Not just external events – mishaps, accidents or soured relationships – but also an internal understanding that comes from the clear thinking brought about by meditation reveal our own flawed psychology. This is why physical and mental seva is so important as a way of reforming our behaviour.Īs we develop, we may find that it’s a long and painful process. Anything that helps defeat the ego is good. The ego is always trying to present things as it wants them to be rather than as they really are, and the Masters say that it is the ego which separates us from the Lord. We live a clean moral life which is the nearest we can get to truth before rejoining the Lord – so no cheating, lying or deception if we try to be truthful, our ego will have no ‘wriggle room’. These substances impede the proper functioning of the frontal cortex – the area of the brain responsible for discrimination, awareness of consequences and rational thought. We have been given an enhancement of life so why take life by eating flesh and bringing burdens on ourselves and pain to other beings? We give up mind-affecting drugs and alcohol. We are asked to follow a lacto–vegetarian diet. The prerequisites for initiation are very small in comparison to what we receive, and make perfect sense for a practice which aims to develop our consciousness.
Have we left it unwrapped, saving it for later? Have we opened it and then, like a small child, lost interest in it? Have we become fascinated with the wrappings and crystallised the spiritual path into rituals? We have been given the leaven of our Master’s power and love. But he is giving a turbo-charged boost to our soul along with the means of learning to control that renegade mind.įrom the time of initiation, we are trying to elevate our attention. When he initiates us, he is not altering our mind. The Master does not make us saints overnight. This injection … permeates the disciple like leaven and produces a new spiritual consciousness and light. The Master injects, as it were, his consciousness and light into the soul of the disciple. But Maharaj Sawan Singh tells us in Philosophy of the Masters that when we receive initiation: The mind is not satisfied here – whatever it gets, it wants something more, hence its restless wanderings over many lives. The Masters often say that no one is permanently happy in this world it is the domain of both pleasure and pain. And it is bliss because the soul knows that it is one with all that exists and is in love with the Lord. It is pure consciousness, because the soul is fully aware, accepting, loving and joyful (unlike the mind which operates under the binary distinctions of opposites, or duality). It is a state of truth because the Lord is unchanging and eternal. This frees the soul to attain God-realization, sometimes described as truth, consciousness and bliss ( sat, chit and anand). The fully concentrated mind can attain stillness and peace once more and merge into the universal mind. Initiation enables us to take the first step towards this, which is regaining control over our mind so that it is no longer dominated by the senses. The Masters guide us towards becoming re-acquainted with real love, with what our soul really is: a drop of love from the ocean of the Lord. He then establishes a subtle link with the disciple, guides him and takes him to the original home.
In Philosophy of the Masters (abridged), Maharaj Sawan Singh quotes from the Adi Granth:Īt the time of initiation the Master gives the ray of life and connects him/her with the melody of the Shabd. The saints go further and describe initiation as ‘the gift of life’. It was when we descended to this physical plane and became engrossed in mind and matter that we stopped being absorbed in it and seemingly lost ourselves – and we have been running around trying to find ourselves ever since. As a matter of fact, we have all heard the spiritual sound and had intimate connection with Shabd before. It is our true self, and our purpose in life is to realize it. Shabd is the sound which our soul has been yearning to find since it came into the creation. They say we receive Nam daan, which means ‘the gift of Nam’ – the gift of contact with the Shabd, the divine inner sound which is resounding in all living things. The Masters describe initiation into Surat Shabd Yoga as a gift.