beyond them into a broadened self-sense and worldview (Garcia-Romeu, 2010). Reed’s (2003) most current definition of self-transcendence is

The capacity to expand self-boundaries intrapersonally (toward greater awareness of one’s philosophy, values, and dreams), interpersonally (to relate to others and one’s environment), temporally (to integrate one’s past and future in a way that has meaning for the present), and transpersonally (to connect with dimensions beyond the typically discernible world). (p. 147).

Noteworthily, self-transcendence was the first trait concept of a spiritual nature to be incorporated into a major theory of personality, namely Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory. Various descriptions of the motivation to self-transcend can be found in the literature (Bloch, 1986; de Chardin, 1955/1959; Garcia-Romeu, 2010; Kung, 1974; Levenson et al., 2005; Marcus, 1961; Maslow, 1968, 1971; Reed, 2003; Walsh & Vaughan, 1993).

Spiritual integration (Helminiak, 1996; Reidhead & Reidhead, 2001; Reidhead et al., 1999) sometimes termed “life-integration” (Schneiders, 1986, 1998, 2005) is a process of spiritually inspired “unification of the psyche,” as Jung (1970b) called it, beginning with the psyche in a state of fragmentation and ending with its eventual unification (C. D. Smith, 1990). Similarly to the relationship with or search for the sacred and self-transcendence, integration is considered key to spirituality by many thinkers and researchers. This is apparent in definitions of spirituality as, for example, “the deep desire of the human heart for personal integration in light of levels of reality not immediately apparent” (Downey, 1997) and “an integrative force in the individual’s life” (Ellison, 1983); of spirit as “the ultimate organizing principle of the human being” (Helminiak, 1996); and of faith as “an orientation of the total person” (Fowler, 1981) and “the centered movement of the whole personality toward something of ultimate meaning and significance” (Tillich, 1958).

Spiritual integration was defined by Reidhead and Reidhead (2001) and Reidhead et al. (1999) as “a way of understanding, behaving, and being that operates on a principle of integrated wholeness, in which the parts of one’s life are unified into a common field of spiritual understanding and practice” (p. 3). The ultimate goal of this process is “integrated wholeness, in which the parts of one’s life are unified into a common field of spiritual understanding and practice” (Reidhead et al., 1999, p. 3).

Such integration must entail, according to Helminiak (1996, pp. 207-208), “attention to all of the exigencies [of organism, psyche, and spirit], each in due order, all subserving the exigencies of the human spirit,” and the potential for “integrated wholeness” is revealed, according to Wolff (1962), in the experience of surrender:

[Man is] ordinarily scattered, dispersed, variously and unevenly engaged, whereas in surrender, in total experience, all his aspects, characteristics, potentialities fuse into one, this one the actual person, the self, that is merely foreshadowed in the scatter. Surrendering, I thus become what otherwise I am only potentially, although the attainment of this state is never definite. (p. 40).

Both aspects of spiritual development, self-transcendence and spiritual integration, involve, therefore, surrender of the scatter of self-concepts, self-images, roles and motivations, which the fragmented “I” or “small self” is, to the integrated, unified and transcendent “Spiritual Self” or “Transpersonal Self” (Assagioli, 1991).

Surrender in Psychology

To her surprise, [Marion Milner] discovered a profound wish to submit herself . . . a desire to have her will broken and her sense of self destroyed, even if only momentarily, by something alien.

(Parsons, 2000, p. 31)

In the sparse psychological literature about surrender, it has been characterized as involving a giving up or letting go of psychological resistance and defenses and acceptance of the help or guidance of powers greater than or truer to oneself (Branscomb, 1993; Ghent, 1990; Hart, 2000; Jones, 1994; Tiebout, 1949, 1953, 1954; Wallace, 2001). Common to the descriptions of surrender is, on one hand, a movement of “letting go,” relinquishment of control and “departure from” an existing set of beliefs and worldview, and on the other hand “surrender to” a truer, deeper, or spiritual being or force, which can be within and/or outside the person.

