What is initiation?
Umapati Swami: Some of the guys were already bowing down to Srila Prabhupada but I wasn't. Hayagriva said to me, "I don't like this bowing." I said, "Me neither." It was too foreign. There was also some talk about an initiation and Roy came up to me and said, "Wally, do you want to get initiated?" I said, "I don't know if I'm ready." He said, "None of us are, but we're going to do it anyway." I said, "Okay, me too." Roy put my name down on the list and we asked Prabhupada, "What is initiation?" Prabhupada said, "I'll tell you later."
After the morning class the day before the initiation Prabhupada said, "Now I will tell you what initiation means. Initiation means that the spiritual master accepts the disciple and agrees to take charge of his welfare, and the disciple accepts the spiritual master and agrees to worship him as God" and he got up and walked out of the room. We sat there looking at each other. I thought, "We wouldn't be this stunned if a hydrogen bomb had gone off in this room." To worship Prabhupada as God was inconceivable, especially after what Prabhupada had said about people who want to be God. Prabhupada had Janaki, Mukunda's wife, string the beads because, as Prabhupada said, "Women have the patience to do this kind of work and they are good at it." After we all had our japa beads then we had our neck beads tied on. I said, "How do you get these off?" And somebody said, "You don't." Prabhupada picked up our japa beads one by one and asked, "Whose are these?" When he picked up my beads, I said, "Those are mine." Prabhupada motioned for me to come to him and bow down. I couldn't avoid it anymore so I bowed down. Then I repeated what Prabhupada said, he gave me my beads and he said my name was Umapati. I thought Umapati was a name for Vishnu meaning the husband of the Goddess of Fortune, but that's not what Prabhupada said. Umapati is actually a name for Lord Shiva. I returned to my seat and I told Hayagriva, who was sitting next to me, "Getting your beads is great" because he hadn't gotten his yet. Prabhupada had all of us touch our beads to the feet of Lord Chaitanya on the Panca Tattva picture, and then he started the sacrificial fire. As he poured ghee on the fire the room filled with smoke, and smoke began to pour out the windows. I thought that any second the Fire Department would come and the firemen wouldn't believe what was going on there. Later I found out that everybody else in the room had the same thoughts. Finally we all went home and left Prabhupada to clean up. Nobody thought about cleaning up after the ceremony.
Reference: Memories Anecdotes of a Modern Day Saint - Volume 3 by Siddhanta Dasa
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