Srila Govinda Maharaj - Faith is the Basis Pt. 3 of 3

Devotee: What is the start­ing point of shar­anagati?
Srila Govinda Maharaj: Sharanagati, sur­render, starts from the point of shraddha, faith. The mood of per­fect sur­render will come to us through shraddha.

‘śraddhā’-śabde—viśvāsa kahe sudṛḍha niśchaya
kṛṣṇe bhakti kaile sarva-karma kṛta haya
(Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita: Madhya-lila, 22.62)

“Shraddha means con­fid­ent, firm faith that everything will be ful­filled, and everything impossible will become pos­sible, through the ser­vice of Krishna.”
What is what, who is who—everything—is determ­ined by our faith. Faith is the basis of all reli­gions, not only the Vaishnav reli­gion, because faith is the jiva–souls’ true and best prop­erty. Faith is always the friend of every­one and if we have faith in Krishna con­scious­ness we will be able to adjust everything.

sakala chhāḍiyā bhāi,     śraddhā-devīra guṇa gāi,
yā̐ra kṛpā bhakti dite pāre
(Srila Bhakti Vinod Thakur)

“So giv­ing up everything, sing the glor­ies of Shraddha Devi, faith, by whose mercy we can feel the pres­ence of bhakti, devo­tion, in our hearts.”
Faith is our main prop­erty; we should never lose our faith. And our faith must also grow, it must become stronger and stronger until it reaches an unshak­able pos­i­tion. Our faith must be tran­scend­ental, sin­cere and chaste. You can­not throw a rocket from any­where, you must have a sub­stan­tial found­a­tion. When your faith becomes firm and unshak­able and you under­stand the fun­da­mental pos­i­tion of sur­render and devo­tion to Krishna then you will be worry free and shar­anagati, your mood of sur­render, will pro­tect you. You will have an unshake­able launch­ing pad and from there you will be able throw your rocket across the illus­ory envir­on­ment to Goloka Vrindavan.
The spir­itual world exists entirely within the plane of faith, and any­one whose faith is very strong will get that highest prop­erty when his faith takes on a tran­scend­ental form and is suc­cess­fully activ­ated in his heart. Everything will be revealed to him.