How to Attain Deathlessness

Scientists are hard at work trying to figure out how to make us deathless, but they will never be successful because birth, death, old age, and disease are built-in non-optional features of this material existence. However, in spite of deathlessness being completely beyond the reach of their empirical experiment and research, it is completely within the grip of those who fully surrender themselves unto Lord Sri Krishna. For those who seriously commit themselves to an eternal life of service to Krishna, the initiation ceremony marks the beginning of their deathlessness, their immortality.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

Initiation Ceremony --20 January 2008
in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
(This a mother and son. Beryl Trimble has become Bhavani devi dasi and her son, Richard, has become Raghunath Das.)Sankarshan Das Initiation Ceremony in Vancouver

Answers According to the Vedic Version:

Question: What is Initiation?

Please accept my humble obeisances.
All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

Our sincere thanks to you for spreading Krishna consciousness through the most powerful medium of the age - the internet. Indeed so many are benefiting from this. Our day starts with reading your Thought For the Day.

Please help me understand what is initiation - first and second and why is it required. What does this mean to a guru and disciple. What happens to the guru and disciple if the disciple does not keep up his vows.

Always your servant,

Jayanthi

Answer: Getting Bhakti Seed from Guru

Initiation means by the mercy of Krishna through His agent, the spiritual master, one is getting the seed of devotional service planted within his heart. Initiation is required for those who want to advance in Krishna consciousness because without initiation one is not connected with Krishna.

Second initiation is recognition that now the disciple has become a fully competent Vaishnava.

Initiation is the greatest opportunity for a soul who is suffering within the cycle of birth and death to regain his original spiritual identity in the spiritual world. It is the great mercy of the spiritual master to absorb the karma of disciple and bless him with Krishna bhakti.

If the disciple does not keep his vows, he falls within the clutches of the material energy and loses this supreme opportunity. And the spiritual master must then sometimes suffer from sickness and bad dreams. The spiritual master is obliged to stay within this material world until his disciples are all transferred to the spiritual sky. Therefore anyone who takes initiation must very seriously keep his vows so that he does not put his spiritual master into difficulty.

The spiritual master petitions all fallen souls on behalf of Lord Krishna requesting them to come back to Krishna through the process of devotional service. When a person is sincere to do this the spiritual master mercifully initiates him as a disciple and teaches him how to become spiritually perfect.

Sankarshan Das Adhikari

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