Hands folded, garlanded

Devotees ask him for permission constantly. May I start, do I need initiation from you, is there a mantra you will give me, can I take the name without a guru. He refuses the premise of the question every time, and the refusal is not humility. It is the position of the tradition he belongs to, stated plainly.

Nothing stands between a person and the name. There is no ceremony that unlocks it, no fee that qualifies you, no clean room you must find first, no hour of the morning it works better in, no direction to face and no posture to hold. He is explicit that this includes him. You do not need his consent, and asking for it is a way of postponing the thing you already have.

The reason he presses this so hard is that entry conditions do a particular kind of harm. A practice with requirements quietly sorts people, and the people it sorts out are the ones with the least room in their day: the woman with three children and a household, the man working nights, someone sitting in a hospital corridor with no idea when they will next be alone. A name that can be taken silently on a full train sorts nobody out.

It also removes the most common excuse in satsang, which is the reason he keeps returning to it. Devotees explain that they will begin properly once things settle, once the house is quieter, once they have found a teacher, once the children are older. He treats all of these as the same sentence, and points out that the conditions being waited for do not arrive, and were never needed.

There is a second thing he is protecting against. A tradition in which access runs through a particular man becomes a business very quickly, and he refuses to be a gate. This is consistent with everything else at the ashram: nothing is sold, no initiation is arranged for money, and anybody offering to secure you a mantra or a private audience for a price is selling something that does not exist.

What it asks of you is to start today rather than on a date. Not to prepare, not to ask anybody, not to wait for a better week. Take the name once during whatever you are doing next, and then again later, and let a practice assemble itself out of that instead of out of a plan. He is fairly clear that this is the entire entry procedure.

The rest of his most repeated sayings are on the quotes page, the teaching they belong to is set out on the teachings page, and the questions devotees bring him about anger, money, family and grief are answered on the questions answered page.