What can other people know of the condition of one’s heart? If the enigma of the mystery of life enters the heart, the person knows no peace until it has been solved.

Sant Kirpal Singh

Initiation


Q. Kindly define ini­ti­a­tion.

A. Ini­ti­a­tion is a spe­cific term. It means intro­duc­ing a per­son to the prin­ci­ples or ten­ets of some sci­ence. It is not a mere for­mal explain­ing of the sub­ject orally. It has a deeper mean­ing too. The term car­ries with it the idea of adopt­ing a per­son into the life and spirit of what is explained. Thus, ini­ti­a­tion has a two-fold aspect: the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal. First comes a clear under­stand­ing of the true import of the sci­ence taught and then a prac­ti­cal dem­on­stra­tion of the truths thus incul­cated. In the ter­mi­nol­ogy of the Saints, it means, actu­ally impart­ing the life impulse by a Mas­ter Saint, for noth­ing short of it counts in the sci­ence of soul or spirit, which is a life prin­ci­ple.

Q. What are the essen­tial pre­req­ui­sites for ini­ti­a­tion?

A. An intense long­ing to meet the Lord dur­ing one’s life­time is the first and fore­most qual­i­fi­ca­tion for ini­ti­a­tion. Seek, and ye shall find, is the law. Next comes strict obser­vance of die­tary reg­u­la­tions by elim­i­nat­ing all prep­ar­a­tions con­tain­ing meat, fish, fowl, eggs both fer­tile and infer­tile, and all alco­holic intox­i­cants and stim­u­lants. Last, but by no means the least, is life of right­eous­ness (right think­ing, right speech and right action), con­ti­nence and chas­tity which con­sti­tute step­ping stones on the way to spir­i­tu­al­ity. Every saint has a past and every sin­ner a future. This is what the Mas­ters pro­claim. One has to out­live and for­get one’s past what­ever it be, and assid­u­ously pray and strive for an adept who can lead him god­wards.

Q. Is ini­ti­a­tion pre­des­tined or pre­or­dained?

A. Yes, it is pre­des­tined and pre­or­dained in the frame-work of the Divine plan that cer­tain souls are to be accepted and ini­tiated by each Mas­ter dur­ing his min­is­try, and many time it so hap­pens that those who are osten­si­bly unwor­thy are accepted.

Q. Why is ini­ti­a­tion con­sid­ered very nec­es­sary for inner spir­i­tual progress?

A. Do we not need a teacher for learn­ing all empir­i­cal sci­ences – engi­neer­ing, med­i­cine, tech­nol­ogy, indus­try and agri­cul­ture? The sci­ence spir­i­tual is a highly obtrude sub­ject, deal­ing with the world beyond. The sense organs, the senses, the mind and the intel­lect do not, and can­not, cog­nize it, for all these lim­it­ing adjuncts fail to meas­ure and grasp the lim­it­less. Here the soul is to be dis­fran­chised of all that is per­sonal, and has to cast off the mask of ter­res­trial per­son­al­ity (per­sona), and become pure soul before it can expe­ri­ence the truth which has no form or shape. It is more of a prac­ti­cal sub­ject than any­thing else, and for this one has to pass through a pro­cess of self-anal­y­sis and self-tran­scen­dence by grad­ual inver­sion, and with­drawal of the sen­sory cur­rents from the body. In order to com­pletely under­stand and to suc­cess­fully prac­tise a super-sen­sory sub­ject, unwrit­ten and unspoken, one has of neces­sity to seek the aid of an adept (Mur­shid-i-Kamil or Mas­ter Soul), fully con­ver­sant with both the the­ory and prac­tice of Para Vidya, and com­pe­tent enough to dis­en­gage the human soul from the human frame, and to trans­hu­man­ize the human in man and lead him to the mount of trans­fig­u­ra­tion to see the real­ity face to face. Again, the inner spir­i­tual planes are so bewitch­ing, bewil­der­ing and so vast, and full of diverse temp­ta­tions that one can­not, with­out the active aid of the Mas­ter, tra­verse them.

Q. Please explain the impor­tance of ini­ti­a­tion.

A. Ini­ti­a­tion by a per­fect liv­ing Mas­ter assures an escort in unknown realms by one who is him­self a fre­quent trav­el­ler to those regions. He knows the pre­sid­ing dei­ties or pow­ers of these planes, con­ducts the spirit step by step, coun­sels at every turn and twist of the path, cau­tions against lurk­ing dan­gers at each place, explain­ing in detail all that one desires to know. He is a teacher on all lev­els of exist­ence; A Guru on the earth plane, a Guru Dev (astral radi­ant form) in the astral worlds and a Sat­guru in the purely spir­i­tual regions. When eve­ry­one fails in this very life, at one stage or another, His long and strong arm is always there to help us, both when we are here and when we quit the earth plane. He pilots the spirit into the beyond and stands by it, even before the judge­ment seat of God.

Q. Is eve­ry­body enti­tled for ini­ti­a­tion?

A. No, eve­ry­body is not enti­tled to holy ini­ti­a­tion into the mys­ter­ies of the beyond.

Q. Is ini­ti­a­tion con­veyed through an author­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mas­ter valid for all pur­poses?

A. Yes, the instruc­tions of ini­ti­a­tion imparted through a duly author­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mas­ter are valid for all pur­poses. The test­ing cri­ter­ion is to have a first-hand inner expe­ri­ence of the Divine Light of God and the aud­i­ble life stream at the time of ini­ti­a­tion. These are the two astral forms of the Mas­ter Power and if one gets to them by per­sonal expe­ri­ence of ris­ing above body-con­scious­ness, there can be no doubt about its valid­ity and effi­cacy.

