Om Harih Om Namaste friends, A lot of people asked in the past how to know if they are making spiritual progress

with their sadhana or not. This is a loaded question, but I will share a few random thoughts on this and several related topics. More than how to recognize spiritual progress, I will be writing on how NOT to try to recognize it! If you don't like my 2 cents, kindly feel free to ignore me and follow your gurus and others whom you may prefer. *** MATERIAL RESULTS One obvious thing is that some people get material benefits, like marriage, job, promotion, childbirth etc. That reinforces or increases faith in the initial stages and makes one continue sadhana. However, that may not happen to everyone. Moreover, such material results do not necessarily show spiritual progress. So, how do we identify spiritual progress? *** GOAL OF SADHANA Spiritual progress is an internal thing. It is well characterized in scriptures. Though different scriptures may use different words, it all boils down to one thing. What binds us is our likes, dislikes, attachments and agendas, which come from innate conditioning of the mind. How free we are is indicated by how much we are able to resist and overcome this innate conditioning. Maharshi Vasishtha taught Lord Rama in "Yoga Vaasishtham" that Self-realization means overcoming conditioning. Patanjali defined Yoga (Communion with Self) in "Yoga Sutras" as "yogaH chitta vRtti nirodhaH" (Communion is resisting the working of conditioning). This conditioning inflates ego and by overcoming all the conditioning, we can deflate the ego completely and then identify with the entire universe, instead of a single entity with a single agenda. *** IDENTIFYING CONDITIONING Innate conditioning of the mind, as said before, is what determines our likes, dislikes, attachments and agendas. We tend to like (or dislike) some people for no clear reason, we tend to do (or avoid) some things though our inner voice (conscience) tells us not to do (or to do) those things. All this comes from conditioning, which has been accumulated over many lives. When someone praises us, we may know that it is irrelevant (our inner voice tells us so) and yet we may feel elated. When someone puts us down, we may know that it is irrelevant (our inner voice tells us so) and yet we may feel offended and feel like doing something about it. All this comes from conditioning, which has been accumulated over many lives. Idnetifying the conditioning as it works on our instincts, thoughts, calculations and actions, is not easy. But it is not impossible. The key is to learn to listen to the inner voice of conscience. Whenever the inner voice of conscience is telling us one thing and we are impelled from inside to do otherwise, we can conclude that that is the work of conditioning. We often suppress the inner voice of conscience and obey the inner voice of our conditioning. If we are engaging in fewer and/or smaller actions - physical or mental - that go against the inner voice of conscience, it means our conditioning is becoming lighter. THAT is the only meaningful measure of spiritual

