Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

'SECOND TALK 23

alone. Your private relationship with your Master y
that is your own and His affair.

Remember •that the real Probationary Path has
nothing to do with this probationary path, although
it is probable that the two may coincide. You may
be a fully accepted pupil; you may be what is
called it a son of the Master"; those are your
private relations with your Master, and you must
not confuse them in your minds with the Initiations
which are given by the Great Hierarchy itself. The
latter are like degrees conferred by a university ;

your private relations with your Master are like
those of the student with the Head of his college—
there is nothing official about them. That is a thing
which we must keep clear in our thought.

What then do we mean by Initiation in this case ?
We mean the first step which makes a man a member
of that Great Brotherhood. Now that step is not
conferred arbitrarily. It is a recognition of the
attainment of a certain stage of evolution—a stage
marked by what used to be called in the earlier books,
" the union of the higher and the lower self, " -the
union of the ego and the personality. A man who
wishes to put himself forward as a candidate for
the First Great Initiation must acquire the Quali-
fications given in this book, and he must make his
personality an expression of the ego and nothing
else; there must be no lower personality left to
thrust itself forward, to have desires of its own in