Question: Kindly define ini­ti­a­tion.
Sant Kirpal Singh: Ini­ti­a­tion is a spe­cific term. It means intro­duc­ing a per­son to the prin­ci­ples or ten­ets of some sci­ence. It is not a mere for­mal explain­ing of the sub­ject orally. It has a deeper mean­ing too. The term car­ries with it the idea of adopt­ing a per­son into the life and spirit of what is explained. Thus, ini­ti­a­tion has a two-fold aspect: the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal. First comes a clear under­stand­ing of the true import of the sci­ence taught and then a prac­ti­cal dem­on­stra­tion of the truths thus incul­cated. In the ter­mi­nol­ogy of the Saints, it means, actu­ally impart­ing the life impulse by a Mas­ter Saint, for noth­ing short of it counts in the sci­ence of soul or spirit, which is a life prin­ci­ple.

Question: What are the essen­tial pre­req­ui­sites for ini­ti­a­tion?
Sant Kirpal Singh: An intense long­ing to meet the Lord dur­ing one’s life­time is the first and fore­most qual­i­fi­ca­tion for ini­ti­a­tion. Seek, and ye shall find, is the law. Next comes strict obser­vance of die­tary reg­u­la­tions by elim­i­nat­ing all prep­ar­a­tions con­tain­ing meat, fish, fowl, eggs both fer­tile and infer­tile, and all alco­holic intox­i­cants and stim­u­lants. Last, but by no means the least, is life of right­eous­ness (right think­ing, right speech and right action), con­ti­nence and chas­tity which con­sti­tute step­ping stones on the way to spir­i­tu­al­ity. Every saint has a past and every sin­ner a future. This is what the Mas­ters pro­claim. One has to out­live and for­get one’s past what­ever it be, and assid­u­ously pray and strive for an adept who can lead him god­wards.

Question: Is ini­ti­a­tion pre­des­tined or pre­or­dained?
Sant Kirpal Singh: Yes, it is pre­des­tined and pre­or­dained in the frame-work of the Divine plan that cer­tain souls are to be accepted and ini­tiated by each Mas­ter dur­ing his min­is­try, and many time it so hap­pens that those who are osten­si­bly unwor­thy are accepted.

Question: Why is ini­ti­a­tion con­sid­ered very nec­es­sary for inner spir­i­tual progress?
Sant Kirpal Singh: Do we not need a teacher for learn­ing all empir­i­cal sci­ences – engi­neer­ing, med­i­cine, tech­nol­ogy, indus­try and agri­cul­ture? The sci­ence spir­i­tual is a highly obtrude sub­ject, deal­ing with the world beyond. The sense organs, the senses, the mind and the intel­lect do not, and can­not, cog­nize it, for all these lim­it­ing adjuncts fail to meas­ure and grasp the lim­it­less. Here the soul is to be dis­fran­chised of all that is per­sonal, and has to cast off the mask of ter­res­trial per­son­al­ity (per­sona), and become pure soul before it can expe­ri­ence the truth which has no form or shape. It is more of a prac­ti­cal sub­ject than any­thing else, and for this one has to pass through a pro­cess of self-anal­y­sis and self-tran­scen­dence by grad­ual inver­sion, and with­drawal of the sen­sory cur­rents from the body. In order to com­pletely under­stand and to suc­cess­fully prac­tise a super-sen­sory sub­ject, unwrit­ten and unspoken, one has of neces­sity to seek the aid of an adept (Mur­shid-i-Kamil or Mas­ter Soul), fully con­ver­sant with both the the­ory and prac­tice of Para Vidya, and com­pe­tent enough to dis­en­gage the human soul from the human frame, and to trans­hu­man­ize the human in man and lead him to the mount of trans­fig­u­ra­tion to see the real­ity face to face. Again, the inner spir­i­tual planes are so bewitch­ing, bewil­der­ing and so vast, and full of diverse temp­ta­tions that one can­not, with­out the active aid of the Mas­ter, tra­verse them.

