If I were asked to explain the meaning of initiation in plain words, I would say that it is like the experience of a person who has never learnt how to swim, and he steps into the river or into the sea for the first time, without knowing whether he will be able to float or whether he will be swept away and drowned. Every person has had an initiation in the worldly sense in some form or other. When a business man begins an entirely new enterprise, and there is nothing to support him at this moment except the thought, "No matter whether I lose or gain, I will take a step forward, I will go into this enterprise although I do not know what will happen later", he undergoes a worldly initiation. And the first attempt of a man who wants to learn to ride, if he has never been on horseback before nor driven a horse, so that he does not know where the horse will take him--this also is an initiation.