Why ekadas bhav is not given easily?

Babaji made me wait about a year before he gave me ekadas bhav. I asked him for it when I first met him, but he wouldn’t do it. He said I should talk to my guru. After going back to the west to preach for nine months, I went back to Babaji pre­pared to stay with him for an extended period and begged him to ini­ti­ate me. We both knew he was the only one who could do it, so he did. I was a san­nyasi, chant­ing 64 rounds, was a devo­tee for seven years, lived in India for two years, and had pretty much proven myself. I had a burn­ing desire for man­jari bhav and noth­ing was going to stop me.

I’m not say­ing how long a wait­ing period there will be, but there must be some and it is only for advanced devo­tees who are ready for it and will take it seri­ously. It’s about build­ing rela­tion­ship with me and the dis­ci­plic suc­ces­sion. The only way in is through the grace of the guru. There must be a com­mit­ment. Per­sons must be ready. It’s not for every­one. I don’t want a bunch of peo­ple run­ning around, say­ing they are my dis­ci­ples and doing bad things. This isn’t for everyone.

Today, per­sons often have gurus already and the rela­tion­ships between us all have to be clear. I am not inter­ested in tak­ing another guru’s dis­ci­ples. I also don’t think many gurus would be happy with their dis­ci­ples tak­ing ini­ti­a­tion from me. I also don’t want per­sons tak­ing ini­ti­a­tion from me and then going to another for ini­ti­a­tion. This cer­tainly isn’t for begin­ners. I rep­re­sent a line of dis­ci­plic suc­ces­sion and sid­dha pranali which goes with ekadas bhav is the link to that line of grace from Sri Jah­nava Devi and Bhak­tivin­ode Thakur. This is costly grace. There is a cost of dis­ci­ple­ship. I have spent the past 32 years car­ry­ing out Babaji’s orders. I am not going to make this a cheap thing.

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This entry was posted on Friday, July 7th, 2006 at 04:01 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.