initiation

‘I love you’, two words and a vowel; the most widely used in our world today, yet the most difficult to say! ‘Love’, or what we call love, is so freely available in our world; especially in the virtual age of social media. If an extra terrestrial was to analyze humans based on our social media platforms, he would conclude that humans are the most loving, the happiest beings in a very sad world, struck by hunger, disease & war. He would also conclude that we are a righteous bunch, with the continuous voices against the issues of the world. The voices of revolution, sadly which do nothing at all, only rebellion does, but I’ve already written about that a lot.

Although, not to say, that on occasion humans aren’t genuinely happy or genuinely angry, but from a birds eye view, the ET’s conclusions will be far from reality. Underneath the projections, the reality is ‘The Human Condition’. To put it simply, the need to be loved, the need to be needed, the need to be heard, the need to be seen. It is essentially a subconscious search for ‘who am I’ in this world full of people. 

The Human Condition stems from layers of wounding, which go deep into the subconscious of Man & Woman. It is in our very psyche. That is why our world is so sad 😞. It cannot be healed overnight, or even over a lifetime, but it can be understood. Every Man has a subconscious fear of intimacy, because of a mother wound. He has not experienced love. He is a boy, he must toughen up. The boy in him, fears love, because what he has seen is not love. It is conditioning.

Every woman lives with a subconscious abandonment wound, because there is no place for her love in this world. There is no ‘need’ for her love for the world to function. Even as a mother she cannot love the way she wants to. She must raise her child for the world, where there is no need for love. To understand this better, I invite you to read my previous blog posts, especially where I write about Adam, Eve & Lilith. So from this wounding, a subconscious need to be loved, a need to be needed arises. And we share love so freely, even when we don’t feel it, we say it easily; just to get some back. I’ll admit, I’ve done it too. In fact, I’ve only recently awakened to this observation.

But love is not free. It is a treasure, buried deep within our being. It is the water of a well, which bursts forth with intensity, in a moment, just like that! But to reach the treasure, the earth must be dug to the depths of its core. And who wants to do that? So we try to get it from wherever we can. Everyone needs love to live. Not many have any Love to give though, as they are looking for it themselves. True love only wants to give. It needs nothing. Occasionally, it happens. Love happens, truly, deeply, madly (as they say). It bursts out like lava from a volcano; and we can’t find the words to express it. Sharing love so easily in the world. Saying it so easily but here, where it truly means something, Love becomes silent. Why is that? 

I experienced two reasons. First, precisely because of everything I mentioned above. Those words have lost it’s meaning. It has lost its sacredness. And second, because the experience of true love is so divine, so otherworldly, so spiritual; that ‘I love you’ seems too small, too insignificant to express the experience. Words just cannot do justice. But love is bubbling, the more silent it is, the more it grows. It must be expressed. It is a new birth really, a re-birth. Like a little child it wants to ask questions, it wants to play, it wants to shout it from the mountain top, but it cannot. 

Love wakes us up to ourselves. Shows us a mirror. It wants to express the truth. It wants to be authentic. And we can’t be authentic because we don’t know what we are. We don’t know our authentic self. If we did, we would know we are Love. But then I wonder, when a fellow passenger says ’I love you’, even when i know it ain’t Love, how would authenticity respond? in truth it would say, ’you are love and so am I’. And that, my friend, will label you ’crazy’. There are no words really. Love can only be expressed through action, silent action. Through the being. 

In Sanyas alone, did I find an expression of my unspoken words. 

The Sanyasin 

A Sanyasin is a seeker of truth. One who is on a path to finding out what he is. What his authentic face is. A sanyasin is awake to his human condition and is on the path to heal it with the illumination of truth, of authenticity. The sanyasin is transforming his being to express authentically, his truth, through his being. 