The experience of surrender, although it may at times “be accompanied by a feeling of dread and death” (Ghent, 1990, p. 110), has been often described in very positive terms as one of “release and relief,” “lightness,” “expansion,” “depth,” “surrendered bliss,” “openness and embrace of the unknown,” and “total experience,” “clarity, relief, even ecstasy” (Branscomb, 1991; Caplan, 2011; Ghent, 1990; May, 1982; Wolff, 1962). Ghent (1990) discussed surrender that involves “a quality of liberation and expansion of the self as a corollary to the letting down of defensive barriers” (p. 108). As such, it requires no justification; like the experiences of love or of aesthetic pleasure, it can be regarded as an end in itself and not a means to anything else. Thus, the motivation to surrender transcends the question of benefit or gain. Wolff even suggested that, while surrender may produce outcomes (which he called “catches”), such as a work of art, an insight or a decision, these “cannot be planned for, cannot be made the purpose of surrender. Ulterior motives, attempts to orchestrate the result, or strike a bargain, any ways we might try to control the outcome are as such refusal or betrayal of surrender” (Backhaus et al., 2007,p. 81).

The surrenderee in the psychological literature is commonly one of three types, although there may be overlap between them. The first is “reality” or a situation one cannot control or overcome but can accept and live meaningfully “with” it, such as a disability, tendency for addiction, or terminal disease. Another is the Self (Jung’s “God within us”) or one’s authentic or true self, the experience of surrender to which may be central to a transformation of one’s life or self-identity. Yet another is God or (an)other supernatural or superhuman being(s) or forces or energies with agency and powers regardless if the view is embedded with established religions or not (Adamson Holley, 2007; Clements & Ermakova, 2012; Cole & Pargament, 1999; Duckham & Greenfield, 2009; Dyslin, 2008; May, 1982; Pargament et al., 1988; Rosequist et al., 2012; Wong-Mcdonald & Gorsuch, 2000).

The main function of surrender, according to the psychological literature, is as a psychological coping skill (sometimes referred to as “active acceptance”), which reduces stress and affords the individual a more open attitude to their struggles (Rosequist et al., 2012), especially in low-control situations. Cole and Pargament (1999) referred to “the paradoxical path of surrender” as an effective coping mechanism when “the only way to enhance personal control may be to give up control” (p. 179).

As indicated above, the term “surrender” is hardly ever used in the psychological literature in the context of a relationship with another person. The terms used in such a context are usually submission and obedience (Benjamin, 2004; Ghent, 1990; Milgram, 1974; Tiebout, 1949, 1953, 1954). These terms are suggestive of a conformity and subordination in face of a power differential, and are associated with a sense of resignation and a heavy, depressive feeling.

Surrender to Another Person

The lover’s purpose, like the mystic’s, is to achieve redemption through surrender.

(Person, 1988, p. 113)

We propose that, in contrast to submission and obedience, the experience of surrender to another person often includes experiential elements described above (“release,” “expansion,” “depth,” “liberation,” etc.) at varying prominences and intensities, and can be perceived by the surrendered as positive, joyful, expansive, and liberating. However, because surrender to another person means handing over control and personal will to another person, it may also evoke fear and trepidation.

The definition of “surrender to another person” we would like to propose is “an act of handing over control and personal will to another person in faith, trust and commitment, and agreeing to be led into unknown territory without control of the outcome.”

Defined in this way, surrender to another person is seen in diverse forms, including followership of leaders in education, the army, politics, and ideological movements (Castelnovo et al., 2017; Oakes & Hamilton-Byrne, 1997; Popper, 2015; Sy et al., 2018), patientship in psychotherapy and health care (Hidas, 1981; Holmberg et al., 2014; Safran, 2016), love (Johnson, 2010; Person, 1988; Sternberg & Weis, 2006), sex/masochism (Barbara, 1974; Baumeister, 1988; Charme, 1983; Cowan, 1982; DeMonchy, 1950; Horney, 1966) and discipleship to a spiritual master (Bogart, 1992, 1997; Caplan, 2011; Feuerstein, 1990; Freimann, 2018; Neki, 1973; Parlee, 1993; Renger, 2013; H. Smith, 2006; Wach, 1962; Welwood, 1987, 2000).

In our review of literature, related to these forms of surrender to another person, we found that surrender in followership and in love are particularly pertinent in relation to the religious-spiritual origins of this construct.

