Extensive changes in personality structure through initiation

Originally posted in German on 1^st August 2023

by Heinz Grill

General concepts of initiation

An initiation, an inauguration, is always carried over from a realised person to another, to a seeker, a participant, a student. In this context, only spiritual initiation will be illuminated in more detail. There are, however, forms of initiation that take place unconsciously in everyday life and at a first glance appear to have no connection with spirituality. In ordinary schools, to a certain extent, teachers always carry over their soul experience to the children, they initiate them to a greater or lesser extent into a characterful and moral life. However, educators can carry over to others only as much as they have actually brought into realisation in their own souls. In any case, teacher personalities have a very formative effect on their students.

To the same extent, spiritual initiation can only take place to the degree that it is authentically and truly founded in the personality of the teacher. It is not conceivable and not at all logical that people could initiate to the higher worlds when they do not know them within themselves. For this reason, many yoga initiations with mantras are extremely limited and are merely to be understood as a ritual gesture, since the teachers who pass on mantras to their students have not themselves seen the spiritual origin and the deeper reality of this mantra and have not fully achieved the insightful knowledge. An initiation with spirituality requires a personality who authentical stands in the truth of spiritual reality. This personality shapes the future of the students.

In yoga teaching, in meditation training and in general esoteric instruction the educating teachers carry, in a still way, their deep experiences over to their students, they initiate according to their acquired spiritual knowledge and if this is very well developed, a meaningful and true initiation can be spoken of. A ritual gesture is not needed by the teacher who is deeply anchored in the life of the spirit.

Initiation from Sai Baba

The now deceased Indian teacher Sathya Sai Baba gave regular so-called darshan in Puttaparthi in India during his lifetime. Darshana means that teachers appear to the students in their spiritual-divine form. Millions of people from all over the world streamed to Puttaparthi and usually stayed for long periods of time in the ashram of the well-known, very small and yet extraordinarily significant teacher. Sai Baba could carry over to the devotees present, great forces with kundalini-effects.¹⁾ Kundalini-forces are very intensive and effective ether forces, that above all are concentrated in the first energy centre in the so-called muladharacakra and can be awoken through a spiritual practice. Without real knowledge of these forces caution is required on the grounds of their strong effects. Sathya Sai Baba knew these forces and could apply them in a directed way. The carrying over of this strong energy, however, constitutes a not so important side issue, for at the centre lies the encounter of the individual students with a personality that has a spiritual and intensive radiance. The devotees lined up for darshan direct their attention onto Sathya Sai Baba, walking along the crowd, who turns towards the groups there and each individual with intense concentration. In their souls, the so-called devotees feel the love radiating directly from the small figure of the Indian with his orange robe. The love is not an emotional affair, it is not a special fabrication that makes life congenial, nor is it a product of chance that is at one point present and at another disappears; it is direct presence in the person of Sathya Sai Baba. It is reality, it lives in the person, it shines like a great planet, collected in all his limbs, finely streaming beyond the black and still powerful hair. It lies in the concentrated gaze, with which he moves gently over the individual people and penetrates every heart. His incarnation is a force of love and this is perceptible to the soul. Those who participate in a darshan know from now on in their souls that they want to realise this love at some point in the course of their lives or also in a next life. Sathya Sai Baba initiates through his presence the primordial seed of love and from the moment of the encounter the student changes. They know from then on, that this love exists in an incarnation and because their souls know this, they want to also attain this themselves one day.

The positive and negative effects of the initiation from Sai Baba

As a rule, Sathya Sai Baba’s students gain a natural awareness that this love is not limited to one religion but lives as an essence in everything. Despite often lacking engagement with life’s deeper “principles of being”, they subtly-feel love as the most desirable and valuable thing that reconciles people with each other. An initial basis for expansiveness and tolerance is common to almost all followers of Sai Baba.

However, unfortunately it is common that the negative effects are more obvious and want to drown out the positive dimension that lies in this initiation. A well-known artist from southern Germany, who is very occupied with spirituality and spiritual personalities, once said in a spontaneous emotional reaction, that she has never seen so much egotism as amongst Sai Baba’s devotees. This comment is unfortunately very understandable, for the devoted, god seeking people who once visited Sai Baba have no proper spiritual schooling path available to them and because they nevertheless received great energy through the kundalini-force streaming out from Sai Baba and furthermore were able to once see, or better said, were able to glimpse upon, the divine mystery of love in a person, they all to easily believe that they are chosen and favoured people. Without accurate disciplined spiritual training, with the experiences of darshan they gained in the ashram, they could only fall back into a formerly familiar emotional state and mix this up with spirituality. They resort to the five values taught by Sathya Sai Baba (these are ahimsa – non-violence, satya – truth, shanti – peace, dharma – righteousness, and prema – love) but more in the sense of purely adopting nominal notions. They have not gotten to know the ways of realisation and now use the five values like an essence. Egoism follows as consequence, that must arise from the lack of training steps. It is not prema, love, that actually comes out of the human being as a consequence, but all too often a-prema, non-love, and selfishness, which binds life more to matter and even often more than with non-initiated people. The future requires that the students of Sathya Sai Baba participate in an intensive course of study of their own, in terms of spiritual training and yoga.