It is not my personal belief that one must be initiated to be a sanyasin, however, initiation has its own place and importance in a seekers experience

The history of Sanyas 

Sanyas is as old as organized religion. Organized religion or organized crime, same thing, if you ask me. Sanyas is the process of knowing one’s authentic self, which is love or god, call it what you want. But organized religion, all organized religion, promotes the idea of a God who is outside of the self, who will judge us. The crime here is that sanyas for the longest time has been the monopoly of organized religion. It’s sad. Not allowing people to know what they are. So it becomes impossible for a sanyasin to reach god because his search is in the wrong direction. The growth is obstructed. But when Sanyas first started, it wasn’t necessarily a wrong method. The method has been exploited by the priests over the years. 

In the old way of sanyas, a disciple cannot question the master. He simply must obey the master and do silently what is being asked of him. The master would ask the disciple to work in a workshop making shoes for years. The disciple wants to ask, ‘what has this got to do with my spiritual evolution?’, but if he does, the master will turn him out. He cannot ask, He cannot say anything. He must remain silent. And slowly as time goes by, his need to ask any questions, his need to express will just die. One day, He will give up. He will accept. Essentially he will surrender. The need of his ego, to be loved, heard, needed; will be surrendered. The master knows this will happen eventually. So the master waits, just as the disciple waits. For when the need has dropped, the ego has given up.

It’s is a precious moment in the evolution of that consciousness, that being. The master will speak in that moment. Because the disciple will be receptive. He has dropped a large part of his pre-conceived notions, ideas, conditioning. A Sanyasin’s journey truly begins there. 

My love was silent for years. I wrote so much, so many words, in poetry & prose, in letters & songs, in friendship & in fights. But in all of those words, I never could say ‘I love you’. When the need to ask, the need to speak, the need to express was no more; I was introduced to my master & sanyas. I was already a sanyasin before I was initiated. My master reminded me when I was ready. 

Sanyas today 

Today, the old sanyas doesn’t work. It can’t. Today, It’s based on exploitation & a false notion of a god outside of the self. And who has that kind of patience today? But sanyas is a journey of patience. It teaches the art of waiting, the art of life. We are all essentially waiting for the unknown. The old sanyas, originally was based on love. The master’s love that the disciple has yet to experience once he surrenders. When the master will speak. When the disciple experiences the power in his surrender.

But today, no disciple surrenders, no master speaks. There are no masters really. The disciple is again left loveless like any other person. And love is the only teacher. Love is the rarest of treasures. Hardest to find, because we are looking outside. Love is a happening within the self. Everyone wants, no one wants to give, because not many have love. They have words, they have smiles, hugs, attraction; they have respect, maybe even admiration, but not Love. 

Today sanyas is a fruitless effort because there is no Love anywhere to be found. Actually, I’d say the old sanyas is a fruitless effort, because, let’s face it, who gets enlightened in a monastery or an ashram these days? It’s not like the days gone by when sanyas was not corrupted by the world that the old sanyas itself renounces. Which is precisely the issue.

The conditioning that ‘sanyas is fruitless, why renounce the world’ is the problem. Sanyas is possible today only if people are not asked to renounce the world as a condition. And really, there is no need. Buddha agreed with his wife that he could’ve been enlightened anywhere. Sanyas is a process that will drop the worldly attachments on its own, as the sanyasin identifies more and more with his true face, his authentic self. All things outside of the self will loose meaning, before the ultimate truth, the divine face. 

Experience is not in renouncing that which feels meaningless now. That which felt meaningful in another time. Experience is in saying yes to everything life has to offer, the good & the evil, now with new found clarity. To enjoy it all, knowing that it is just a ‘Leela’. A play! Today’s sanyas cannot be so serious. It has to be a ‘play’. An attitude of ‘come check it out’. Enjoy it all, enjoy this too. It cannot be monopolized. If the disciple is serious about it, he will be committed to his practice. And as his practise intensifies, so will his expression of the unspoken words, as an offering of Love, to love, through his whole being. 

