From the forum:

There are several issues underlying your question.
First is the assumption that renunciation of the worldly possessions and surrender to God are tightly correlated. I personally see no evidence for that. You can renounce all your worldly possessions all you want and still be a nasty, egotistical cunt, “Mother Theresa” was an example of that – an incredibly nasty and toxic person, but a first class sannyasi.
The second is the assumption that renunciation is tightly correlated with divestment of energy from the world. Here, as well, I see scant evidence for this assumption; the most fatal forms of investment of energy into the world that I had the misfortune to witness took form of surrender and devotion to “God”, where “God” was an intellectual pointer to Sanat Kumar. I never saw anything more harmful and fatal anywhere, so in order to avoid the most terrible outcome, I would strongly advise against this form of piety.
The third is the assumption that renunciation is somehow correlated to high spirituality. I see no evidence for that, either; in fact, not only does this world not reward “lilies of the field”, it so strongly attacks anyone who is actually successful in working against it, that such people don’t have an issue of renouncing anything, because there are ‘scripts’ designed to deplete them of resources. I was targeted by several such scripts and if not for the help from people present here, my career of a world-transformer would have been short lived. 🙂 However, if we ignore those scripts, I still don’t see a strong correlation between true spirituality and renunciation, because it is for the most part impossible to survive here if you strip yourself of resources; however, if you see it as a war in which you need to establish a fortified beachhead, your efforts to shield yourself from spiritually harmful influences will look like attachment to worldly possessions to a superficial observer, but nothing can actually be farther from the truth. Sri Yuktesvar, for instance, used his inheritance to fortify himself against attacks that vied to compromise his spiritual work and independence. Lahiri Mahasaya used his job at the Indian railroad to create a protected zone for his spiritual work. In cases I had the opportunity to observe, control over aspects of the world (usually in form of money, power and possession) are a significant asset to one’s spirituality, as they are much more of a shield than they are a hindrance. They give a yogi independence from other people’s energetic influences and, thus, from corruption. Lack of money, from what I can see, doesn’t mean freedom and detachment, it means vulnerability, exposure to harmful energies, and I see only grave dangers from this direction. Sure, there will always be some “spiritual” idiot to claim that you can’t take money with you to the other world, as if that’s what a yogi would attempt. Owning things isn’t the point, the point is to isolate and shield yourself against people who want to own and control you in this world. People who use mosquito repellent don’t do it because they like the way it smells. They use it because the mosquitoes hate it. That’s what money and physical power are to a yogi: a mosquito repellent. Interestingly, Sanat Kumar agreed, which explains his main vector of attack against me.
The siddhis are really the root issue. Fools will say that you don’t need siddhis to levitate food to your mouth if you have hands, as if that’s what one would use them for. No, the reason why siddhis are so powerfully banned here is not because of what you could do with them, but what they prevent others from doing to you. If you had siddhis, you wouldn’t be forced to work for money, therefore others wouldn’t have a claim on part of your life. You wouldn’t have to live in civilization, so you wouldn’t be forced to suffer the astral pressure of other humans. You wouldn’t be forced to interact with humans for every single need. Basically, the siddhis would negate all the satanic things this world was designed to *do to you*. They are a shield, which is why they were the first thing you were stripped of. The second shield you had was your memory, your understanding of who you are, what this world is, your ability to protect yourself from evil based on experience and knowledge. When that was stripped away, anyone could basically convince you of anything, and you were placed in a position of total dependence. This position of total dependence, incidentally, looks very much like sannyasa – you don’t have anything of this world, you can’t really do anything in this world, and the world can do whatever it wants with you. It’s a situation that is not really conducive to defending your spirituality from attacks, which is why I see exactly zero reasons to find it useful or desirable.
There’s another underlying assumption, and that is that power and money corrupt. I already wrote about that at length; money can expose one’s corruption if it’s already there, but won’t create it where it’s absent. A yogi won’t just develop a desire to blow money on whores and cocaine if he has money; I know people who think exactly that, and that’s because they fear their hidden desires. I have no such desires so I find the concept ridiculous and hypocritical: why would you shield yourself from such desires by renouncing money, instead of dealing with your desires in the first place? Depleting yourself of power, thinking it will make you more spiritual, is definitely an issue you have, and it is all based on misapprehensions and delusions of some kind.

I would add something else.
The issue isn’t in what you renounce, or surrender. The core issue is what you are, what you are made of, and on what resources you are pulling on in order to build yourself, and to create thoughts, words and actions. If this resource you’re pulling on is brahman, then you have the right foundation and the issue of surrender and renunciation doesn’t even arise. It’s not as if such foundation will just magically appear by negation – you strip things away and brahman is what remains underneath. No. I’ve heard such theories and they are all completely wrong. If you strip things away, you will end up not only with nothing, you will end up being nothing, and I don’t mean it in some abstract sense where it’s a good thing. Renunciation is a pastime of idiots, because if you start with your consciousness, with asmita, and realize that asmita is good because it’s of brahman, and you pull more from where that goodness came from, you will understand how I write these texts, what sources I pull on, and you will also realize that the concept of “giving things up” in order to get there doesn’t even arise, because the very idea is deluded from start to finish, it has no healthy elements whatsoever. If you peel yourself like an onion to get to the core, you will unfortunately find out that onions have no core. You don’t peel the onion to get to the essence of onion, you just need to accept that you already have the essence of what onion is, right on the starting point. Spiritual growth starts by understanding that you are already in the core of things, only you don’t understand it properly and pull from it properly. Surrendering things and giving things up in order to get to God… it’s such a stupid and useless idea I wonder who ever thought of such damn nonsense. It’s actually what Śakyamuni tried first, and guess what, it didn’t work. Then he changed the approach, and guess what…

ps. Ever thought of why my first book is called “A Yogi approach”? Because it’s about the approach to things. That’s where the “click” has to happen. A yogi approach is what is needed.

The reason why I prefer Patanjali’s “asmita” to the “atman” of vedanta is because it’s a “virgin term” for most people; it’s not “poisoned” by interpretation. You see, brahman is explained as something that’s so awesome it can’t really be part of your experience, and atman is basically a symbolic link to brahman, and also can’t be part of your experience, because it’s so awesome and you suck so much, so your definition of self must be that other term, the filthy one used to describe everything that’s wrong with you and needs to die: ego, or ahamkara/mamata.

That’s why I decided to introduce Patanjali’s term for atman manifested in human consciousness: asmita, or the sense of self. You can call it ‘ego’ if you prefer Latin to sanskrit, but it has no nasty implications. Basically, it’s the best approximation of atman that you have as a human being without entering samadhi, where asmita reveals itself as atman/brahman, when you realize that “tat tvam asi“, or “tat brahman aham“. Or, translated to English, “God fucking damn it, it was here all along!” 🙂