"Yoga is essentially a technique
to experience Him who is inside us."

A few spiritual experiences have real significance and therefore undue importance should not be attached to them as this may divert us from our goal. Persons who give too much importance to experiences are likely to 'miss the wood for the trees.' Too much importance has been given to dreams, visions, hearing of voices and the like in the traditional works on the subjects of Religion, Yoga and Mysticism. This has led aspirants to wrongly conclude that where there are no such experiences, something is seriously wrong with their practice of the method. My Master has emphatically stated that experiences, as experiences, have no value since what should concern us is the attainment of the Goal, and not experiences enroute. We may take note of them in the same manner as we note the passing landscape when on a journey. No greater importance should be attached to them. In any case, a desire or craving for experiences is definitely a wrong attitude, and should be changed forthwith.

Condition and Experience
When we start meditation, there is a need and tendency to judge our sittings by what we feel during the sittings or what we experience, the conditions. That is always a problem in the beginning. And in some way we are also taught to expect that we should have experiences. But what is an experience? I don't know what is an experience, you see. I don't know what to call what we experience, whether they are experiences or some sort of situations - it's like when you go out you feel cold, is it an experience? Of course, in the normal use of language, we say, "I experienced cold outside." But to my way of thinking it's not an experience at all - if I go and stand out in the cold I feel cold. If I come back into the room, I feel warm. So, I think we call all these things, experiences. The food is an experience, the drive back to Seattle is an experience. Today, everything is an experience. If you sleep well it's an experience. If you don't sleep it is another experience. So I think an experience, strictly speaking, should be something we should not have in the normal course of events. Something, shall we say, not germane to the situation, not natural in that situation. Something which should not have happened. Suppose I were to go out and stand now outside under the trees in the cold and feel hot. That would be an experience. Or if I were to jump into the swimming pool, or that canal down there, and feel warm - that would be an experience. I mean, to feel cold where you should feel cold could hardly be called an experience. So this mistake, we all very blithely make - that I closed my eyes and I felt that it was all dark. Of course, the lights have been switched off, I close my eyes and I see nothing but darkness. It is hardly an experience.

Now suppose you are to feel the reverse, that all the lights have been switched off, my eyes are closed, but I felt as if a pair of car headlights were focused on my face - that would be an experience. So the first thing we need to distinguish is, what is an experience and what is not. To most of us, in our anxiety, in our eagerness to experience something, we sort of convert everything into an experience - if it makes any sense to you. So, that tendency to convert everything into an experience because we feel we should have an experience, relates in some way to a need to have an experience, rather than to the fact that there should be experiences during a sitting. Now this is the first point we should note very carefully.

The second is, how to sift out the true experience from that which is natural to the situation. So we must know what is natural and what is not. Now, if I should eat an apple and it should burn my tongue like pickles, that would be a very strange apple indeed. Wouldn't it? Or if I should put in mango pickles full of hot red chilies and taste it sweet, that would be very strange, too. So, strangeness seems to indicate a more appropriate evaluation of what is an experience and what is not. Strangeness in the sense that, that should normally not be the feeling associated with that activity. So, when we sit for meditation, we are normally expected to feel calm; we are normally expected to feel that thoughts, or the level of thoughts, has gone down, the frequency of thoughts has gone down. These are, therefore, not experiences; they are consequences of meditation. But most often the rookie abhyasi says, "Sir, I had a wonderful experience today." "What did you have?" "Oh, I didn't have any thoughts today." And the preceptor is also happy, he says, "Wonderful." Technically, it is not an experience, it is a state induced in you by the fact of meditation or, shall we say, by the fact of correct meditation, right meditation, properly done. So when we start out with our diaries, of course to us it is valuable indication of how you are meditating. There is a suppression of thoughts or a reduction in the level of thinking, you feel more calm, at peace with yourself, with the environment. These are states consequent on right meditation. So we have to distinguish between experiences and conditions or states.

Now the other thing is, when we have these two, there is not only a distinction between them, but there is an interplay between them, in the sense that when our condition is gross, when we are in the beginning stages of spiritual life, the grossness itself conditions the experience. It is like, you know, when you have a fever you cannot taste what you are eating, properly. The taste eludes you. Smokers know that when they have a fever, they cannot enjoy a smoke. Now the tobacco hasn't changed, so something has changed in you. Your fever has made it impossible for you to perceive certain things. So, our condition does have an effect on our experience.

