My Initiation

by L. Gurney Parrott

Christmas Day, 1966. As I taxied across Bombay to receive initiation from the Master, dawn was breaking and high above the rose-pink flush of the approaching day, hung the morning star. Beneath it was a huge illumined Cross on some hidden building. The star in the East – the Cross – the dawn! I was thrilled to the symbolism in the heavens. What matter if it was all purely coincidental? I chose to ignore the rational aspect and joyously accepted the Spiritual Significance of that marvellous morning sky as a most happy augury.

We assembled as before in two separate sessions of meditation, the first for Vision, the second for Sound. In His brief instructions, the Master told us that for the peep within the day before, it was the Master-Power which gave us the experience and not our own efforts. This time, however, the Master-Power would be withheld, and whatever we should receive would be according to each soul’s receptivity and degree of Spiritual Attainment.

I must bear witness to the Truth and it is only in this spirit that I record that once again I beheld the Divine Light and heard the Divine Sound.

It is a practical question of self-knowledge, and actual experience thereof is vouchsafed by the Master to each individual at the time of initiation,

as the Master emphasises.

The soul as it rises above body consciousness, shines forth in its pristine purity, comes into cosmic awareness, and feels, as it were, the efflorescence of the microcosm into macrocosm, which is called Dwa-janma, or the second birth – i.e. birth of the spirit as distinguished from the birth of the flesh.

We have in the Gospels:

– Except a man be born again, he cannot see the Kingdom of God.

– Except a man be born of Water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

The Greatness of the Master lies not in His advising you how to say prayers or perform certain rites and rituals – any man can give lectures after a little training – but in the fact that He is able to give you a sitting in which your soul is first withdrawn from the outside and then raised above the senses; your Inner Eye is opened and you see the Light of God and your Inner Ear is opened and you hear the Voice of God; you testify yourself that it is so,

as the Master says.

I will not try to convey the joyous; thankfulness, the serenity and peace resulting from this profound experience which are with me still.

The Master, as usual, with His unerring feeling for the right phrase, said as I bade Him farewell: –

You have been given a talent. Go and use it!

When I informed the Master that I was thinking of visiting India again in October 1967, He gave me a warm invitation to stay at the Ashram. This delighted me since the main reason for wishing to go to India was to be with Him again, and the chance to watch Him at work in His own surroundings in Delhi, apart from the Spiritual Benefits I should receive, was a fascinating prospect.

On Monday, 30^th October, I found my way to the Ashram, expecting to arrange for my visit on the following Friday as the Master, I understood, would not return from tour until Saturday or Sunday. As I entered the Ashram, however, to my surprise and delight the first person I saw was the Master crossing the verandah of His bungalow to meet me. He gave me a warm welcome, ushered me into a large reception room and ordered tea and fruit. He chatted with me for half an hour, answering my questions, then placed me in an inner room for meditation while He attended to other matters: yet He still found time to return at intervals to see how I was getting on. Such is His courtesy and attention to detail. He misses nothing in a day crammed with activity that would appal an ordinary man.

The day begins at 4 a.m. when the Ashram is aroused by a vigorously pounded gong for private meditation in one’s room; then bath, and breakfast around 7 o’clock. Assembly in a large outbuilding for the Master’s daily Spiritual Discourse at about 9.15. There are no hymns, or prayers, or other rituals; but sometimes verses from the Holy Granth or from the writings of past Saints may be intoned by a reciter and the Master will explain and interpret them. He sits on a raised dais. He speaks conversationally into microphones for amplifiers and tape recorders, without notes, straight from the heart; there is no rhetoric, no gesture, no hesitation, no ifs and buts, translating Hindi into English in places for the benefit of His foreign listeners, and always summarising at the end in English.

As the Master crosses to His bungalow afterwards He is besieged by eager throngs, and He stops time and again to answer their questions. It is fascinating to see how He turns His full concentrated attention upon each person to whom He speaks using short, concise phrases, achieving the maximum effect with the minimum of words, precise, exact. He moves lightly and buoyantly and eventually regains the bungalow to find another expectant crowd patiently waiting in the verandah. To these He gives the same careful guidance. Then He enters the large reception room and finds there another group, including some foreigners. Another absorbing session in which He deals with the most abstruse general questions or personal difficulties of one kind or another without the least hesitation. Sometimes there is just silence, when His gaze seems to be scanning other worlds than this, but in which Great Spiritual Power is absorbed by His audience. One of the most interesting and curious things that more than one of us noticed was that away from the Master you think of several questions you will ask Him, only to find later that either He answers them without having them put to Him, or the answers come into one’s own mind.

This sort of thing goes on almost all day. People filter in and out continually, or wait patiently outside the gate just to glimpse Him, but invariably He goes out and gives them His blessing.

On Monday following the first Sunday of the month the Master holds an initiation service and on the 5^th November, I witnessed surely the most extraordinary and challenging ceremony in the world. Some 200 aspirants – the figure is a guess – assembled, sitting in the open from 7 to 9 a.m. in meditation, oblivious of their surroundings. Just to see them was in itself an object-lesson in Spirituality and where else in the world could one see anything like it?

At 9.15 they sat in the barn, men on one side, women on the other. The Master entered without the least formality and took His seat and briefly told them what He wished them to do, viz., to sit quitely and reposefully, turning their thoughts inwards while fixing the Inner Gaze at a point between the two eyebrows – the seat of the soul – forgetting their bodies and the outside world. The meditation ended, the Master asked first the men and afterwards the women who had experienced nothing to stand up. About a dozen did so. They were told to wait outside for another session or sessions until they did, for no one is sent empty away. There are five degrees of Spiritual Experience, corresponding to the five Inner Spiritual Planes, and each is represented by a certain symbol which is seen by the Inner Spiritual Faculty. The Master then asked those who had seen the symbols He described to stand up, starting with the highest level. About six men stood up, and were noted down, and so on down to the lowest in increasing numbers, the majority, naturally, being in the first category.

Apart from the impossibility of deceiving the Master, Who can see at a glance the Spiritual Level of any person, these grades relate to a state of being, of consciousness, not of belief or intellect, and therefore cannot be imitated or assumed. Afterwards a second meditation for the Sound, and the same modus operandi. The happiness and peace that pervade such a place as this Ashram – a school of Spirituality – my pen has no power to describe. Here is a Master demonstrating in actual practice to hundreds of people the truths in the Sacred Scriptures of the world. The records of past Masters and Saints which hitherto had seemed rather abstract, obscured by centuries of ignorance, rather irrelevant in this modern scientific age, spring to life and take on meaning. He clarifies the theory of Spirituality and then has the competence to impart it in actual experience. Is this not indeed stupendous, challenging fact to those who deny religion and have no respect for these Great Sons of God?

One personal note before I close this. The Master, I have said, misses nothing. Calm and unflurried, supremely in command without commanding, He gets through a tremendous amount of work in a very long day, even inspecting household accounts brought to Him every evening.

One morning, fearing to be late for my meeting with the Master, I went to Him without having had breakfast.

His very first words were:

Have you eaten?

On my admission that I had not, He said:

That is not good; you must eat!

But He did not stop at a merely polite enquiry, but straight away ordered coffee and fruit to be brought to me, and how thankful I was to get it for I was ravenously hungry! Such is His care for His children’s comfort and well-being, His attention to detail, but most of all is the subtle Spiritual Power He emanates. Is it any wonder that He is loved and worshipped?