What is the nature of initiation in the spiritual training with the new yoga experience(empfindung²⁾ Empfindung is a German word that has no direct translation into English. It means a soul feeling. This is an experience or perception that is felt with the soul.)?

The participants who come to my training, experience in me after a relatively short time, the effect of healing forces, that lead them – maybe not immediately, but after a few days – into a better and higher form of general experience and health. They notice that the healing, uplifting and harmonising influences, for example, do not come about only through the individual exercises, through good nutrition, or applied healing methods but that they actually arise in the encounter with my person. After a few days they feel in many ways lifted in energy, their form is better established and a so-called “being carried” can be spoken of. They feel inspired and, in most cases, partly released from the fates of the past. Illnesses become relative or disappear. People experience a new beginning and if they embrace more seminars, they gain unexpected perspectives.

In the soul the previous, the past fate, is slowly released, it becomes relative and a subtle-feeling for the spiritually existing reality and its laws develops in the first small beginnings through the explanations in the lessons. Day by day the thinking emancipates itself from the stored-up emotions and from now on truer subtle-feelings can flourish. The essential separates from the unessential. The subtle-feeling-organism (Empfindungsorganismus) of individual participants gains a quick and strong development from the overarching spiritual influence. Sometimes those interested already sense this when reading a book. When listening to a lecture or taking part in a row of exercises, however, forces of a subtle-feeling for truth stream towards individuals in a heightened and very intensive way. The thinking loosens itself from the emotional organism and slowly – this only happens after several and longer stays – the previous intertwinings of the will loosen themselves and for the first time the soul can partake in purer and more purposeful actions. Beauty awakens in students, freer subtle-feelings light up for the first time. Varying degrees of healing are almost always related to the encounters and subsequent stays. People who have taken part in some days of training and have been able to engage to some extent with the content, gain a better form-structure in their outer appearance and a more dynamic basis for activity. They become as a rule more open to relationship and they actually become more beautiful.

Through the initiation, through the transmission of spiritual mysteries, that always happens starting from a person, in this case from my person, individuals get to know, in first fragments, the mystery of the spiritual art of healing. They notice further the relativity of all external healing methods, both in conventional medicine, in natural medicine, as well as, with energetic treatments. It is the person that can set free the greatest healing force with the meeting of another, when it is grounded in spiritual principles and truths. At the same time, people who have received the initiation, in this sense, know in the depths of their souls, that they must not longer be concerned about themselves and their petty physical ailments, their conflicts with all kinds of turbulent relationship conditions and questions of subsistence, but now are obliged to give an adequate response to their healing. From now on the individual must look to the future and do constructive work for others. They must no longer want to save themselves but they must strive for the best development for the greater whole or for an ideal in humanity. “For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 16:25) This gospel sentence, spoken through Christ, becomes true in its entirety through initiation. The initiation, as it takes place in my teaching forms and training sessions, is a christian-spiritual one, that naturally cannot be compared with Christ himself, that would be presumptuous, but which nevertheless contains the principle of the spiritual worlds in the sense of a very deep christian philosophy. Those who receive it now no longer need to make psychotherapeutic efforts to save their psyche, they can now assume the freedom in their personality and in a meaningful way be constructively active, by teaching and healing others. The aim of initiation is for people to radiate healing to their fellow human beings.