A very mundane example. We are travelling on the road in a very nice car through very scenic surroundings. But the man is sleeping, the passenger, you see - how can he have an experience? So, to know what is an experience, to know whether it's really an experience, we have to be aware of our condition and also to be alert to note what is going on. A passive state in which we are almost asleep, well, you would need thunder or lighting before you would know it is an experience. As they say, he has to be given a sock on the jaw before he feels anything. So, to experience - to have an experience, and to experience the experience are two different things. Whether I am asleep or awake the road is passing by, the scenes are going on, the beauties of nature are passing by, but to a man who is asleep, it is as if they had never happened. But to one who is awake, who has an aesthetic sense of appreciation, who has colour sense, form sense, he sees beauty in everything that he sees. A businessman only looks at the lumber and says, "Ah, what wonderful timber, and how many tons I could get out of an acre of this sort of woodland." And some of these incendiaries might think what a wonderful blaze they could have if they set a match stick to the whole thing.

We see what we see, not because we see what we see but because of what we are conditioned to see. I see what I think I see. Similarly, I hear what I think I hear. Very often I am sitting in my room here and hear this whispering of the wind in the trees and I think it's raining. You come out and see it's just rather stiffer breeze than normal, and it produces a sound like rain. Or if we are to depend only on these senses of ours - beautiful senses: eyes, nose, the sense of touch, taste, smell, hearing - we would have a very different idea of what the universe is from what it really is. It's not enough to see and to hear and to perceive and to touch and to taste and to smell. It is necessary to evaluate and to come through that into an association with the reality which is trying to peep through these experiences like, you know, the tentative touch of reality intruding into our consciousness, waiting for us to see the reality behind it. If you don't, it timidly, shyly withdraws. That is the reason why we have experience after experience, but nothing penetrates into the consciousness, nothing makes an impression on the soul. We see sunrise after sunrise and it doesn't make an impression. We see people dying one after the other and it makes no impression. We think we are going to be eternally alive.

So you see, how we can convert an ordinary, mundane thing like drinking coffee into an experience, or a smoke into an experience, and then to boost our ego into saying, "Yes, you are right, we put more and more money on that experience to prove to ourselves that it's a valuable experience." So instead of accepting the reality of an experience, we are loading what we suppose to be an experience with all the unreality that we can possibly load onto it, and present it as something novel, something unique, something wonderful. This tendency we should not sort of import into our meditative states, because the whole idea of meditation is to perceive reality, to become one with the reality that we perceive; finally, to merge into that reality ourselves, so that our separate identity no longer exists. So we have to be careful, we have to be discriminating, because in yoga, discrimination is of the highest value and necessity.

Now whether that is a condition or whether it is an experience, your guess is as good as anybody else's. I would say that without that condition you could not have that experience. So in spirituality, I would hazard the suggestion that every experience, to be real, must be backed by a condition of existence which is real, a state of existence which is real. And that is no mystery at all. I must be happy before I can feel happy. I must have pain inflicted on me before I can feel pain. Otherwise, you call these states suggestive, auto-suggestive or just neurotic. When you feel something that is not there, we say they are neurotic persons. In spirituality there is no space, or no place, for neurotics.

So the condition comes first, the experience comes subsequently. Then I have no difficulty in distinguishing the condition and the experience, because they are part of the same thing. I see a thing because the thing exists. If the thing didn't exist and I saw it, it would be a fantasy, it would be a hallucination. So what is the difficulty about understanding the spiritual jargon? It's what you are doing all the time. Except that, transposed to the inner existence, to the inner universe within myself, which is me, I find it difficult to understand how a condition and an experience can be the same thing.

When you sit in meditation, please try to be discriminative. It's not enough to say, "Well you know Chari, I felt pain here." Yes of course because you are used to cushions all the time in your pampered existence, and when you sit for the first time on the floor everything seems to prick and you know, that is the reality of the floor on which we must have sat before. If you had sat before like that, today we would not feel it. So we must try to be discriminative. Is this an experience or is this just the impact of the universe on me? And then write our diaries. So the best way is to sit in meditation, ruminate afterwards - what was this that I felt? Was it a feeling? Was it an experience? Anyway let me write it down, because now I am not able to discriminate but the fact of writing itself will train me in the discriminative faculties and I shall be able to write better and better as I go.

My Master said, "The condition, that is, the spiritual condition, must keep changing if there is progress. Often we find that an abhyasi has a good experience at a particular level, which he likes to be repeated at subsequent sittings. But I always tell them that if they have the same experience again and again, then they should run to the preceptor, because such repetition of experience shows stagnation, and requires correction. So change is necessary because without it no progress is possible."

