In the 1950's a spirited brahmachari took to austere religious life, eking out his living by the quasi-spiritual endowment of water divining. It gave him one meal a day and two sets of clothes to his respectability. He was universally respected but he longed for commensurate comforts in life without deserting the codes of his life. The concept of Spiritual Prosperity or Prosperous Spirituality attracted him. He examined the various tenets of this way of life - service, enlightenment, meditation, invocation, initiation, psychological purification, consecration, surrender, raising one's consciousness, pure goodness - and chose initiation as it suited his traditional culture. It was arranged.
He knew the tradition means elaborate procedures. He was told no such procedures were followed here, but flower offering was not inadmissible. Those who seek prosperity often resort to cash offerings. He emphatically denied his seeking affluence and chose flower offering. At the moment of initiation, he had a new spiritual birth and his usual brahmachari tejes on his face gained in lustre, almost sparkling.The direct result was his appointment as State Water Diviner. He did in the next twelve months as much work as he had done all his thirty years of profession. He was enjoying the Spiritual Expansion of Social Life, but the inflow of his income was in a trickle, almost defeating his original intention. When this was raised as an issue, he was told that was his deliberate choice. The new realisation was a mortification or even a humiliation. He felt humbled before the enormity of his petulant behaviour. He offered to reverse his attitude and was prepared to do now what he haughtily omitted earlier. The cash offering was made and accepted. All the fabulous income that had waited at the outside flowed in quickly.