Followership

Surrender to another person in the context of a leader–follower relationship has been extensively studied since Weber (1968) argued that the leader’s “charisma” resulted from the follower’s tendency to believe that their leader is “endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities . . . [that] are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary” (p. 241). This belief compels, according to Weber, “the surrender of the faithful to the extraordinary and the unheard of, to what is alien to all regulation and tradition, and therefore is viewed as divine” (p. 117).

Surrender to a leader fulfills two important functions, depending on the circumstances (Mayseless, 2010). In times of crisis or distress, the leader provides support and encouragement and galvanizes their followers into action that can solve the problem, be it leaving on a perilous journey or storming an enemy position. At other times, the leader provides a sense of security and secure base, thus fostering exploration, creativity, and personal growth, and enabling collective endeavors such as the establishment of a utopian commune (Lindholm, 1990). Leaders also provide meaning and value to individuals’ lives by advocating a shared vision, that when followed, provides a sense of meaning in life and symbolic immortality (Florian & Mikulincer, 1998; Kouzes & Posner, 2007).

While surrender to a leader may be highly beneficial for the followers, as in the examples given above, obviously it can also lead to catastrophes in the case of a self-serving, narcissistic, or psychotic leader, such as in the case of “father of the German people” Hitler or “sun of the nations” Stalin.

Love

Limerence or passionate love, often defined as “a state of intense longing for union with the other” (Berscheid & Hatfield, 1978), is another area in which surrender to another person is commonly experienced. The similarity between the language of mysticism and that of love is evident in texts such as the Biblical Song of Songs, traditionally interpreted as describing God’s relationship with Israel (starting with “The song of songs, which is Solomon’s. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth! For your love is better than wine.” [1:1]) and the love poems of Sufi mystics-poets (e.g., “I opened my arms to love and love embraced me like a lover” [Rumi]). Ethel Person (1988), for example, compared the self-surrender in love with spiritual surrender:

[I]n surrender, the impulse is from within; its purpose is self-purification or self-expansion through the transcending of the self and identification with the attributes of the Other. [ . . . ] No self-will stands between the lover and her secular god. This it shares with the religious impulse and it yields the same gratification. (pp. 116, 122)

The state of “being in love” is considered one of the most positive and desirable human experiences and the surrender, often associated with love, is similarly experienced as empowering, self-expanding and self-asserting. If the lover’s personality structure cannot sustain this state, however, the result is “obsessive self-destructive love or masochistic surrender,” in which case, “the deterioration of surrender into self-abnegation and self-destruction is rapid” and the lover may “sacrifice his autonomy, even his life” (Person, 1988, p. 128).

As evident in the examples of followership and love, one of the characteristics of surrender to another person is that involves risk. Wolff suggested that, in surrender, “The risk of being hurt means that surrender does not function within ordinary or prescribed boundaries and so there is a real risk in undergoing the experience.” (Backhaus et al., 2007, pp. xxv-xxvi). That risk is amplified by the fact that the surrenderee is another person, an agent with their own needs and motivations, some of which may be unconscious, self-serving or even sadistic.

If surrender to another person in followership and in love bears resemblance to the type of surrender to God, espoused by religious and spiritual traditions, this is all the more so in the case of surrender to a spiritual master.

Surrender to a Spiritual Master

In authentic spiritual discipleship, submission is immediate and concrete. The disciple’s surrender is demanded and seen by the teacher. Good intentions and verbal declarations do not suffice. The guru fully expects precisely the kind of actions that the abstract God of popular devotion benignly overlooks.

(Feuerstein, 1990, p. 153)

In this article, we use the term “spiritual master” in reference to a person who reached spiritual mastery or high development and who functions as an exemplar, teacher, guru, spiritual director or the like for spiritual seekers, practitioners, followers, disciples, devotees, or aspirants. We propose that surrender to a spiritual master can play an essential role in the search for the sacred, self-transcendence, and spiritual integration.

