Importance of Initiation

by Dona G. Kelley

Many of us accept initiation without knowing and realising its full impact upon our lives. Each one, no doubt, in the beginning seeks the Way to God, but, through lack of proper understanding, turns farther away to material things or to a less responsible path.

The Path, trodden by mystics and Saints in all ages, is the highest of all for it brings us release from reincarnation and a return back to the Home of our Father, our original source. Humanity is in search of Truth. The most important aim of life for man is to know himself, his True Relationship to God and how to know and realise God. Some of us have been put on the right Path and given initiation. Much of the evil in the world today stems from the man’s failure to know himself and to know Truth. He has searched so long outside and knows nothing of the Inner Way and the Divine Light which shines in him. He has lost himself in all the outer aspects and even more so of religion.

Today many in the West are expecting the coming again of Christ on earth in physical form. They are ignorant of the fact that Christ represents the Spiritual Principle of man.

Jesus, the man, said:

The Kingdom of Heaven is within you

… not outside.

The majority of people seek religions – and even initiations – for the betterment of their physical and material needs. They do not understand that the Spiritual Path means self-abnegation, patience and responsibility. Every man has within him a spark of Divinity of which he is totally unaware. Yet God is closer to us than our hands or feet. When we recognise this we can also recognise the capacity of man to become God-like. It is in the understanding of karma, the law of cause and effect, which includes man, sooner or later, to search for Truth and to make progress on the Spiritual Path. Under the law of rebirth, man is able to work out his salvation. These laws condition him at all times, through all births, until he has achieved the necessary perfection when he can function rightly as a son of God.

When you reach the stage you have earned for yourself the right to get initiation, the Master proves to you by the initial experience, at the time of initiation, that He is One with God and capable of leading you back to God. Many initiates do not understand that the Inner Experience is given by the Master and that He plants the seed within for the Spiritual Development of the soul and not for the satisfaction of material needs or healing powers or psychic experiences. By daily meditation with earnest effort, persistence and patience, we can have Spiritual Development, if we sacrifice the outer chains or attachments.

We must sincerely apply ourselves to conquering the mind through Inner Disciplines of meditation, stilling outer thoughts and facing up to the negative qualities of our own personalities. Then, in due course, we will find Inner Peace, harmony and wisdom. It is not enough just to sit in meditation as a duty. A disciple has to recognise his weaknesses, face them and refuse to give way to them. For instance, delicious foods hold us to the subtle sense-appetite. Strong desires for sports, inability to restrain the tongue and attachment to the luxuries of life, all hold us to the world without. These are but a few of the things which hinder our progress on the Inner Path.

A daily diary will help us immensely if we sincerely work at it. We should not take initiation lightly. It is a supreme gift and must be recognised as such. There are many important points we must keep in mind regarding initiation. First, it is only the seed which needs care and watering daily to bring forth first the plant, then flowers and then fruits. Without proper care and nourishment, it remains a seed, but a seed which never dies. It simply remains dormant for the time being. Initiation cannot be undone or neglected by our turning aside. It goes with us not only for the rest of our life, but in future lives as well, until finally we feel the need to accept it and nourish it to its full maturity. A disciple who turns away only fools himself.

The Master says:

If a son deserts his father, he still remains his father’s son. The disciple may try to desert the Master, but how can the Master desert the disciple?

The seed has been sown and the link forged at initiation remains unbroken. Generally, a disciple needs four lives to cover the four stages – Gurubhakti (devotion to Master), Naam (Word), Mukti (detachment) and Nijdhaam (Original Home – the Ultimate Goal) – necessary to nourish that seed. These four stages can be covered in one single life, provided one has a proper background and puts in right effort. We must remember that when we are discouraged over our seemingly slow progress and want to drop out of Sant Mat – the Divine Wisdom of the ancients –, we are only postponing our day of destiny. When once the seed is planted, there follows a process of germination and this takes time, longer in some than others; and again it requires pollination besides watering and cultivation before it ripens. Initiation is the quickening impulse which quickens the tempo of our soul-growth. But, like the growth of the seed, it takes a long time. It cannot grow all at once and overnight, as it were.