Classification of Spiritual Experiences
We have to classify the subject of spiritual experiences into two major classes. The first one consists of all those experiences that an abhyasi experiences by himself during his meditation, with or without preceptors, as well as in dreams. This class is amenable to the threefold subdivision. The second major class contains all experiences which the Master deliberately induces in us, or makes possible for us to experience. Such experiences can be of any level of 'being.'

The first one: Speaking in a very general manner, experiences can be classified as falling into three groups.

(a) The first group contains experiences arising out of the abhyasi's own imagination, or as a result of his having projected them himself. Abhyasis, indeed all human beings, are prone to discuss matters among themselves, and to exchange notes on each other's experiences. In spiritual sadhana this is not advisable since, in the same sitting, different abhyasis may undergo different experiences. This does not mean that one is progressing more, or faster, than another. Experiences depend on such diverse factors as the samskaras of the individual, his previous background, social environment and so on. If abhyasis discuss each other's experience, some may feel that they are not getting the right experience from meditation, and may feel dejected. Worse, they may project the same things unconsciously during subsequent sittings and have experiences which are their own creation. Therefore Master advises abhyasis not to discuss their spiritual experiences with each other, but only with Master himself or with the preceptor. Such experiences are not true spiritual experiences and have no value whatsoever.

(b) The second group covers all experiences arising from the cleaning process. Master has stated that when the system of the abhyasi is cleaned, then the past impressions are removed. When these impressions surface to the mind then the original experience or activity which created the impressions is once again created in the mind. So the abhyasi has an 'experience.' In general the experiences which abhyasis have are of this category. The visions of gods and goddesses that abhyasis experience during meditation are of this type. Whenever such an experience comes up, it is an indication of a past involvement with that particular deity. Many abhyasis have startlingly clear visions of gods or saints. Quite a few make the tragic mistake of thinking that the goal has been reached, since their chosen personal god has granted them his darshan. It is a pity that persons who practice without the guidance of a capable Master mistake such experiences for divine revelations, and go back to the traditional forms of worship of that particular deity which appeared to them. Abhyasis have to be on their guard against such misinterpretation of experiences. Many abhyasis report having visions of gardens, hill-stations and the like. These also belong to the same category. Some experiences may also refer to a previous life. Generally the abhyasi will not be able to correctly interpret and evaluate such experiences, particularly if they have occurred during sittings with the Master or the preceptor.

(c) The third category contains what Master has referred to as "revelatory experiences." These are of a very valuable nature as they contain messages from the inner Self of the abhyasi which, if properly interpreted, can help him considerably on his journey. Such experiences may come during meditation sittings, or as dreams. Master has also stated that orders, instructions, and advice from the Master himself can be conveyed in this way.

When we analyse the situation we discover an important trend. The imaginary experiences and those projected by the abhyasi himself, come very early in a person's spiritual life and fortunately, do not last long. The experiences arising out of cleaning may be numerous, and may last for many years depending on the condition of the abhyasi. The revelatory experiences come when the abhyasi is established on the path, and devotion for the Master has filled his heart. There is no set time for this. It may be the very same day on which one commences abhyas, or never at all.

The Second Group: Apart from these experiences there are those that can be created by the power of the transmission itself, when consciously done with such an intention.

I recall going to Dr. Varadachari at Madras one hot summer evening for a sitting. When I reached his residence I was hot and sweating profusely. Within minutes of my arrival he asked me to sit with him in meditation. I continued to feel very hot as the fan was not on. But strange to say, within two or three minutes of commencing meditation I felt a cool breeze blowing around me. I cooled off immediately. The breeze continued to blow, and I actually felt a little chilly. At the same time I could feel that the atmosphere around me was still as hot as ever. I was puzzled, but enjoyed the cool breeze that seemed to be blowing for my benefit. When the sitting ended Dr. Varadachari asked me what I felt. I told him of the peculiar sensation. He said, "That is the beauty of this system. I knew you were feeling hot and so I transmitted to you from the water centre. So you felt cool and refreshed. A capable preceptor must be able to work upon the system as a musician plays upon an instrument."

Another occasion relates to my father. He had a hankering to visit the holy shrine at Badrinath. He had had this desire ever since his boyhood. We had arrived at Shahjahanpur to attend the wedding of Master's son Chi. Umesh. My father expressed a desire to go from there to Badrinath, and sought Master's permission. Master said, "Why do you want to go there? It is dangerous. The roads are bad and a journey now is a great risk. If you are hankering for the experience you hope to get there, sit in meditation and I will give you the experience here itself, right now. There is no need to undertake such a troublesome and risky journey for this purpose!"