Relevant to the place and role of surrender to a spiritual master is the presupposition, common to many religious traditions and to spirituality, that the absolute, divine, or sacred is intangible and ineffable. In Judaism, for example, God is formless (Exodus 20, p. 3), in Taoism it is said that “The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” (Lao Tzu, 1972, Ch. 1), the Buddhist nirvana or satori (enlightenment) are said to be indescribable (Koller & Koller, 2007), and in Hinduism “The supreme Self is beyond name and form” (Baird & Heimbeck, 2016). In discussions of spirituality outside specific religious tradition, although it is commonly referred to as a human characteristic (Helminiak, 1996; Lonergan, 1957/1992; Perrin, 2007; Schneiders, 1986, 1998, 2005) requiring no “supernatural concepts” (Maslow, 1970) or “humanly external ‘sacred’” (Helminiak, 2016), the individual’s search for the sacred is nonetheless a search for the intangible and ineffable. The ineffability of the sacred in spirituality is evident in the use of terms such as “a transcendental dimension” (Elkins et al., 1988), “the unrecognized Real Self” (Deikman, 1982), the “mystery of creation” (May, 1982) or the “mysterious ‘other’” (Prezioso, 1987) in reference to it.

Where the intangibility and ineffability of the sacred make it less accessible to the seeker, the experiential recognition of the sacred in human form, as the spiritual master, can bridge that gap. In the words of 20th-century Hindu mystic Swami Sivananda (2009), “Grace of God takes the form of the Guru. To see the Guru is to see God.” Seen in this way, surrender to the spiritual master is surrender to the sacred. In Jewish Hasidism, we see this idea with regard to the concept of devekut (Hebrew for “cleaving to God” or “mystical adherence to God”) seen as the goal of the religious life (Jacobs, 1985): while devekut to God is unattainable by the common folk, cleaving “blindly and with unquestioning faith” (Rapoport-Albert, 1979, p. 305) to the Tzadik or Rebbe (titles for spiritual exemplars or masters in Judaism) enables them to perceive and experience Divinity. Similarly, in referring to the Christian concept of imitatio Christi, imitation of Christ, Peter Sloterdijk (2012) suggested that “the Christian teacher is destined not only to be an imitator of Christ himself, but also to take the position of the imitable” (p. 286). In Kularnava Tantra, a major text in Tantric literature, this concept is explained as follows:

Shiva is really all-pervading, above the mind, without features, imperishable . . . infinite; how can such a one be worshipped? That is why, out of compassion for his creatures, He takes the form of the guru and, when so worshipped in devotion, grants liberation and fulfillment . . . (Kularnava Tantra 13)

The first role of a spiritual master is, therefore, to represent the sacred in human form, thus allowing the seeker for the sacred to experience not only connection and communication with but also surrender to the sacred.

The spiritual master’s second role is to facilitate and support the seeker’s process of spiritual development toward self-transcendence and spiritual integration in different ways. Such a role is manifested in a variety of ways.

The first way is by creating conditions conducive to this process and, as one “who has fully engaged the process of inner transformation” (Bogart, 1992, p. 2), guiding the seekers through “the wilderness of mystical adventure” and providing them with scaffoldings and a framework to support and stabilize the progress (Scholem, 1965).

The second way is that by their example, the spiritual master pulls the seeker toward the goal of their religious or spiritual path. This may be, for example, an increase in skill, power and knowledge in service of the community, in the case of shamanic traditions (Friedman et al., 2012); a shift from focus on the individual to focus on God (Friedman et al., 2012) or “aligning the secular with the sacred” (Rafea et al., 2005) in some of the Abrahamic traditions; or quieting the mind, transcending one’s usual identity and knowing God in Ashtong Yoga (Friedman et al., 2012). Whichever the goal of the path is, the spiritual master inspires and uplifts the seeker by their example, and serves as a role model to be emulated.

The third way by which the spiritual master can facilitate the seeker’s process of spiritual development is more pronounced in some spiritual or religious traditions than in others. It is to reflect to the seeker their resistance to spiritual transformation, often in the form of attachment to their self-concepts, self-images and roles, and to encourage and sometimes compel the seeker to surrender and transcend those, and thereby achieve integration. It is in this realm that the spiritual master may and often does evoke the seeker’s fear and resistance, since the prospect of surrendering the ego conjures up anxieties of psychological fragmentation or death (Suchet, 2016). This is where trust in and surrender to the spiritual master can help the seeker overcome the fear and resistance (Fauteux, 1995) and advance in his or her spiritual development.