The Initiated Sanyasin

As I mentioned above, it is not my personal belief that a Sanyasin must be an initiate. A Sanyasin really just has a different perspective on life. As he moves through life, his vibration, naturally, attract others of a similar vibration. It is the law of attraction. He learns from others, shares with others and continues horizontal (outward) growth, with his freshly awakened eyes. He has tasted the fruit of knowledge. The fruit of good & evil. He knows now, ignorance is not bliss. He is figuring out who he is! 

When a sanyasin has been initiated, he has tasted the fruit of life too. He is in bliss. No question of ignorance. He has the knowledge & he has the bliss. Now he can’t learn from others, he can barely share with others. His experience is now not of this world. He exists in multiple dimensions. The initiated sanyasin is not interested in who he is. He is on a path to remembering what he is. His search so far has been futile. He is not of this world. He is only in it. Experiencing it. Observing it. Witnessing it. A Sanyasin has heard of vertical growth, the other dimensions, the world of god. But he has not experienced it. He has knowledge but no experience.

An initiated sanyasin is living the experience, as he remembers he is all there is, and nothing at all. As he remembers he is God because his nature is love. Naturally, his being expresses just that. But he doesn’t know it. Only others can see it. He is not interested in anything outside of his inner experience. 

The mysteries of initiation 

Only a fully enlightened consciousness can initiate on the path of Sanyas. His ego self, the person has fully died and he is now merged in union with cosmic consciousness. Only such a consciousness is capable of fully awakening the kundalini (life force) energy within someone. He can certainly use other high consciousness beings as mediums to initiate others, but it is essentially the enlightened master who is initiating a sanyasin.

In the moment of initiation, the disciple has to be in complete surrender as I mentioned above. And surrender is the hardest things for the ego to do. Only for the ego though, not for the being. Essentially all the disciple has to do is surrender. Have faith. The master on the other hand has a tremendous job. He has to take the responsibility of the disciple. The master is responsible for all the needs of the disciple, while he seeks the the truth. 

Sometimes I wonder if the old sanyas’ insistence on the renunciation of the world was because of this? Which master will take the responsibility of the entire worldly affairs of a disciple? And for how many disciples? I mean … It’s a struggle to survive ourselves, how to be responsible for another, including their families that too? So it’s understandable but it’s a huge blockage. A sanyasin who renounces anything, develops a subconscious aversion to it. What we can’t achieve, we condemn. And aversion is the duality of attachment. Both must be transcended  for evolution. So ‘let it drop when it drops’, is more the way of the new sanyasin. What we cant achieve, the new sanyas allows us to supersede instead.

But which master will take all the responsibility of a disciple and his loved ones? My master does just that. As I approach my first sanyas birthday in less than a month, I reflect back and see, that in this short span of time, the emotional, physical & financial health of my loved ones & myself has totally transformed. I’ve talked to so many Sanyasins from my spiritual community, and they tell me similar magical experiences. One sanyasin is famous for turning millionaire the morning after his sanyas initiation by Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. And this is only the outer reality mysteries I’m talking about. The inner reality experiences magic & mystery too, but no point talking about it here. There are no words to express. And it is unique to each being. That is what makes it so otherworldly. Everyone is magical in their own way. 

My master’s love is so unconditional, he gives me love unconditionally, just to give it away to someone else unconditionally. I learn so much from him & my love doesn’t feel so unconditional then. I’m humbled and I transform to be more true to my authentic self. My true nature. My love. There are no words. All I can say is that initiation, if accepted with total surrender to & total faith in the master, completely liberates the sanyasin to dedicate himself to his practice. Liberates him to experience, to create, to express through his being, all the unspoken words. 

Conclusion
Initiated or not, Sanyas is an experience, it is the art of living! Every seeker’s search ends with sanyas. Then life is only a ‘Leela’. Every human’s search essentially ends with sanyas. It is the path of god, unearthing unlimited love within self, as one moves. Naturally, his love spreads in a loveless world. He becomes a magnet. Then he is not thirsty, then the thirsty come to him. A Sanyasin’s entire being is an expression of his unspoken words. 

I’m grateful to life for the experience of expression! 🙏🏻