View source for The first word in devotional service is surrender. The only meaning of surrender is to accept that one is a servant of God

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[[Category:Devotional Service]]
[[Category:Surrender]]
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[[Category:Accept]]
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[[Category:Servant of God]]
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<div id="Other_Books_by_Srila_Prabhupada" class="section" sec_index="3" parent="compilation" text="Other Books by Srila Prabhupada"><h2>Other Books by Srila Prabhupada</h2>
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<div id="Renunciation_Through_Wisdom" class="sub_section" sec_index="5" parent="Other_Books_by_Srila_Prabhupada" text="Renunciation Through Wisdom"><h3>Renunciation Through Wisdom</h3>
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<div id="RTW42_0" class="quote" parent="Renunciation_Through_Wisdom" book="OB" index="34" link="RTW 4.2" link_text="Renunciation Through Wisdom 4.2">
<div class="heading">The first word in devotional service is surrender. The only meaning of surrender is to accept that one is a servant of God. Even great scholars and philosophers like Dr. Radhakrishnan will have to perform heaps of austerities and penances before they will yield to the process of surrender. This is the conclusion of Bhagavad-gītā. Dr. Radhakrishnan's explanation of the six limbs of surrender is superficial. Originally defined in a Vaiṣṇava text, these six limbs of surrender pertain to Lord Viṣṇu, or Kṛṣṇa.
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<span class="link">[[Vanisource:RTW 4.2|Renunciation Through Wisdom 4.2]]: </span><div style="display: inline;" class="text"><p style="display: inline;">We learn from the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that, due to māyā, which makes the living entity fall down from spiritual practice, certain obnoxious atheists try hard to create a smokescreen of philosophical jargon around the Supreme Lord to keep Him hidden from the general populace. The result of this effort is also described in the Bhāgavatam (12.3.43):</p>
:kalau na rājan jagatāṁ paraṁ guruṁ
:tri-loka-nāthānata-pāda-paṅkajam
:prāyeṇa martyā bhagavantam acyutaṁ
:yakṣyanti pāṣaṇḍa-vibhinna-cetasaḥ
<p>O King! In the  Age of Kali people's intelligence will be diverted by atheism, and they will almost never offer sacrifice to the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is the supreme spiritual master of the universe. Although the great personalities who control the three worlds all bow down to the lotus feet of the Supreme Lord, the petty and miserable human beings of this age will not do so.</p>
<p>A good example of such philosophical jargon meant to bewilder the public is Dr. Radhakrishnan's translating ānukūlyasya saṅkalpaḥ as "good will to all" instead of  "surrendering to the Supreme Lord," its proper meaning. Such an interpretation is what we can expect from a mundane scholar.</p>
<p>The first word in devotional service is surrender. The only meaning of surrender is to accept that one is a servant of God. Even great scholars and philosophers like Dr. Radhakrishnan will have to perform heaps of austerities and penances before they will yield to the process of surrender. This is the conclusion of Bhagavad-gītā. Dr. Radhakrishnan's explanation of the six limbs of surrender is superficial. Originally defined in a Vaiṣṇava text, these six limbs of surrender pertain to Lord Viṣṇu, or Kṛṣṇa. Ānukūlya means "loving devotion to Lord Kṛṣṇa." The Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu states, ānukūlyena-kṛṣṇānuśīlanaṁ bhaktir uttamā: ([[Vanisource:CC Madhya 19.167|CC Madhya 19.167]]) "One should render transcendental loving service to Lord Kṛṣṇa favorably. That is called pure devotional service."</p>
<p>Everyone in the world is rendering service to Lord Kṛṣṇa in one way or another. Some are doing it favorably, and others antagonistically. Those who are serving unfavorably are inimical atheists, the foolish nondevotees, while those who do it with pleasure are truly intelligent. In other words, the devotees of Kṛṣṇa are very intelligent, while the mundane scholars are in the same category as the nondevotee atheists led by the demons Kaṁsa and Jarāsandha.</p>
<p>The main instruction in the Bhagavad-gītā is to take complete shelter of Lord Kṛṣṇa. Yet this cardinal conclusion, which emanated from Lord Kṛṣṇa's own lotus lips, is reversed by Dr. Radhakrishnan when he writes that one should surrender not to the person Kṛṣṇa but to the "Unborn, Beginningless, Eternal who speaks through Kṛṣṇa." It is an exercise in futility to take up the Gītā for discussion only in order to ostentatiously display one's erudition, and thus to foolishly misinterpret the text so much that one concludes that the speaker of the Bhagavad-gītā, Lord Kṛṣṇa, is a mere mortal. This use of Vedic knowledge to pronounce that God does not exist is a clear example of serving Kṛṣṇa unfavorably.</p>
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