As may be evident by now, surrender to a spiritual master tends to be, generally speaking, more comprehensive and extreme than surrender to another person in other contexts. In the contexts of love, sex, patientship, and followership, surrender is usually partial and within clear parameters. One reason for this is the close association, which in many traditions is explicit, between surrender to God, Brahman, or another expression of the sacred absolute, and the expression of the sacred in human form as the spiritual master. And, just as the nature of surrender to the sacred absolute is all-encompassing, unconditional and absolute, nothing held back, so is often the expected nature of surrender to its manifestation in human form as the spiritual master.

Another reason is the nature of spiritual development itself, which concerns transformation “not of the individual, but of the subject himself in his being as subject” (Foucault, 2006). Such transformation in a person’s very being is associated with marked changes in one’s self-identity and relationship to life, others, the world and the sacred. For surrender to a spiritual master to catalyze such core transformation, “we must give ourselves in fullness; we must give all of ourselves, including our capacities to judge, discriminate, plan, decide, and act” (May, 1982, p. 302). Moreover, because such a transformation takes one out of their familiar and habitual “comfort zone” and commonly evokes fear and resistance, the spiritual seeker may give (explicitly or implicitly) the spiritual master the mandate to catalyze it by using “shock therapy” methods (referred to, in some eastern traditions, as “divine madness” or “crazy wisdom” methods).

The stakes involved in such an unconditional, comprehensive surrender are obviously high. While such surrender may enable and facilitate the search for the sacred and spiritual development and transformation, if it turns into disempowering submission it can result, in the most extreme cases, in mass suicide and murders, as at Reverend Jim Jones’ Jonestown in Guyana, David Koresh’s Ranch in Waco, Di Mambro’s Order of the Solar Temple in Switzerland, Canada and France, and Shoko Asahara’s Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin attack in Tokyo. In less extreme but very prevalent cases, it results in sexual, psychological, and financial abuse of students and devotees.

The difference between empowering surrender and dangerously disempowering submission to a spiritual master depends, to a great extent, on the spiritual master’s own psychological and spiritual development and the way they navigate the relationship, and on the context in which the surrender occurs (traditional or nontraditional, one-to-one basis, or only as part of a collective following, etc.). As in other contexts of surrender to another person it also depends, to no lesser extent, on the surrenderer’s maturity. This is expressed in Caplan (2011) words, “Surrender cannot be an act of weakness or submission. It is not relinquishing one’s own responsibility. Instead it is an expression of profound and complete self-responsibility and self-salvation within the context of the student-teacher relationship” (p. 118). In any case, because of the very nature of surrender to a spiritual master, the stakes involved in such surrender are frighteningly high. An initial leap of faith is required from the surrenderer, often followed by additional leaps of faith as the spiritual master leads the seeker into higher stages of development.

Discussion

It is easy to understand why the construct and experience of surrender in general and surrender to another person in particular are baffling and confusing for the modern worldview. For this worldview, which sees autonomy, self-mastery, agency, and free will as hard-won victories of modernity and the highest achievements of human development, surrender seems like admission of failure and defeat. This may be the reason that, while the construct of surrender is well recognized and espoused in many religious and spiritual traditions, it is little discussed and barely researched in psychology. Whenever it is discussed in the psychological literature, it is primarily as a coping mechanism for times of crisis or as a tool to overcome addiction. Moreover, in the context of a relationship with another person, the terms “submission” and “obedience,” with their negative connotations of disempowerment, have commonly been used in that literature instead of “surrender”.

Review of literatures from different fields indicates, however, that self-empowering, expanding and transcending surrender is a common experience both when it occurs as an internal, subjective experience in relationship to “reality,” the Self or God, and in the context of relationship with another person. As recognized by many religious traditions, surrender can help the surrenderer in their struggles and yield various beneficial outcomes. The longing to surrender, however, poignantly conveyed in the quote at the beginning of this article, may transcend considerations of outcome.