Question: Please explain the impor­tance of ini­ti­a­tion.
Sant Kirpal Singh: Ini­ti­a­tion by a per­fect liv­ing Mas­ter assures an escort in unknown realms by one who is him­self a fre­quent trav­el­ler to those regions. He knows the pre­sid­ing dei­ties or pow­ers of these planes, con­ducts the spirit step by step, coun­sels at every turn and twist of the path, cau­tions against lurk­ing dan­gers at each place, explain­ing in detail all that one desires to know. He is a teacher on all lev­els of exist­ence; A Guru on the earth plane, a Guru Dev (astral radi­ant form) in the astral worlds and a Sat­guru in the purely spir­i­tual regions. When eve­ry­one fails in this very life, at one stage or another, His long and strong arm is always there to help us, both when we are here and when we quit the earth plane. He pilots the spirit into the beyond and stands by it, even before the judge­ment seat of God.

Question: Is eve­ry­body enti­tled for ini­ti­a­tion?
Sant Kirpal Singh: No, eve­ry­body is not enti­tled to holy ini­ti­a­tion into the mys­ter­ies of the beyond.


Question: Is ini­ti­a­tion con­veyed through an author­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mas­ter valid for all pur­poses?
Sant Kirpal Singh: Yes, the instruc­tions of ini­ti­a­tion imparted through a duly author­ized rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Mas­ter are valid for all pur­poses. The test­ing cri­ter­ion is to have a first-hand inner expe­ri­ence of the Divine Light of God and the aud­i­ble life stream at the time of ini­ti­a­tion. These are the two astral forms of the Mas­ter Power and if one gets to them by per­sonal expe­ri­ence of ris­ing above body-con­scious­ness, there can be no doubt about its valid­ity and effi­cacy.

Question: Is every ini­tiate able to work on the higher planes dur­ing sleep, even if they are not aware of it when they wake up?
Sant Kirpal Singh: No, it is not pos­si­ble for every ini­tiate to work on higher planes dur­ing sleep. It should be under­stood care­fully that dur­ing wak­ing hours the soul is at its seat at the back and behind the eye brows, whereas dur­ing sleep it slips down the throat gan­glion when one enjoys dreams and dur­ing sound sleep the same soul goes down to the solar plexus at the navel. It is only pos­si­ble for the advanced souls whose bod­ies sleep but their souls remain con­scious dur­ing sleep to enjoy their inner spir­i­tual phe­nom­ena with the Grace of the Mas­ter. It does hap­pen with the dis­ci­plined ini­tiates that their souls are with­drawn into the beyond dur­ing sleep, and they can enjoy inner flights in a con­scious state. To them sleep and wake­ful­ness make no dif­fer­ence.


Question: If one has great love for rel­a­tives and wishes them the high­est good in the world, can one pray to the Mas­ter that that per­son will get ini­ti­a­tion, or is it a des­tiny fixed before death which noth­ing can change?
Sant Kirpal Singh: It is always ben­e­fi­cial spir­i­tu­ally for the ini­tiates to radi­ate com­pas­sion­ate feel­ings for guid­ing the foot­steps of their beloved ones to the Mas­ter for holy ini­ti­a­tion. The des­tiny of every per­son changes every moment by vir­tu­ous or wicked deeds. The holy path of the Mas­ters is open to one and all. It may, how­ever, be under­stood that it is due to the evo­lu­tion of some rare noble karma of the past lives that the inner yearn­ing of the soul gets strong for spir­i­tual enlight­en­ment and those dear ones who ben­e­fit from such chances by put­ting in extra effort are put on the holy path whereas oth­ers sim­ply drift and have to wait for some bet­ter future chance. There are instances, though rare, when the sin­cere aspir­ants have seen and received ini­ti­a­tion from the Mas­ters even with­out meet­ing him phys­i­cally.