MURYOKO
'Infinite Light'
Journal of Shin Buddhism
Harold Stewart
Initiation and Purification
A radical and irreversible difference separates those who have personally passed through the initiatory trials and ordeals and those students of comparative religion who have merely read about them in books. Actual or operative initiation should be clearly distinguished from theoretical or speculative, and even more from a passive mental indoctrination or reconditioning. For after real initiation a permanent spiritual change in the whole being of the initiate results; whereas mundane cerebration on the subject confers no right to speak with any spiritual authority.
Often the accumulation of evil karma, both individual and social, is so heavy that the candidate can only be purified of his defilements by undergoing intensified suffering through the Ordeals by Fire and Water. If the drastic process of his total regeneration is to succeed, he must pass through the solve, or dissolution, before the coagula, or reintegration, not of his psychological individuality alone but of his whole being, can be accomplished. To break down his inveterate egoism and to dissolve the karmic residues of his old self, he may need to be subjected to a lifetime of trials and ordeals of body and mind. Exposure to the tests of hunger and thirst, heat and cold, pain and lack of sleep, fear of danger and even threats of death, may all have to be faced and endured to the limit of one's powers before virtual initiation becomes actual. Besides, the aspirant must be prepared to renounce every possession and privilege of his former worldly existence before he can pass through the gate of initiatory death and be reborn into his new ‘posthumous’ life, still in this world but no longer attached to it.
Lacking this indispensable purgation and without having passed through such an existential crisis, initiation may remain merely virtual, the repetition of an empty ritual formula. Yet even virtual initiation is still capable of later activation, once obstructive karma has been cleared away; and for this, as Frithjof Schuon has remarked, life itself, especially in the modern world, can provide trials and ordeals enough. But what is derived from any ascetic regimen is in direct ratio to what has been invested in it by religious fervour, to the intensity of tapas, or spiritual fire, generated either by self-effort and suffering or as a free transference of grace or merit from a higher power. Now at the critical point when the candidate has undergone the initiatory tests and is ready to be reborn, two contrary ways open up: a positive spiritual path ascending to Heaven, and a negative anti-spiritual path descending to Hell.
The way up and the way down may lie along the same Axis Mundi, but their directions are diametrically opposed. The authentic Traditions, whether in the Metaphysical or in the religious mode, guide the pilgrim in the upward direction, so that the candle of his individual consciousness continues to shine and, even though its flame may seem invisible, is not lost but adds its light to the splendour of the Supernal Sun. But the pseudo-religious cults, whether political or psychic, entice the unwary in the downward direction, so that their conscious candle is inverted and extinguished: either submerged in the proletarian masses or smothered by the black morass of the 'collective unconscious' of inferior psychic residues.