Q. Is every ini­tiate able to work on the higher planes dur­ing sleep, even if they are not aware of it when they wake up?

A. No, it is not pos­si­ble for every ini­tiate to work on higher planes dur­ing sleep. It should be under­stood care­fully that dur­ing wak­ing hours the soul is at its seat at the back and behind the eye brows, whereas dur­ing sleep it slips down the throat gan­glion when one enjoys dreams and dur­ing sound sleep the same soul goes down to the solar plexus at the navel. It is only pos­si­ble for the advanced souls whose bod­ies sleep but their souls remain con­scious dur­ing sleep to enjoy their inner spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena with the Grace of the Mas­ter. It does hap­pen with the dis­ci­plined ini­tiates that their souls are with­drawn into the beyond dur­ing sleep, and they can enjoy inner flights in a con­scious state. To them sleep and wake­ful­ness make no dif­fer­ence.

Q. If one has great love for rel­a­tives and wishes them the high­est good in the world, can one pray to the Mas­ter that that per­son will get ini­ti­a­tion, or is it a des­tiny fixed before death which noth­ing can change?

A. It is always ben­e­fi­cial spir­i­tu­ally for the ini­tiates to radi­ate com­pas­sion­ate feel­ings for guid­ing the foot­steps of their beloved ones to the Mas­ter for holy ini­ti­a­tion. The des­tiny of every per­son changes every moment by vir­tu­ous or wicked deeds. The holy path of the Mas­ters is open to one and all. It may, how­ever, be under­stood that it is due to the evo­lu­tion of some rare noble karma of the past lives that the inner yearn­ing of the soul gets strong for spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment and those dear ones who ben­e­fit from such chances by put­ting in extra effort are put on the holy path whereas oth­ers sim­ply drift and have to wait for some bet­ter future chance. There are instances, though rare, when the sin­cere aspir­ants have seen and received ini­ti­a­tion from the Mas­ters even with­out meet­ing him phys­i­cally.

Q. What is the sig­nif­i­cance of an ini­tiate hav­ing ter­ri­fy­ing and vivid dreams?

A. Dreams are the out­come of past rec­ol­lec­tions based on hear­ings, see­ings, read­ings or dread­ful think­ing. The ter­ri­fy­ing dreams gen­er­ally are attrib­uted to some diges­tive dis­or­der; a bad stom­ach which can be cured by sim­ple med­i­ca­tion. The vivid dreams denote clar­ity of inner vision when some peo­ple can re­­­-c­ol­lect their dreams very clearly whereas oth­ers can­not recall them.

Q. Can the ini­tiates influ­ence the Mas­ter?

A. Love and yearn­ing com­ing from the inner­most recesses of the heart stir Divine Grace and the Lord has ordained that what­ever the child would ask would be given. At times if the child would ask for a thing which is in real­ity a poi­son, not good for him or oth­ers, He will not agree to give what is in the best inter­ests of the child. The child may con­sider it oth­er­wise. But when he comes face to face with real­ity within, he may be allowed to see more things. Until then, there­fore, it behoves the child to act impli­citly in the way directed by the Mas­ter. Those who hook their wag­ons sin­cerely to the Mas­ter have every­thing to gain. They shall go to the realms to which the Mas­ter goes and they will be able to tra­verse the way while liv­ing in the world, but they have to fin­ish their nat­u­ral give and take in due time in the mate­rial world to be free to go into the higher regions.

Q. Are all initiates related spiritually?

A. Yes, more than blood rel­a­tives, as they are des­tined to reach their true home to meet there in due course, where all will become one with the pri­mor­dial source. This is true rela­tion­ship which never breaks.

Q. Is it nec­es­sary that ini­tiates will have to see evil enti­ties?

A. It is irrel­e­vant that you will have to see evil enti­ties in your home. You should know it for cer­tain that those who have been accepted into the sacred fold, are granted the rare priv­i­lege of the charged five holy names, which are a sure sheet anchor against any unto­ward phe­nom­ena. The aud­i­ble life stream is the shield for the ini­tiate, and even the angel of death dreads its pres­ence and can­not assail the devoted dis­ci­ple of the liv­ing Mas­ter.

Q. If the key words are had from some­body else and one starts med­i­ta­tion on his own, will it not be pos­si­ble to have inner progress?

A. You mean to say that if one comes by the key words from some­body other than an adept or picks them up from some­where and then starts med­i­tat­ing on his own, will it bring forth any fruit? Cer­tainly not, for he will then be repeat­ing par­rot-like, a mere bunch of words with­out know­ing their sig­nif­i­cance and with­out any potency in them. It is the thought trans­fer­ence or per­sonal life impulse from a per­fect Mas­ter that charges the words and makes them key-words where­with to open the man­sions of the Lord.

Q. If the Mas­ter hap­pens to leave the phys­i­cal plane after ini­tiat­ing the dis­ci­ple, will the Ini­ti­a­tion remain valid for the rest of the latter’s life­time?

A. Yes, the holy ini­ti­a­tion when granted by a com­pe­tent liv­ing Mas­ter remains per­fectly valid for all time not only on the earth plane but even into the beyond.

Q. Is it not nec­es­sary for the ini­tiates of the Mas­ter to receive fur­ther ini­ti­a­tion from the next liv­ing Mas­ter from whom they have to seek Sat­sang ben­e­fits?

A. No, it is not at all nec­es­sary to have re-ini­ti­a­tion after the pass­ing away of the Mas­ter who orig­i­nally ini­tiated an indi­vid­ual. It is His sole respon­si­bil­ity to lead the soul once ini­tiated by Him back to the home of His Father. For any fur­ther guid­ance or for Sat­sang pur­poses he will enjoy the com­pany of the Mas­ter fol­low­ing Him on earth plane.