Horrible or Haribol?

Horrible and Hari bol:

The prospect of Surrender is such...

I recently received a message from "E." who wrote as follows:

Dear Mahayogi: I have translated into russian an excerpt from your article
http://mexpostfact.blogspot.ru/2015/11/o-you-sons-of-nectar.html?m=1
and Russian devotees have some question:)
May I send it to you?
The excerpt is following:

"Shridhar Maharaja understood that giving one’s life in surrender was difficult and implied deep sacrifice. One time, when we were listening to his talk, he concluded a point. He tapped the arm of his chair with his fingertips as he often did when he was satisfied that he had made an explanation clear. He turned to us and looked at us to see if we understood.
“Do you follow?” he said.
I said, “Hari bol!”
He looked at me, his eyes magnified by his thick black-plastic framed glasses and said, “Hari Bol! and horrible. The prospect of surrender is such.”"

7:10AM

Sure. What's the question?

Thanks for remembering me.

"The horribility of surrender is only in deep sacrifice from our side or surrender is by itself a torture? Surrender in a mood of deep loving self-giving is clear idea, then even tortures become sweet. And love in separation is a happy sacrifice..."

Ужасность только в том, что придётся многим пожертвовать или само предание для некоторых огромное мучение (как для великомученников в христианстве?) Мне раньше было понятно предание в настроении великой любовной самоотдачи. Если по зову сердца, то и муки - это наслаждение....Да и любовь в разлуке - это счастливая жертвенность....


So she is wondering - why surrender is horrible?

The prospect of surrender, sorry...

I responded as follows:

Well, there's a couple of things. One is, that when Sridhar Maharaja said this, he was reacting to the devotees constantly laughing and smiling and saying, "Haribol."  

As if Krishna Consciousness were merely fun and games. So his point was that surrender is more serious than you think. 

Also, he loved puns. "Is lava love?" was an expression he was working on at the time of the Golden Volcano of Divine Love. The relationship between something as painful and dangerous as lava and something as sublime as love intrigued him. His Sanskrit poems are filled with puns and word-play and his English was no different. 

So he liked the word-play between Haribol and horrible. Surrender itself is sublime as your friend pointed out. But the prospect of giving everything scares us. It's thrilling and terrifying at the same time to surrender everything. So "horrible" in that sense.Not only for the person surrendering, but for friends and parents as well. One may understand intellectually the idea of surrender, but to actually make the leap requires courage. In chess the threat of a threat is often more daunting than a well-played move. So the threat of what will happen to me if I surrender, the "prospect of surrender"

 may be more horrible than haribol.

M.