Let us see what Sant Kirpal Singh says of initiation:

Consider the parable of the ‘seed’, as given by Christ. The seed was sown. Some seed fell on the road, some fell in thorny hedges, some fell on rocks, and some fell on quite clear land which had been divested of all foreign matter. The seed which fell on the hard open ground or on the road was eaten away by sparrows; the seed that fell on the rocks grew. but there being no depth of soil beneath, its growth was slow and stunted and seldom achieved maturity; and then the seed which fell in thorny hedges likewise grew, but not fully, and lastly the seed which fell on the land well ploughed and prepared, grew in abundance. Again, if you put in one seed of any kind, it will give you hundreds of seeds of its own kind. For instance, you put one mango-seed in the ground, and that will give a tree which will give you hundreds of mangoes. So there are wonders in nature.

This parable, then, shows what? The seed is the contact of the Light and Sound Principle, which is the expression of the Word or Naam in the hearts of the initiates. Those who simply take It, they very often lose It in the swirl of mind and matter because they never put in time to develop spiritually. Even though they are given the seed and the seed is sown in them, they do not care to nourish it after initiation, and the seed is lost for the time being.

Concerning those seeds that fall on the rocks and beneath which there is little or not much soil, they used to be fed by Satsangs. If these seeds are not watered by Satsangs, they naturally fade away. So, that is why I tell people to leave hundreds of urgent things and to attend Satsangs, above everything else. The seeds that fell in the thorny hedges won’t grow there, encumbered by distracting thoughts and other kinds of hedges. They are just like people who have too many irons in the fire. They have no time to attend to the seeds sown in their hearts. Such people do not develop and grow spiritually. Only such seeds which have fallen on the fully prepared land grows fruit in abundance. So, you will find that the purpose of this diary, which I always enjoin to be kept, is to weed out all imperfections from the soil of the heart. Those who keep the diary regularly naturally make progress. If, in spite of it, they are not progressing, then there is something wrong somewhere in understanding what is explained to them at the time of initiation. This is the meaning of this parable.

However, they are all dear to the Master. Those who have got the seed of Inner Contact are indeed fortunate. This contact is eternal for the seed so sown cannot go waste. That seed is bound to grow and if the initiates have not put in enough time in this physical life, they will naturally have to come again to complete the process and that is possible only as human beings. Thus, human birth is, at least, assured by Samskaras so planted by the Godman. But, why should we not put in enough time now and finish up with the rounds of births and deaths?

The watering, cultivation and germination, of course, takes quite some time; for some longer than others. The soil is not so well prepared in some, while in others it is very fertile and has had much previous attention, may be even in former incarnations. Again, others are not so mentally alert and of the same calibre. Time factor, thus, varies with each one, yet with all it is a constant watching and working to overcome the obstacles in the way. There is no religion, philosophy or occult study that gives us anything without constant searching and studying for years, and then it is only an external subject. Why should we expect to get quick results from Sant Mat which after all is an Inner Process and gives us so much.

As one advances in age, concentration becomes rather difficult, for so many impressions have filled the mind and the intellect. You should know that Heaven is not reached by a single bound. Remember, too, that forced growth is an unnatural process. You cannot force the spirit to rise. Mushrooms appear above ground overnight and are gone as quickly as they come, while a redwood tree takes thirty centuries to reach its maximum growth and it consequently remains for centuries to thrill mankind with its majestic beauty and grandeur. So, be it physical or spiritual, slow growth is sure growth.

In the cycle of transmigration, 8,400,000 species of births, are gone through before birth as a man comes. Once the opportunity is lost there is the cycle to go through from the point of diversion. A slip from the top of a mountain means a steep fall and a stop on the way is rare. But, for the disciple of Sant Mat there is no cause for disappointment. It is very easy for the Master to take up a soul and bring it face to face with the Light within, but it is not easy for the devotee to behold the Light constantly. The daily practice, however, makes it easy. The combination of spirit with matter is very close and the knot is to be untied, bit by bit, to avoid a rude shock to the physical raiment tightly stretched.

Sant Kirpal Singh even goes to say that we need not beg for Spiritual Growth for by karmic law what we have earned is bound to come to us in due course. It does not, however, mean that we ought not to put in our best endeavour and hasten the fruition of the process.