I will relate one particular example to show at what levels such experiences can be imparted to a disciple if Master desires to do so. There had been a lot of new thinking about the moon, several years before moon travel was even contemplated in the West. Our sister Kasturi had expressed a desire to know what conditions were like on that satellite. Master said, "All right, sit in meditation. I will try to give you the experience of that condition." Sister Kasturi told me that she did have a profound experience and had noted the details down in her diary. Later, visits to the moon by the American astronauts revealed certain conditions which she had experienced many years earlier.

Dreams
We should not worry about dreams. If they appear significant, write them in the diary, and stop with that, forget it. That is the only thing to do with dreams, as with all experiences.

My Master said, "If you have the grace of the Master, your samskaras can be wiped out of dreams. You don't have to undergo them in the waking reality." For instance, God forbid, somebody has the samskara which must make him a leper, may not today, may be a hundred year hence. The Master's grace can convert that into an experience of being a leper in a dream. In a dream he is a leper, he suffers whatever it is he has to suffer as a leper, the odium of being a leper, the isolation of being a leper, even the family pushing him out into a hut somewhere, throwing food at him like a dog. He wakes up and he finds, it is finished you see. But it requires a very special relationship with the Master before it can happen. So what does it mean? It means the dreams have a reality, and its reality, perhaps transcends waking reality in such a way that the experience in a dream of a few moments can remove the need for us to experience our samskaras over perhaps a hundred years or two hundred years or several life times.

Don't interpret yourself, just report to Master
Abhyasis should not try to interpret their experiences because they are imposing their own opinion on an experience, which may not be correct. What really happens is, I think, our own inner ideas surface to the mind and assume these symbolic representations. So the interpretation should always be left to the Master and we, as abhyasis, should only report our experience. This is a very important thing because I know most of the misery that abhyasis experience after meditation is because of their wrong interpretation which they give themselves. So please don't attempt it at all. It's a very interesting experiment, but you should not do it.

I remember one occasion when a preceptor gave me a sitting and he was a very advanced preceptor. And his finding was that I was hard as stone. Master was quite angry when this was reported to him. He said, "This is why I don't want even preceptors to interpret their own findings." Because sometimes they also impose an artificial interpretation. And this comes out of a need to always interpret everything that we see or hear or perceive. What is this? why is this? how is this? So this is not important to know all the time. And I know some instances when it took my Master several days to come to a correct understanding of an experience I have reported to him. So the abhyasi is least qualified in this direction. And if you want to avoid a miserable time subsequent to meditation, please avoid this totally. And to attempt to interpret dreams is even worse. Very often we don't even remember the dreams correctly. So in all these matters, please write it down and send it to the president, or whoever it is, and let him break his head.

I would add one more warning: don't refer these matters to psychologists. Very few of them are even marginally qualified to handle spiritual experiences or dreams with a spiritual content. It is no disrespect to that profession. But their curriculum does not include spiritual experiences. So-called experiences are only our own problems surfacing during meditation - who is the Master? what is the Master? where is the Master? things like this, and our struggle to answer these questions ourselves. In all such cases, if you would patiently refer the matter to your own heart and not attempt an intellectual answer or a solution to your problem, the answer comes by itself.

I will relate an experience, an abhyasi of 19 years of age had. She lives in the north of India and probably because the parents were abhyasis, had this problem of who is the Master; she also had this problem by a sort of inheritance from them. But instead of thinking about it and intellectualizing about it, she had the wisdom to meditate over it. She wrote to me that she did this for three or four meditations, praying before sitting for meditation, "Please, Master, reveal to me the answer to this problem." On the fourth occasion, she had a vision. She found that Babuji was walking up and down in his room and she was watching him. And there was a chair, like this, empty against one wall. She approached the Master and asked him, "Babuji, you have left us, now what are we to do?" Babuji smiled and pointed to the chair and said, "There he is, he will guide you." And she saw that empty chair was now filled by Parthasarathi. She said, "Yes, Babuji, but he is for the new abhyasis, what about us, old abhyasis?" Babuji said, "He is there and I am also there, you follow him." So this is the sort of answer that a prayerful question to your own heart brings. And therefore, that is the way we should adopt, Babuji's advice - always refer to the heart.

