Elisabeth Haich’s ‘Initiation’

by Sanjay Sivadas

[box]Initiation is worth its weight in gold, says Sanjay Sivadas. Find out what he has to say about this book by Elisabeth Haich.[/box]

Initiation is an extraordinary book penned by Elisabeth Haich in 1953. Elisabeth Haich (1897-1994) was a well-known painter and sculptor from Hungary. In 1948, she, along with Selvarajan Yesudian founded in Switzerland what’s the oldest school of yoga in Europe.

Initiation is initially set in Hungary, pre-World War II. But a spell-binding story within a story soon emerges. Elisabeth Haich recounts the dramatic story of her past life in Egypt circa 4500 BC where she was the daughter of Pharaoh Atothis. The story begins with the preparations for her initiation by High Priest Ptahhotep. In ancient Egypt, the whole purpose of initiation was to teach a neophyte that ‘there is no death’. The high priests knew how to keep a neophyte’s mind awake even while his or her entranced body lay in a granite sarcophagus within the Great Pyramid. Elisabeth Haich tells us how the future appears in a neophyte’s consciousness as dreams. The latter could see their future all the way to the end as a dream. He or she could prevent these dreams from turning into reality on the level of the material plane by going down into the depths of their being (where these forces are hiding in a latent state) to experience these dreams as real. If one identified with these dreams, all these would remain real for them and he or she would have to experience them to the very end as reality in the three-dimensional world of Time and Space. Not all neophytes passed these tests. If a neophyte passed all these tests, he or she entered what’s known as ‘a condition without fate’.

In Initiation, Elisabeth Haich talks about a lost civilization of a race of people who were technologically (these people knew how to liberate their vehicles from the gravitational pull of the Earth and make them fly with the power of thought) and spiritually far more advanced than the people of today. Further, we come to know how, by whom and for what purposes the pyramids at Giza were built. Incidentally, 2 ½ million blocks of limestone, each weighing about 2-10 tons were used to construct the Great Pyramid, alone. How this was built still remains one of the greatest mysteries of archaeology. Elisabeth Haich also sheds light on Moses (how he really parted the Red Sea), Jesus Christ and the profound truths contained in the Bible.

The author also discusses about the epochs of the world in this book. Each epoch lasts for about 2160 years. According to Elisabeth Haich, in the coming Age of Aquarius (it’s just around the corner), the boundary between science and religion would disappear. A great teacher would prove to the world that the inner core of all religions is one and the same truth, thus abolishing all the differences that seem to exist between the three dominant religions of the world, today. Also, we would really begin to understand how our entire universe is teeming with life.

Initiation is a book you simply can’t put down. In 1943, when Elisabeth Haich happened to meet Selvarajan Yesudian (the son of a doctor from Chennai who went to Hungary in 1937 to study medicine), she had not the faintest doubt that he was the little boy from India whose life her father had saved in Egypt circa 4500 BC. In the latter pages of the book, we also get to know an interesting fact about Pharaoh Atothis. In pre-World War II, Hungary, when Elisabeth Haich touches base with High Priest Ptahhotep, she asks him the whereabouts of Pharaoh Atothis, her father in her past life in ancient Egypt.

‘Father of my Soul,’ I ask Ptahhotep again, ‘where is Atothis, your brother and my father in Egypt? I long to communicate with him again, and I’m also certain he has never abandoned me.’ Instantly before my spiritual eyes there appears the image of a splendid man, one who has been, in recent times, the greatest teacher and expounder of the highest, profoundest truths. I’ve read books published by his disciples on the basis of his lectures. In reading these books I was deeply moved because every sentence I read made me feel absolutely positive that I knew the man who had made the statement, that I was in profound communication with him, that I knew all his thoughts and that I belonged to him! I knew I would never have a chance to meet him as he had died in a far-off country when I was still a little girl.

There are enough clues in Initiation that help us know that this splendid man Elisabeth Haich speaks about is Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902).

To inhale the wisdom that unfolds in the pages of this book one needs to have an open mind on subjects like reincarnation. Reading Initiation may bring a person one step closer to truth.

Elisabeth Haich concludes the book by saying,

I remember … Oh God! … I remember! All these events I’ve been experiencing as ‘reality’ in my life on the material, earthly plane are things I experienced several thousand years ago in my initiation in the pyramid. At that time all these events were lying in the depths of my soul as unconscious, still latent energies, still pure cause. This is because everything that happens here on earth is the materialization of a complete, accomplished cause waiting on the spiritual plane for materialization. When one achieves the ability consciously to reach the depths of the self where those energies are awaiting their realization, one experiences cause simultaneously with the effect—the future—as a complete and perfect present! And the present, our life, everything that happens to us is merely an opportunity to meet the tests and trials and challenges of initiation. An opportunity to relax the tensions and dissolve away the stresses we have stored up within ourselves, for aeons and aeons of time, by our thoughts and words and deeds … the tensions and stresses that are the cause of our destiny, our future. To the extent that we are able to become conscious of these tensions and overcome them, we free our human consciousness which is tied down by these energies and limited because it is tied down, and we identify our consciousness with the true divine self waiting behind every personal feeling of ego … we identify ourselves with God … and that is Initiation.

Initiation is indeed worth its weight in gold. After reading this book you will never be the same again. To read Initiation is to be part of initiation.

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