Initiation is a purely natural thing and there is nothing psychic about it. It is as truly scientific as any other science. It is a most tragic thing that man has gained almost a complete mastery over physical nature but still remains in darkest ignorance concerning his True Self! He has cut vast continents with huge canals, uniting oceans on opposite sides. He has flown into the stratosphere and delved into the depths of the earth. Our skyscrapers tower into the heavens and our jet planes span the continent in a matter of hours, yet the men who perform such wonders in the nature’s outer realms are grossly ignorant of their own Inner Constitution. They know not anything of initiation, the perfecting of man through it and the Spiritual Science of Sant Mat. Even though man may be a digger of ditches, if he is an initiate of Sant Mat, he is vastly better off than the most learned pundit, the greatest monarch, for he has the world’s most precious jewels within the Inner Planes which endure for Eternity, while the riches of the world endure just for a brief spell.

That should be a great comfort to each disciple of the Sant Mat, even though we may move at snail’s pace. Human reason cannot grasp the laws of the Inner Planes and we must strive to re-educate ourselves gradually to our new position and gain understanding of the laws and wisdom governing the Inner Life. Does initiation give us anything else besides the seed? Yes. It gives us the means to turn our mind inward, to control Inner Mind, to protect ourselves and to rise up internally and, last but not the least, to gain our True Relationship with True Father, the Beloved Master. We are all apt to forget that at initiation the Light form of the Master takes His rightful place within each one of us and remains there, always watching over us, ever ready to help and guide us to return to our Father’s mansions. Until we have made some progress on the Path, we are not aware of this because all our attention is turned outward in the work-a-day world. When we learn to dwell more and more constantly in the Holy Names and in the thought of the Beloved and be still, the Inner Master guides us, at first through intuition, thought transference, until later we can see His Radiant Form and talk to Him, face to face.

In this context, Hazur Sawan Singh Ji Maharaj says:

The worldly man takes to Bhajan as a curiosity. The day he comes for initiation you may credit him with some sincerity. There is some desire to escape from this place of misery and sorrow. It is this stuff on which Saints have to work. Bhajan for the sake of Bhajan is cultivated by few. Slowly and slowly the little ripples of awakening die out and disappear in the vast waves of karmic activity. Yet Saints are not disappointed. They know the helplessness of man and also know the efficacy of Naam. Naam is all powerful. As one spark of fire burns away a forest, so Naam burns away the thick karmic outgrowth. A bird may escape from the sweep of an eagle but the mind dare not stir when Naam manifests itself. Saints are the custodians of Naam. Their method is sure and certain. They see that day by day man is paying the karmic debt. By age, he is slowly turning his face away from temptations as he gets feeble. Misery and sorrow of the world narrow down his mind and death brings him concentrated to the portal of the Third Eye where the Master takes charge of him, for the soul is His, as He had accepted him when He initiated him.

Progress in Sant Mat is not slow compared with other systems. In other systems people complete their incomplete course in a series of lives, living under strenuous circumstances. In Sant Mat, while staying at home, living with kith and kin, facing not the hardships of jungle life, doing one’s duty in all walks of life observing no restrictions of caste, creed, ritual or ceremony, young, grown-up, old man or woman goes up, never to return. Bit by bit, we are nearing our goal.

If we try to live in God, practising listening to the Sound Current, it will take us across the rough places. Then the world and worldly affairs will become of secondary importance. Sant Mat is a Path of Love and one must cultivate Love in one’s heart, turning out all other feelings of resentment, bitterness etc. In drinking from the vintage of Love and devotion to the Mystic Adept, it transports us to Realms Divine and Spiritual, where we find Truth. It is the ecstasy of mystic rapture that opens our Inner Eye to the transcendent Truth of the rarest essence of existence and being. Shabd is the Reality of all realities and the Truth of all truths. By knowing the Truth, we go into the state of super-consciousness, Eternal Bliss.

Sant Kirpal Singh, the Perfect Master in this age, is now carrying on this work of Spiritual Organisation of mankind from so many live centres of Spirituality extended all over the world. As a unanimously elected head of the World Fellowship of Religions, He is doing a tremendous work in knitting together the peoples of the world in a silken bond of loving fraternity as members of the one vast family of God on the earth plane. In all humility, He says:

If any little love of mine may make a life the sweeter, if any little care of mine may make a friend the fleeter, if any little lift of mine may ease the burden of another, God give me Love, care and strength to help my toiling brother.