The negative and positive effects of my initiation

Similar to all other schools there is also a great pallet of curious and not harmless negative effects in this development. Especially since the transformation processes are obvious and extraordinarily intensive, the forms of misuse and negative manifestations can make themselves known to a large degree as counter images. Students gladly want to harvest the beautiful sides but they do not want to carry out any proper studies. Practitioners know, for example, how through my person they have come into a higher state of consciousness, with sensitive subtle-feelings for the spiritual reality and they appreciate the healing effect. But by not working carefully enough on the content of teaching, on the exercises and on their social application, they bind themselves to the previously gained experiences, they ultimately want to experience them again in repeated encounters. How long though can the healing and the conscious forms of building people up be maintained through a passive participation in classes? The study of spiritual content needs individual aims with a striving towards higher ideals. It needs a constant intensive, constructive engagement with discerning perceptions of the outward forms that describe egotistically driven behaviour and are the opposite to the moral-forces that represent a lasting worthy-content for life. The initiated, the healed or those that have already experienced new beginnings in their lives, with the ideals, must realise the content of the spirit. They must unfold their cakras, their energy centres, they must not wait for a passive energy which the teacher offers them repeatedly. But how great is this passivity? How powerful are omissions on the path of training? Expectations from the teacher show themselves and the individual responsibility appears to be too much effort. Many, indeed very many people, who have experienced healing and an initial transformation in the soul, through my teaching, turn away because at some time they have to achieve a self-activity towards the spiritual content and they cannot accomplish this due to fear, comfort or feelings of attachment. From now on, however, they want to save their lives and are no longer available for a responsibility towards what they have learned. They almost always seek a way out in all kinds of therapies and take refuge in strengthened attachments to other people or to material life. It is perhaps not direct egoism that is visible in many, who do not carry the initiation they have received through to responsibility, but in many cases, there is an extreme clinging to attachments and all kinds of curious social behaviour. It is not uncommon for people to become even untruthful and energetically exploit their environment and their fellow human beings to an excessive degree. They realise that they would have to make a completely new start for their soul and they compensate for this situation by taking greater refuge in ideologies or worldly dependencies.

Many people flee to other paths and because they have not properly further developed the spiritual path as it is given here, they accuse it. They go, for example, to anthroposophical establishments and think that there they make up for their own omission. In reality, however, their own failure radiates over onto Anthroposophy and they also bring this into a worse level through conflict. It is not uncommon that people who were once students of mine have brought other establishments into conflict and caused harm there in a silent way. The omissions on the training path lead ultimately to a psychological instability. These people lack a future. They ought to develop the future outside of their ego-drive in constructive ideals, as exemplified by me, and then they would be able to radiate a great healing force.

A person who was in a distressing relationship conflict and had been receiving spiritual training for years, came to my classes in Naone and criticised both my way of teaching and the behaviour of colleagues. The judgement of this colleague was harsh and very subjectively chosen. Magical effects now flowed from this judgemental and projecting person to other participants and there was even an inevitable onset of illness in the whole group. 25 people incurred bronchial symptoms, temperatures and aching limbs. The colleague that had caused this even felt validated that all those present, including my person, were badly flawed and he left with defiance and aggression. After a few days, clarification work took place with this colleague, who fortunately was willing to engage in dialogue and at least listened to the criticism. After a long conversation the colleague began to reflect better on his own situation and discovered his projective behaviour. He was ashamed and then became ill himself, while everyone else directly got better. The colleague had projected the conflict in his relationship onto the spiritual teaching seminar. It took a few weeks and the colleague came back after he was able to order the conflict in his relationship and he attended the study course again. He could be given a lot of credit for his courage to come back again because he overcame a limit in his own mind. The repercussion of his participation was that from then on, he radiated considerable healing forces to his fellow human beings and gave the best and most constructive contribution to the trainings. He shone out beauty and hope for all others. This example shows that negative effects are preventable through conscious training, confrontation and above all honesty with oneself.

How is it possible for inherently negative effects to radiate so immensely through a misinterpretation of, or omissions on the path of training? Through initiation people know that they have arrived at an end point of their lives, and that they can now bridge this in another way, by living for a higher ideal and for a greater spiritual task. However, they must attain this task out of previously learnt content, for they can deeply trust this content. or in other words, it is inherent in them in the sense of a first form of subtle-feeling. Other content, for example, content from other teachings, has not been brought closer to them through initiation and therefore is far less accessible to them. The soul wants to realise with the deepest drive that which it trusts and not that which is remote. Although Rudolf Steiner’s statements are intensive initiatory content, they are more difficult to access for those who have studied with me. Above all, my students are not yet able to see Rudolf Steiner’s soul in the content and therefore cannot find any personal example for the words. In the soul people who have received initiation through a teacher notice that they can only live through the spiritual content of spiritual school and that if they muster the courage to develop can do a great deal in this way. They overcome a limit, which, in an evangelical sense, can actually be described as if from death to life. But if they do not produce the courage for these activities, they take the wide path of ruin, as it is said in the Sermon on the Mount;³⁾ “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it. Matt 7:13-7:14 or in other words they bury their talent and lose their spiritual abilities.⁴⁾ Matt 25:14-25:39 They feed that previous body of emotion, that they should assign to the past. They do not summon the courage to develop a free consciousness of high moral standing. The gate of initiation is the narrow one that is referred to in the Gospel. Those students that have once received this will not be able to deny the spirit regardless of all the self-made excuses.