progress. This may in general be difficult for others to judge, but one can certainly judge for oneself. The tricky thing is that our self-analysis and self-judgment is also controlled by our conditioning!! Suppose I engaged in an action against my inner voice. Suppose I want to analyze what just happened and whether I violated my inner voice of conscience. That whole process is governed by the conditioning too. Depending on how deeply I am conditioned to think that I am a good person doing the right thing and not making a mistake, my mind will be impelled to label the inner voice of conscience as a voice of confusion and not accord it any importance. Instead, it will focus on the inner voice of conditioning (which shouts out from inside the reasons that justify the action!) and conclude that I did the right thing. The grip of conditioning is too tight to overcome in a day or two! But, the inner voice of conscience does tell everyone when one is doing something wrong under the influence of conditioning. If one keeps trying, it can oneday help one identify and overcome conditioning. *** SPECIAL EXPERIENCES Sometimes, as one makes spiritual progress, one may have super-normal or mystical or out-of-body experiences, visions and dreams. For example, one person I know started to feel very light in the head with a vision of bright light of a particular color, when he meditated with a specific mantra. Another person felt like there was a big fire at the base of his spine and the entire lower back was on fire (he actually felt unbearably hot), when he meditated with a specific mantra. Another person saw a deity appear in front of him and the deity talked to him. Interestingly, the same deity was seen by another person who was also sitting there at the same time and that person had a totally different (and more mundane) mental conversation with the same deity at the same time. Another person felt like he became very light and was floating in air and there was an inexpressible happiness. In another case, one sadhaka when meditating was filled with the sense that his job was done on earth and he could now leave. He thought, "let me leave and let me take some more with me". He felt like he was a point moving up with a tremendous speed. At the same time, another person who was meditating a few feet away in front of a homam fire felt like somebody was pulling that person forcibly through a cave and felt really overwhelmed. There are so many possible experiences. But the key point is that experiences are secondary. They are NEITHER NECESSARY NOR SUFFICIENT for spiritual progress. I had my share of experiences, progress and setbacks and I am 100% sure of the above. You'll do well to remember this sentence and not be swayed by stories of experiences or desire them consciously or sub-consciously. I will elabate a little later on the grave dangers of desiring experiences. *** EXPERIENCE VS THEORY: WRONG QUESTION We say that god can be known only by experience and not by reading books. That is not incorrect. However, when one is deeply desirous of an experience, one may experience an aspect of god's Delusory Power instead of god and that may increase false pride (a true experience of god will instead produce infinite humility). Not all experiences are equal. There is a famous quote: An ounce of experience is better than a ton of theory. Though that is true in a way, it is not complete. Even a ton of experience is useless if produces a quintal of ego. Instead, a ton of theory may actually be better if it actually reduces one's ego to a pound or an ounce! The issue is not whether one needs practical experience or theoretical understanding. That is secondary. The primary thing is what is happening to one's ego. Is it getting inflated or deflated? THAT is undoubtedly the main issue. If reading books, satsanga, rituals, theoretical understanding etc reduce ego from a ton to a quintal, from a quintal to

a pound and from a pound to an ounce, even without a direct experience, that's awesome. That is better than getting a ton of experience and ego being inflated from a pound to a quintal.

Though it is true that ego does not become complete zero without an "experience" of god in the end, it is still a bad idea to seek that "experience" when one's ego is still a ton or a quintal. First reduce it to as small a quantity as you can. Experience of god will then come by itself.

In the famous Indian movie "3 Idiots", there is a nice line: "Don't chase success, but chase capability. Success will follow automatically." Similarly, don't chase experiences, but chase detachment and deflation of ego. Experience will automatically follow. Chasing experience without trying to reduce ego is like putting the cart before the horse. To use the analogy from the movie "3 Idiots", one then runs the risk of becoming the spiritual equivalent of Chatur Ramalingam (alias Silencer) of that movie, who chased success, ended up with huge ego from limited success and failed in the end! *** EXPERIENCE AND CONDITIONING As said above, it is a bad idea to seek an "experience" when one's ego is still a ton or a quintal. In other words, when one's conditioning is dense enough, a pre-occupation with experiences can be counter-productive. The reason is that any experience will be interpreted (and absorbed into one's system!!!) through the color of one's conditioning. If I go into the open and view Sun without any eyeglasses, I will see that Sun is orange. But, suppose I see Sun from green colored glass windows of a house. Or suppose I go into the open, but see Sun through green eyeglasses. In either case, I will see that Sun is green. I am experiencing the real Sun, but I will get the wrong knowledge that "Sun is green". Similarly, even a genuine spiritual experience (e.g. seeing Sun!) CAN generate false knowledge (e.g. Sun is green!) if one's conditioning is conducive (e.g. green eyeglasses!). The key is not just to experience, but the ability to interpet, *digest* and absorb the experience into one's system well. One's conditioning influences how one digests various life experiences, including spiritual experiences and mystical experiences, like the green eye glasses in the above example! *** DIGESTION OF EXPERIENCES In ayurvedic terms, food one cannot digest well becomes ama, a toxic buildup in the system. It can slowly build up, get absorbed into various tissues and create various diseases. In the beginning, one may look and feel healthy despite some ama, but, when too much ama accumulates, one develops serious diseases. The disease starts to spread to various parts of the body. The ama may even interfere with the digestion of good food being taken in and the working of even medicines one may take in. When too much ama has accumulated and destabilizes the system, one may need to go through a painful de-toxification process. Similarly, spiritual experiences one cannot digest well become spiritual ama, a toxic buildup in the subtle system. It can slowly build up, get absorbed into various aspects of one's being and create various diseases in the subtle system. In the beginning, one may look and feel spiritually healthy despite such issues, but, when too much spiritual ama accumulates, one develops serious spirituality disorders. It can eventually affect one's entire being. The spiritual pancha-karma (for de-toxification) may be far more difficult than the physical pancha-karma. *** EXPERIENCES OR DELUSIONS

