Guru says, “Son, the self-luminous akshara whose inherent nature is Aksharam is one’s Guru, one’s teacher or acharya, one’s best friend or hiteshi, one’s companion or sakha, one’s Father, one’s Mother, one’s sibling and one’s child. Supreme Self is one but forms are myriad. Why is being grateful and offering thanks imperative for one to become immersed and absorbed into the Self?
The reason is it is the first step to Self-Surrender. It is very easy to say that one has surrendered to the Supreme Self but it is difficult to emote and experience if not in entirety. The reason is that Self-Surrender is a process that one needs to be established in throughout one’s sadhana, anuṣṭhāna and practices. It is the initiator, the catalyst and the end goal of all practices.
Self-Surrender will eventually lead to peace. But first, one has to be grateful and offer thanks for all that the Supreme Self has bestowed and blessed the created being with. Every other creation that a created being comes into communion with has to be understood and realized to be the self-luminous akshara irrespective of its form and shape.
The self-luminous akshara with its inherent nature of Aksharam in its unmanifest state is the propeller or charioteer of the “body” which is the manifest state of the self-luminous akshara leading to the knowledge, realization, experience of the unmanifest state of the self-luminous akshara that is the Primordial Light, the Primordial Sound and Consciousness.
But this can be attained only through the Self and hence, the first step to Self-Surrender is gratitude or kr̥tajñatā.”
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