By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

While I was doing deep internal work, it was the external world that showed me my spiritual progress. I was more centered and peaceful in the midst of life. Less reactive. Less needy. More decisive, simply knowing what to do.

Anxiety left me, for I wasn’t hoping to get something outside of me that would complete me – I felt complete within my own Self. A subtle level of bliss was always there, an undercurrent, under everything else in my mind.  I could rely on this inner buoyancy, like I was floating in an extra salty sea. I used the world to help me gauge my deepening spiritual state.

Baba did it a different way. He used his inner experiences to gauge his spiritual progress.One of the reasons is that he had lots of inner experiences! Fortunately he wrote about them for us, so we can learn from his mystical inner expansion.

He had physical kriyas, spontaneous movements, classical yoga poses during his meditations. And pranayamas, yogic breathing patterns. He saw lights and colors, Gods and Goddesses, heaven and hell, other worlds and much more. One reason he did it that way is because he had 25 years of full-time yoga practice before he got Shaktipat.  

I had 0 years before Shaktipat.  Well, I had 4 or 5 months as I had started a yoga class a few months earlier. When I got Shaktipat, I had no clue what was happening to me.  I loved it, but was at sea without a compass.  Until I read his books and listened to his discourses.

Still, I haven’t seen all the things he saw. I’m not so visual as he was. I am more kinesthetic, so I feel my way inward. Like I can feel the Truth, rather than see it. For me, it’s a feeling.

And Baba emphasized feeling – bhaava. He said, “God is in your feeling.”

How do you know love? It’s a feeling.

How do you know happiness? It’s a feeling.

How do you know God?  God is in your feeling.

This is why yoga gives you ways to get better at feeling. One way is by cultivating your proprioception, your ability to sense your body and its movements – the yoga poses do this for you.

Another way is by cultivating your energetic enlivenment. Your yogic breathing practice does this, giving you more prana, making you more alive.  Baba said that every disease is due to…

— Excerpt from March 16 Satsang Discourse, available for viewing in our Deep Teachings Videos.