Initiation into Spiritual Life

Initiation into Spiritual Life

His Divine Grace
Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda
An article from Sree Sajjana Toshani December 1928

“The bad preceptor is a familiar character. It is inexplicable how
those gurus who live in open sin contrive never-the-less to retain the
unquestioning allegiance of the cultured portion of their disciples…”

The ceremony of diksha or initiation is that by which the spiritual Preceptor admits one to the status of a neophyte on the path of spiritual endeavor.

The ceremony tends to confer spiritual enlightenment by abrogating sinfulness. Its actual effect depends on the degree of willing co-operation on the part of the disciple and is, therefore, not the same in all cases. It does not preclude the possibility of reversion of the novice to the non-spiritual state, if he slackens in his effort or misbehaves. Initiation puts a person on the true track and also imparts an initial impulse to go ahead. It cannot, however, keep one going for good unless one chooses to put forth his own voluntary effort. The nature of the initial impulse also varies in accordance with the condition of the recipient. But although the mercy of the good preceptor enables us to have a glimpse of the Absolute and of the path of His attainment, the seed that is thus sown requires very careful tending under the direction of the preceptor, if it is to germinate and grow into the fruit and shade giving tree. Unless our soul of his own accord chooses to serve Krsna after obtaining a working idea of his real nature, he cannot long retain the Spiritual Vision. The soul is never compelled by Krsna to serve Him.

But initiation is never altogether futile. It’ changes the outlook of the disciple on life. If he sins after initiation, he may fall into greater depths of, degradation than the uninitiated. But although, even after initiation temporary set-backs may occur, they do not ordinarily prevent the final deliverance. The faintest glimmering of the real knowledge of the Absolute has sufficient power to change radically and for good the whole of our mental and physical constitution and this glimmering is incapable of being totally extinguished except in extraordinarily unfortunate cases.

It is undoubtedly practicable for the initiated, if only he is willing, to follow the directions of the preceptor that lead by _slow degrees to the Absolute. The good preceptor is verily the savior of the fallen souls. It is, , however, very rarely that a person with modern culture feels inclined to submit to the guidance of another, especially in spiritual matters. But the very person submits readily enough to the direction of a physician for being cured of his bodily ailments.

Because these -latter cannot be ignored without consequences -that are patent to everybody. The evil that results from our neglect of the ailments of the soul is of a nature that paralyses and deludes our understanding and prevents the recognition of itself. Its gravity is not recognized as it does not apparently stand in the way of our worldly activities with the same directness as the other. The average cultured man, is, therefore, at liberty to ask questions without realizing any pressing necessity of submitting to the treatment of spiritual maladies at the hands of a really competent physician.

The questions that are frequently asked are as these: “Why should it be at all necessary to submit to any particular person or to subscribe to any particular ceremony for the purpose of realizing the Absolute Who by His nature is unconditioned? Why should Krsna require our formal declaration of submission to Himself? Would it not be more generous and logical to permit us to live a life of freedom in accordance with the principles of our perverted nature which is also His creation? Admitting that it is our duty to serve Krsna, why should we have to be introduced to Him by a third party? Why is it impossible for one to serve Sri Krsna directly?” It would no doubt be highly convenient and helpful to be instructed by a good preceptor who is well-versed in the Scriptures in understanding the same. But one should never submit to another to an extent that may furnish a rascal with an opportunity of really doing harm. The bad preceptor is a familiar character. It is inexplicable how those gurus who live in open sin contrive never-the-less to retain the unquestioning allegiance of the cultured portion of their disciples.

Such being the case, can we blame any person who hesitates to submit unconditionally to a preceptor, whether he is good or bad? It is of course necessary to be quite sure of the bonafides of a person before we accept him even tentatively as our spiritual guide. A preceptor should be a person who appears likely to possess those qualities that will enable him to improve our spiritual condition.