We propose that, just as the experience and posture of agency, volition and freedom of choice are desirable ends in themselves, so are the experience and posture of surrender. This proposal is supported by Horney’s (1966) claim, that “both the preservation and development of individuality and the sacrifice of individuality are legitimate goals in the solution of human problems” (p. 248) and by Baumeister’s (1988) suggestion, that excessive cultural emphasis on individuality, agency and responsibility leads to greater desire to find relief from the burden, associated with them, by “escape from self.”

Furthermore, we propose that, contrary to the culturally ingrained belief and expectation that personal growth, strength and freedom can be gained only through the exercise of choice and volition, these can be gained also through surrender. It has been well observed that strength can be gained by accepting powerlessness, control by giving up control (Baugh, 1988; Cole & Pargament, 1999) and freedom through surrender (Adamson Holley, 2007). It is only because of the above culturally ingrained belief and expectation that these statements seem paradoxical (Leary, 2004).

Nevertheless, because “the impulse to self-surrender often conflicts with the impulse to self-assertion” (Person, 1988,p. 115), negotiating these competing impulses and maintaining the “vital dialectic” between the experiences of agency and of surrender (Safran, 2016) is a challenging endeavor for the individual. The challenge of negotiating these impulses and maintaining this “vital dialectic” is especially apparent in surrender to a spiritual master. Because of the challenge that surrender to another person in general and to a spiritual master in particular present, a significant degree of maturity, integration and strength is required from the surrenderer. It can be said that only a person who has achieved those can seek a spiritual master “as an outgrowth of a genuine longing for freedom from the limitations of ego-centered awareness and for evolution into transpersonal stages of consciousness” (Bogart, 1992, p. 9). Paradoxically, “conscious and deliberate self surrender . . . proves that you have full control of yourself, that is, of your ego” (Jung, 1970a, p. 258). It can be speculated that, if a person lacking such foundation makes an attempt at surrender to another person, the attempt is likely to fail, leading to disempowering submission and obedience rather than to empowering surrender.

For the psychologically and spiritually mature surrenderer, the tension created by the conflicting impulses, to experience agency and to surrender it, can be a source of developmentally “creative friction.” Such tension and friction enhance the need for questioning, struggling with hard decisions, taking risks and making mistakes—some of the building blocks of the adult development process (Levenson et al., 2001).

In the case of surrender to a spiritual master, the paradoxes and dilemmas, inherent to this type of surrender, are the beating heart of surrender to a spiritual master. As long as they are vibrantly and dynamically alive, so is the surrender and its potential to support the surrenderer’s process of “life-integration through self-transcendence toward the ultimate value one perceives” (Schneiders, 1986).

Having reviewed some of the evidence concerning surrender in general, surrender to another person in particular and surrender to a spiritual master as a specific case thereof, we believe that it beckons the attention of psychologists and the research of this construct. Possible subjects of research include the phenomenology of surrender; common themes of surrender in different contexts, for example, to God, a lover and a spiritual master; the phenomenology of surrender compared with that of submission and obedience to another person; the psychological traits (of both surrenderer and surrenderee) supporting the former and those supporting the latter; and “alarm bell” characteristics of surrender turning into submission and obedience.

Such research may give us insight not only into this construct itself but also into the potentially developmental dialectic between the impulses to increase agency and to surrender it and by extension into other conflicting impulses as well. It may also further clarify the position of surrender, which made its way from the religious traditions into spirituality and psychology, as a point of contact between spiritual and psychological development.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Amir Freimann

Author Biographies

Amir Freimann is a doctoral student at the Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Israel. His doctoral research is on Living transcendence: A phenomenological study of spiritual exemplars. His previous book was Spiritual transmission: Paradoxes and dilemmas on the spiritual path (2018).

Ofra Mayseless is a full professor of developmental psychology, at the Faculty of Education (former Dean), University of Haifa, Israel. Her research focused on attachment, caring motivation, transition to adulthood and spiritual development and she published over 100 articles and chapters, edited two books and authored one. Currently she is the head of the Multi-University Center for the Study of Human Spirit (in progress).

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Surrender to Another Person: The Case of a Spiritual Master

Abstract

Keywords

Introduction

Surrender in Religious Traditions

Surrender in Spirituality

Surrender in Psychology

Surrender to Another Person

Followership

Love

Surrender to a Spiritual Master

Discussion

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

Funding

ORCID iD

Author Biographies

References