Very often we find that people have experiences, and because they tend to intellectualize, they begin to doubt their experiences. The question most often asked is, "Is it real, or is it a projection?" I always have to ask a question in return, "You believe all the pains and frustrations, and the negative things that you have. Why don't you think they are also projections?" So we should treat both on the same footing, you see. But the wisest is still to give up the intellect.

Transcend all Experiences
When people come to Sahaj Marg, they expect experiences, "I have been meditating for three months and I have no experience." Now, we have to train people out of this idea that this is an experiential system. This is an evolutionary system. It is also a revolutionary system; but it is not per se experiential. Our experiences have nothing to do with our progress. If they have any value, it is in showing you what grossness you have had embedded in you, which is being released by the cleaning or the meditation process. To use a very crude example - when you vomit, you can see what you have eaten before you vomited. Nothing more. It stinks, because it has passed through your system. So the human system really makes everything stink.

If experience has any value, it is in showing you what has been in you, the original experiences that created an impression that is being released, very much like when a photograph is developed. The impression of the scene that is recorded on the film is released by the developing process. Here, with cleaning, it comes out. Some people experience, some people don't experience. I think it is morbid to try to look and see what is going out of you. I know some people who never bathe and suddenly one day they bathe and say, "Look how much dust I have got on my head." It is morbid. To know what is dirty in us, unacceptable in us, unnecessary in us, is a morbidity which we should avoid. That sometimes we have good experiences, like we are passing through a beautiful scene, is also similarly something we are throwing out of ourselves. Now, if either you hate this or you become attached to that experience, both are going to deepen until they form fresh samskaras. Now how to translate this into real experience? People say, "Yes, but you know I want some experience to prove to me that the system is really working." It is like a boy of 12 saying, "Daddy, let me vomit a little to see that I have really eaten." "But don't you feel in your stomach that you have eaten? Hasn't your hunger been satisfied?" So you see, many of these rather peculiar desires still rest in us, though we routinely say the prayer, "Our wishes are putting bar to our advancement."

The only value of experience is in showing you that something has gone. Like when I am moving in a train; a station flashing past me shows that I am moving in this direction. If the station remains static, it means that I am also static. And if the station goes past me in the opposite way, it means that I am moving backwards. These are only indicators of how fast I am moving. If you cannot see this then you will see nothing.

So this idea of seeing something, feeling something, is bringing the human perceptions to play on a state of existence which is beyond the human level of existence. It is like trying to measure air with a metre stick. So you see, we are trying to transpose one dimension of experience into another dimension of being, and suffering the consequences and saying, "I feel nothing, I know nothing, I see nothing, Sahaj Marg is a failure." Whereas the opposite is true: that so long as I can feel something, see something, I am at the lowest level of the spiritual ladder. So abhyasis should be trained to recognize this. And to know that when they continue to know, they are really only at the level of knowing. They have to go to the level of feeling. When they transcend that, they are going to a level where nothing more exists, either to be known, or to be felt. That is the real state of progress.

So, you see, when we go into meditation, we learn all these things: that I have to die in my meditation to be reborn in that meditation, and to come out yet the same Paul, and same Bill, the same whatever you are, you see. But with a very, very different outlook on life; with a very, very different inside that has now been opened, changed, cleaned up, refurbished in some mysterious way. Therefore, every time we sit in meditation and we go deep into it, we come out new - renewed, you can say. That is why meditation is refreshing. That is why meditation is never exhausting, you know, however deep you go into it you come out fresh. Pains are gone, aches are gone, more of the heart - which is a very great need. There is solace derived from ourselves, from within ourselves, by ourselves. So we see that, in a very real sense, we are becoming independent of the universe. We seek no solace outside, we get it from inside. The others take renewal from outside, we get it from inside. Then we find the ultimate experience, that within me is the universe. Not this which I see outside, however vast it might be: ten million, ten billion light-years big, so what? It is only a parody of what is inside. That has no limit that can be measured in terms of light-years. You cannot measure this at all: it is truly infinite.

We are always afraid of death. That's a very natural fear. But to be told that perhaps, my dear friend, you don't exist - even now - would be awful, wouldn't it? But when you plunge into yourself in meditation and, if, by Master's grace, by the solemnity of your experience, you are able to experience those spiritual states where you find first nothing, then you find yourself all alone, and then you find that the universe into which you are put all alone by yourself is really you ….! The universe is you. You are there as something experiencing yourself in a cosmic form. Then comes this, you know, really brilliant, fascinating experience that "I am the Universe." Which means you are part of me, everybody is part of me, you are me in a sense.

"God cannot be known. He can be experienced.
Experience is the only way of ascertaining
what Divinity is about."