Those and similar thoughts are likely to occur to most persons who have received an English education, when they are asked to accept the help of any particular person as his spiritual preceptor. The literature, science and art of the West, body forth the principle of the liberty of the individual and denounce the mentality that leads one to surrender to however superior a person his right of choosing his own course. They inculcate the necessity and high value of having faith in oneself

But the good preceptor claims our sincere and complete allegiance. The good disciple makes a complete surrender of himself at the feet of the preceptor. But the submission of the disciple is neither irrational nor blind. It is complete on condition that the preceptor himself continues to be altogether good. The disciple retains the right of renouncing his allegiance to the preceptor the moment he is satisfied that the preceptor is a fallible creature like himself. Nor does a good preceptor accept any one as his disciple unless the later is prepared to submit to him freely. A good preceptor is duty bound to renounce a disciple who is not sincerely willing to follow his instructions fully. If a preceptor accepts as his disciple one who refused to be wholly guided by him, or if a disciple submits to a preceptor who is not wholly good, such a preceptor and such disciple are, both of them, doomed to fall from their spiritual state.

No one is a good preceptor who has not realized the Absolute. One who has realized the Absolute is saved from the necessity of walking on the worldly path. The good preceptor who lives the spiritual life is, therefore, bound to be wholly good. He should be wholly free from any desire for anything of this world whether good or bad. The categories of good and bad do not exist in the Absolute. In the Absolute everything is good. We can have no idea in our present state of this absolute goodness. Submission to the Absolute is not real unless it is also itself absolute. It is on the plane of the Absolute that the disciple is required to submit completely to the good preceptor. On the material plane there can be no such thing- as complete submission. The pretence of complete submission to the bad preceptor is responsible for the corruptions that are found in the relationship of the ordinary worldly guru and his equally worldly­-minded disciples.

All honest thinkers will realize the logical propriety of the proposition set forth  above. But most persons will be disposed to believe that a good preceptor in the above sense may not be found in this world. This is really so. Both the good preceptor and his disciple belong to the spiritual realm.    But spiritual discipleship is neverthe­less capable of being realized by persons who belong to this world. Otherwise there would be no religion at all in the world. But because the spiritual life happens to be realizable in this world it does not follow that it is the worldly existence which is capable of being improved into the spiritual. As a matter of fact the one is perfectly incompatible- with the other. They are categorically different from one another. The good preceptor although he appears to belong to this world is not really of this world. No one who belongs to this world can deliver us from worldliness. The good preceptor is a denizen of the spiritual world who has been enabled by the will of God to appear in this world in order to enable us to realize the spiritual existence.

The much vaunted individual liberty is a figment of the diseased imagination. We are bound willingly or unwillingly to submit to the laws of God in the material as well as in the spiritual world. The hankering for freedom in defiance of His laws is the cause of all our miseries. The total abjuration of all hankering for such freedom is the condition of admission to the spiritual realm. In this world we desire this freedom but are compelled against our will to submit to the inexorable laws of physical nature. This is the unnatural state. Such unwilling for forced submission does not admit us into the spiritual realm. In this world the moral principle, indeed claims our willing submission. But even morality also is a curtailment of freedom necessitated by the peculiar circumstances of this world. The soul who does not belong to this world is in a state of open or court rebellion against submission to an alien domination. It is by his very constitution capable of submitting willingly only to the Absolute.

