We recently posted a class given by Hazrat Inayat Khan to mureeds in New York City on New Year’s Day, 1926. Two weeks later, on the 15th of January, the circle met again and he gave the following explanation of the significance of initiation, including an illustration of his own experience of finding his Murshid.
Initiation
Blessed mureeds,
I would like to speak a few words on the subject of initiation.
Initiation is not only a formal ceremony. It is an outside form of something which is meant to take place. As all things in life are appointed and fixed on a certain time, so initiation is fixed on a certain time. And when that time comes, you are brought to your teacher, who gives you initiation. Many in the mystical path have this experience, if not all–that after the yearning of many, many years, to come to some person who will give them his guidance on the spiritual path, that they were brought to him after many years’ time. Some had visions and warnings in the form of dreams, or in the form of inspiration.
If I were to tell you my own experience, I could say that I was meditative from childhood and that tendency grew by my growing. And there was a certain time in my life when I felt more urge from within to be contemplative. I had no teacher whom I could call my spiritual guide, yet I had learned as every child in the East, who knows more or less the path of discipleship. But there came a certain time when the inner urge began to be more concrete, more clear; even to such an extent that it became audible, louder than a spoken word, it became visible in the form of vision. And when I was looking for some soul in the eagerness of being guided on the spiritual path, I happened to come in the presence of a soul who at my first sight I recognised, that this was the person whom I had seen in my meditations. That was my teacher. No sooner my teacher appeared, I knew this was my teacher. You need not be surprised about it. In the spiritual path it is natural to have this phenomenon. But even in everyday life we have that phenomenon. If we are serious, earnest, that in business, in our profession, in our work in worldly life, when we meet someone who is really meant that we must meet, there is always a feeling we have always known this person. And if there is not that feeling, then people may come and be together for a hundred years and they will remain strangers. And another time, a person may meet someone once and he feels, “I have known that person for a thousand years.” The same feeling became more concrete at the first glance on my teacher. I recognized, “This is the same face I have seen in my visions.”
Everyone is not visionary. But as spirit, heart and soul know, if one does not see, one feels it; if one does not feel, one thinks it. Always there is a sign which links up a murshid with his mureed. And where does this link reach? This link is just like a chain. The teachers who have lived in all different ages, who have worked for humanity, whether they are recognized or not, who have suffered for the cause of mankind, who have sympathized with the difficulties of men worrying in bad times, who have led men from difficult conditions, such teachers, whether on earth or on the other side, this link of initiation unites you with them all. Therefore it is said, “United with all the illuminated souls who form the embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance.” Therefore, this link of initiation not only unites with Murshid, but with all illuminated souls here before you and in the unseen.
One who has feeling and illumination will see more, cannot help to see more and more every day. But this path of initiation is continued. After one initiation there is another initiation and after is again another initiation. And so it goes on. As the veil is lifted, you go on, further and further, till you arrive at that stage where inner initiation begins. Outer initiation is a preparatory stage of inner initiation, which comes in the form of revelation.
And now, you may ask, what would bring blessing to initiated ones? The answer is: a steady interest in the path. It is a great pity to watch that in these modern times people seek after truth, but with no patience. They go into one society and then get tired of it; they want some novelty and then they go into another society and then in another and so on. They move from place to place. For them this is just like a variety theatre where one gets changes every week. All their life they change from one thing to another.
Imagine, after so many thousand years since Buddha came, the Buddhists holding the idea of Buddha! They have not gone back in spiritual development. They have gone forward. After thousands of years since Buddha has come, they even keep up his living teaching; they live with it. And that is the most important thing. If one asked, “What is more important in your life? Is it worldly enjoyment, worldly interest?”, you should answer, “No, all these things are needed in my life, but near to my heart is my spiritual development, my religion, my devotion. That is nearest to my heart.”
If a person goes from one society to another, from one teacher to another, then nothing is gained. Besides, they test the teacher, instead of the teacher testing them. The poor teacher is a human being; he must have something wrong. No one in this world is right altogether. If one were right, one would not exist in this world. A human being is subject to all things. When they criticize, they take with them the impression that, “We have seen in the teacher something which is against him.” From twenty teachers, that is twenty bad points. Twenty points of twenty teachers makes them against God, soul, spirit, and against truth. This is the condition. They all say that they earnestly seek after truth, but they do not know in what way to seek after truth.