To illustrate what I mean by spiritual ama and delusions, let me give a *hypothetical* example. Suppose someone sits still for a few hours everyday and meditates. Suppose one starts to get some special inner experiences and some seemingly supernatural things start happening externally around one. Suppose these experiences give one the impression that one is special and one is making excellent spiritual progress. Suppose one reads some spiritual books and fantasizes "becoming like Shiva" mentioned in those books. Then one may start to think "may be, I have become like Shiva" and slowly convince oneself that one HAS become like Shiva. Suppose one reads a spiritual book that claims "If one becomes like Shiva, the whole universe connives against one who causes an offense to him". Of course, there is a context behind every statement and no statement is absolute. If one misses the nuances, one may digest and absorb it into one's system incorrectly. After all, one could have also said, "if one becomes like Shiva, the whole universe fully co-operates with one and there is no way anyone can really cause offense to that person". Anyway, one in the process of convincing oneself that one has indeed become like Shiva may then look for examples of someone causing offense and suffering bad things. Of course, just as one can find any shapes in clouds, one can find any correlations in things happening around one. One will find a few examples. That may reinforce the delusion that one has become like Shiva. When good and bad happen to people around one, one may start correlating them to good and bad done by those people to one and/or to things one has done. Over time, the delusion may become so deep that it just feels so natural and obvious. This is like a serious disease developing from a toxic buildup of undigested or badly digested food. Inability to fully understand the spiritual experiences one had, the fantasy of becoming like Shiva, the pre-exising pride (like pre-existing ama) and the notso-well-digested notion that offense to Shiva causes harm, have together created spiritual ama buildup that now resulted in a serious disease. Though original experiences may have been genuine, experiences coming later on MAY be the result of accumulated delusions (disease) from the ill-digested experiences and notions (ama). Please note that ama is conducive to creating more ama. When unchecked, disease in one part of the system can spread to others. As said before, the key issue is: Is the ego getting inflated or deflated. If ego is getting inflated, then one is on the wrong track. One is either deluding oneself or ill-digesting genuine experiences due to pre-existing conditioning and delusions (spiritual ama). In either case, whatever one is experiencing is not being digested well and is weakening the system instead of strengthening it. If, on the other hand, ego is getting deflated, then one is on the right track. Whatever one is experiencing is being digested well and strengthening the system. *** SHAKTI, SIDDHIS AND MIRACLES This emphasis on ego deflation may make some people wonder about the prominence given in some books to accumulation of shakti, siddhis and miracles. For example, some books describe what a being like Shiva or someone less but still with high enough shakti, can do. Yes, SOME enlightened beings or some beings close to enlightenment MAY have a lot of spiritual shakti and be able to do some special things. But, no book said that you get those abilities by being proud or pursuing something that can make one proud. In fact, if one looks at those abilities described in books and adores them from one's *current* levels of dense conditioning, it is quite akin to looking at a "green Sun" from green eyeglasses and admiring the greenness of that Sun!!! In other words, one has missed the whole point. One with dense conditioning can't even understand what that shakti or ability really means or comes from. In order to understand what shakti is, to accumulate enough shakti or to reach such a state, one MUST deflate one's ego. Bottomline is this: Most scriptures of most religions are unanimous in teaching the importance of humility, compassion and ego deflation. No scripture talks about the glory of pride and ego inflation. It's as simple as that.