The good preceptor asks the struggling soul to submit not to the laws of this world which will only rivet its chains but to the higher law of the spiritual realm. The pretence of submission to the laws of the spiritual realm without the intention of really carrying them out into practice is often mistaken for genuine submission by reason of the absence of fullness of conviction. We are, therefore, compelled in all cases to act on make-believes, viz. the so-called working hypotheses. The good preceptor tells us to change this method of activity which we have learnt from our experience of this world. He invites us first of all the be really and -fully informed of the nature and laws of the other world which happens to be eternally and categorically different from this phenomenal world. If we do not sincerely submit to be instructed in the alphabets of the life eternal but go on perversely asserting however unconsciously our present processes and so-called convictions against the instructions of the preceptor in the period of noviate we are bound to remain where we are. This also will amount to the practical rejection of all advise because the two worlds have nothing in common though at the same time we naturally fail to understand this believing all the time in accordance with our accustomed methods that we are at any rate partially, following the preceptor. But as a matter of fact when we reserve the right of choice we really follow ourselves, because even when we seem to agree to follow the preceptor it is because he appears to be in agreement with ourselves. But as the two worlds have absolutely nothing in common we are only under a delusion when we suppose that we really understand the method or the object of the preceptor or in other words reserve the right to assertion of the apparent self. Faith in the Scriptures can alone help us in this otherwise unpracticable endeavor. We believe in the preceptor with the help of the shastras when we understand neither. As soon as we are fully convinced of the necessity of submitting unambiguously to the good preceptor it is then and only then that he is enable to show us the way into the spiritual world in accordance with the method laid down in the shastras of that purpose which he can apply properly and without perpetrating fatal blunder in as much as he himself happens to belong to the realm of the spirit.

The crux of the matter lies not in the external nature of the ceremony of initiation as it appears to us because that is bound to be unintelligible to us being an affair of the other world, but in the conviction of the necessity and the successful choice of a really good preceptor. We can attain to the conviction of the necessity of the help of a good preceptor by the exercise of our unbiased reason in the light of our ordinary experience. When once this conviction has been truly formed Sri Krsna Himself helps us in finding the really good preceptor in two ways. In the first place he instructs us as regards the character and functions of a good preceptor through the revealed shastras. In the second place He Himself sends to us the good preceptor himself at the moment when we are at all likely to benefit by his instructions. The good preceptor also comes to us when we reject him. In such cases also it is certainly Krsna Who send him to us for no reason what-so-ever. Krsna has revealed from eternity the tidings of the spiritual realm in the form of transcendental sounds that have been handed down in the records of the spiritual Scriptures all over the world. The spiritual Scriptures help all those who are prepared to exercise this reason for the purpose of finding not the relative but the Absolute Truth to find out the proper instructor in accordance with their directions. The only good preceptor is he who can make us really understand the spiritual Scriptures and they enable us to realize the necessity and the nature of submission to the processes laid down in them. But there is still every chance of foul play. A very clever man or a magician may pass himself off as a person who can properly explain the Scriptures by means of his greater knowledge or deceptive arts. It is very important, therefore, that we should be on our guard against such tricks. The Scholar as well and the magician pretend to explain the Scriptures only in terms of the object or happenings of this world. But the Scriptures themselves declare that they do not tell us at all of the thing of this world. Those who are liable to be deluded by the arts of pervert yogis who persuade themselves into believing that the spiritual is identical with the perversion, distortion or defiance of the laws of physical nature. The laws of physical nature are not unreal. They govern the relation of all relative existences. In our present state it is therefore, always possible for another who possesses the power or the knowledge to demonstrate the merely tentative character of what we choose to regard as our deepest convictions by exposing their insufficiency or inapplicability. But such surprises as they belong to the realm of the phenomenal, have nothing to do with the Absolute. Those who have an unspiritual partiality for scholarship or for magic fall into the clutches of the pseudo-religionists. The serious plight of these victims of their own perversity will be realized from the fact that no one can be delivered from the state of ignorance by the method of compulsion. It is not possible to save the man who refuses on principle to listen to the voice of reason. The empiric pandits are no exception to this rule.

The plain meaning of the shastras should, therefore, be our only guide in the search of the good preceptor when we actually feel the need of his guidance. The Scriptures have defined the good preceptor as one who himself leads the spiritual life. It is not any worldly qualification that make the good preceptor. It is by unreserved submission to such a preceptor that we can be helped to re-enter into the realm. that is our real home but which unfortunately is veritable terra incognita to almost all of us at present and also impossible of access to one body and mind alike which is the result of the disease of abuse of our faculty of free reason and the consequent accumulation of a killing load of worldly experiences which we have learnt to regard as the very stuff of our existence.