Faith is a great thing. The Hindus have taught faith through the ideal of rock*, an ideal which is more than ignorant, that has no knowledge of life, no response. If a person can have faith in his ideal, he naturally can have faith in God and man both. The one who is capable of having faith in his ideal that has no sign of life, he can then have faith in a living being. But the one who has no faith in his living ideal, he has no faith in anything.
Besides, man is a very quick judge. He very readily judges another from his own law and from his own point of view. The child is ready to judge his father, people are ready to judge their professor, their doctor; they readily judge the one who is more evolved. It is a tendency which is freely expressed; it breaks all the ideal there is, it kills idealism. It is therefore that there are many inventors in the Western world, but great personalities are not allowed to grow. And if one sees a great personality, there is hardly one who has not the tendency to throw him down, to pull him down. It is a great error of this age; and if it will be continued, great personalities will rarely be found. Religions and the spiritual world apart, even in the political and society world, as soon as a man has sprung up and gives an example to ten people, the first attempt is to pull him down before he is known to forty people. In ancient times they crucified and stoned and persecuted prophets and mystics. And in this time they pull them down and insult them and criticize and trouble them. It is a great pity just the same.
Worldly things aside, when we come to spiritual things, a certain amount of idealism is necessary. Without idealism there is no religion, no spirituality. Idealism comes of imagination. If there is no imagination, one cannot have ideal. For an instance, it is very easy to say diamond and pebble is the same, it is stone. But imagination distinguishes between diamond and pebble. If there is no imagination one can easily say it is stone; it is possible that it is ruby or diamond, what is it!
The initiation received by you, it does not urge upon you a certain discipline of life. You are not asked to follow certain rules or principles, because the Sufi Order** leaves the initiates free to choose for themselves their own principles. Nevertheless, it wakens in some form or the other a principle which is there naturally, which rises in one’s heart and which one can follow because it comes from oneself. And at the same time, to be without principle means to live without life. Is life only to drink and make merry or to have a good pastime? If it was meant for that, life would have no importance. The only thing that gives life importance is principle. Not in the ordinary sense of principle, for an instance a community principle or a society principle, I do not mean that principle. I mean inner principle, that your own soul teaches you, that makes you live as you want to live and as you like to live. That is the principle, that is the spirit of all moral that the Sufi Movement teaches; no restriction of food or action. In the Sufi teaching is shown what is best for your spiritual development. There is no restriction, that you must follow this rule. There is perfect freedom to choose your own way.
Only it is said that initiation must be regarded as the most sacred thing and it is this regard which will help you all on the spiritual journey to go forward. All the exercises given to you, if regarded in that way, will be of greater use and benefit. It is just like a medicine. One person who takes it with great faith and belief, certainly it will do him good. But another who says, “I do not believe that it does any good, but I take it because my doctor has prescribed it and I have paid his fee, now I must take it,” for him that medicine has no value except what he has spent for it. So it is with initiation. If one thinks that initiation belongs to membership, he will have no virtue of it, but if one thinks initiation is sacred, it has nothing to do with membership, it is a connection to Murshid and all spiritual, illuminated souls, a link through which spiritual knowledge is received, a blessing which one keeps as a sacred treasure, when that is the idea, then initiation has value and will give all the benefit initiation can give.
There is no wisdom in talking about the Sufi initiation to those uninitiated, those who cannot understand. If you talk with them, if you say, “I am initiated,” it only makes them think it smaller than it is. It is something sacred which you must keep in your heart. You can say, “I am a member of the Sufi society”; you need not say, “I am initiated.” It is too sacred to speak about. When you carry this idea as a sacred thing wherever you go, you will flourish in your soul work, and bring forward fruits and flowers, both of which are the proof of spiritual attainment.
Practices are secondary. The first thing is your attitude to your initiator. The second thing is the practices. The third thing is the study which can explain the inner meaning of your practices.
There will be study groups here. In the study group all things connected with your initiation will be read, and with silence. Do this soon, and that study will always help you more and more to attain to that bliss for which you have joined the Sufi Order.
God bless you.
*’rock’ referring here to stone idols.
**The Inner School of the Sufi Movement.