Initiation

Initiation is the immediate expansion of the disciple’s consciousness and a conscious manifestation of the Master’s height of compassion.

The main purpose of initiation is to bring the soul to the fore. At the time of initiation, the Guru makes a solemn promise to the individual seeker or aspirant that he will do his best to help the seeker in his spiritual life. The Guru will offer his heart and soul to take the disciple to the highest region of the Beyond.

The Guru can initiate the disciple in various ways. He can perform the initiation in India’s traditional way while the disciple is meditating. He can also initiate while the disciple is sleeping or even while the disciple is in his normal consciousness, but calm and quiet. The Guru can initiate the disciple through the eyes alone. He can also do a physical initiation which is to touch the head or the heart or any part of the body. Along with the physical action, when he touches the heart, the Guru can initiate the disciple in a psychic way. The Guru can feel the soul within the disciple’s heart, he can see the soul and he can act upon the soul.

Whoever is my disciple need not ask me to initiate him because I know what is best for him, that is to say, whether the outer initiation will expedite his inner progress or not. The act of initiation can also be done by occult and spiritual processes. There are various ways, but I prefer initiation through the Third Eye which I feel to be the most convincing and effective way. When I am in my highest consciousness, my ordinary eyes, my human eyes, become totally one with my Third Eye. They receive infinite light from the Third Eye and then they enter into the aspirant’s eyes. In this way I initiate. Immediately the Light enters into the aspirant’s whole body; it percolates there from head to foot. I see the light, my own light, glowing in the disciple’s body. And when I do initiate, it is my light, the light of the Supreme, that enters into the disciple.

Real initiation, as I said, is the total acceptance of the disciple by the Master. The Guru accepts the disciple unreservedly and unconditionally. And even if the disciple goes away after initiation, finding fault with the Guru, the Guru will act in and through that disciple forever. After accepting the spiritual life and being initiated by a spiritual Master, the disciple may drop from the spiritual path for one incarnation, two incarnations or even many incarnations. But his Guru, whether he be in the body or in the higher regions, disembodied, will constantly watch over the disciple and wait for an opportunity to help him actively when the disciple again turns to the spiritual path. A time comes when the disciple is bound to come again for the Master’s spiritual guidance.

Those who have been close to me must feel the actual flowering of their initiation the moment they have dedicated wholeheartedly to me their entire life — body, mind, heart and soul. This is really more than initiation, it is their revelation of their own inner divinity. At this moment they feel that they and their Guru have become totally one. They feel that their Guru has no existence without them and that they have no existence without the Guru. The Guru and disciple fulfil each other mutually and they feel that their fulfilment is coming directly from the Supreme. The greatest secret they learn from their Guru is this: only by fulfilling the Supreme first can they fulfil the rest of the world. Now you may ask, “How can they fulfil the Supreme?” The disciple fulfils the Supreme by constantly staying in the Guru’s boat, in the inmost recesses of the Guru’s heart, and by feeling that he exists only for the fulfilment of his Master. Him to fulfil, him to manifest is the only meaning, the only purpose of the disciple’s life. This is the most important thing to know about initiation.