Section X - The Gayatri Initiation
Nathdwar had me fast for a day, and then he said for me to meet him before dawn. I always awoke early. So I went to him while it was still dark. He rose from meditation position, and we walked up the mountain path. Mostly there were hills, but the path was steep. We went into a cave, which had water in it and found places to sit.
He said to meditate on Lord Shiva, and do the OM NAMAH SHIVAYAH mantra. I did but Shiva did not appear. Then Nathdwar chanted OM so that I would cease meditation, and I saw that his eyes were glowing. He asked me my birth caste, and I told him honestly that I did not know. My father had come from far away, and was forced by poverty to farm. He never spoke of his caste and where he came from, and neither did any of my relatives. I did not know why. But once when I was young, I heard him speak with my uncle, and he said that marrying the Brahman witch was not worth what he now had to put up with.
The guru said, "I expected as much." It is clear to everyone here that you have Brahman blood. Your mother may have married below caste, or have had a forbidden alliance within caste, but you are a Brahman (and not an outcaste). I too came of Brahman caste but renounced it. But you have never had your Brahman initiation. You should never have renounced [the world] without it. Before any other initiation, you must have the sacred thread. We will do a sannyasi's version of the ritual - we will not ask you to renounce renunciation. You will gain only one thing from it - the gayatri mantra, the great mantra of the sun.
So he chanted the mantra aloud, and I did too, and he placed his hand upon my forehead. I saw the sun rising from a great river, and entering it again, and I followed it through the waves and currents to the ocean. There beneath the ocean, it became my guide. I was no longer myself, nor was Nathdwar any longer himself, but we were both drops in a great current resonating with the sound of the mantra. I could sense him urge me on, and we went to the source of the world, and the great light, which illuminated the world. We worshiped it, and returned.
Nathdwar gave me my sacred thread and said, "Now you are a Brahman." Then he took it from me and said, "Now you are no longer a Brahman - and a proper renunciant"