*** GODS, GODDESSES, VISIONS & CONVERSATIONS We encounter some people who claim to have visions of gods and goddesses and also conversations with them. When probed, there is nothing sublime coming from the divine beings in their encounters. Whatever the divine beings supposedly said is well within what one consciously or sub-consciously already knew or believed or wanted to believe. This may remind one of the encounters of Mahatma Gandhi by the character played by Sanjay Dutt in hit bollywood movie "Lage Rahe Munnabhai". In that movie, the visions are due to "chemical imbalance" in Munnabhai's mind and the Gandhi he sees and can talk to, cannot answer questions that Munnabhai himself does not know (but real Gandhi should know). So the conclusion is that the person Munnabhai imagines seeing is a character in his own mind constructed based on what Munnabhai understands of Gandhi. In the case of divine encounters, it may be a little different from this movie. It MAY be a divine being one truly fancied meeting based on all that one consciously and sub-consciously knew already, OR it may be a real being. Even in the latter case, the being and his/her actions are interpreted strictly based on one's conditioning, like the "green Sun" in our previous example. So, no wonder, in most cases, what divine beings say fits well within the realm of knowledge one consciously or sub-consciously already knew or believed or wanted to believe. In the rare case of a sadhaka with very little conditioning having a real divine encounter, it is like an innocent child meeting mother or father, and there is a real flow of divine and sublime understanding and wisdom. Again, the key is not to see a god or a goddess, but to be de-conditioned enough to really benefit from it! *** KUNDALINI AWAKENING & RISE One more thing people often talk about is Kundalini awakening and rise. Kundalini shakti is that through which we are aware of self (i.e. this is "I"). Kundalini being asleep in Mooladhara chakra means one does not even question who one is and assumes the normal self-awareness that ties self down to the physical body and physical senses. However, self-awareness rising above this does not necessarily mean spiritual progress or enlightenment. Kundalini awakening is only the beginning of a long process. If one's conditioning is deeply holding down to subtle ideas of who one is (e.g. I am a great spiritual soul who saved the world many times in the past and came back to save it), an awakened Kundalini may take one's notion of self beyond the physical body, but will get stuck somewhere else. In fact, one's subtle notions of self may become aggrandized when Kundalini reaches conducive regions and one may experience things that aggravate and strengthen those notions. One may get badly stuck. As mentioned above, any spiritual experience can create spiritual ama when not digested properly. Any preexisting conditioning may make it difficult to digest anything complex. Instead of eating a heavy-duty protein bar that one cannot digest and getting toxic buildup in the system, one is better off eating simple food that one's own system can process and digest well. To be clear, whether one's Kundalini is awakened or not, and where one's Kundalini is currently, is NOT a measure of one's spiritual progress. As Kundalini does not rise through a single path, as the rise is not linear and as the obstructions are not uniform in all people, one cannot compare two people based on Kundalini experiences. One can cling to the body and overcome all conditioning slowly and oneday Kundalini may awaken and rise all the way to Sahasrara. Another person may awaken Kundalini and it may get stuck somewhere where it is extremely difficult to overcome the corresponding conditioning.

The bottomline is that how much conditioning is overcome and how reduced one's ego is is the correct measure of spiritual progress and not whether Kundalini is awakened and where Kundalini is. *** CORRELATIONS GALORE Do not get distracted by trying to find *correlations* that may or may not mean much. Suppose you call someone and they tell you, "wow, I was just thinking about you". Or suppose you say something and someone says, "wow, I was just thinking about it. You answered me as though you read my mind." Suppose you were unhappy with the happenings in some region of the world, did a special sadhana and suppose something bad happened there. Or suppose you had a desire at the back of your mind, did some sadhana and the desire was fulfilled. In several such cases, correlating a result with something you did can often increase pride and your sense of selfworth. And, doing that will not enable you to do your dharma any better. Keep thinking your thoughts and desires, keep doing your actions and keep doing your sadhana. That's it. Don't correlate actions and results and think that you made X or Y result happen. We engage in actions and god gives results. The sense of "I made X happen" is conducive to pride and ego inflation. Moreover, you can *never* know *for sure* whether action A or B caused result X or Y, because the action-result pipeline has variable delay!! So, why even bother to correlate and run the risk of ego inflation? *** BOTTOMLINE Don't run after special experiences and special abilities or anything that makes you special (as you imagine currently, based on your dense conditioning). Spiritual progress is not about becoming "special", but about becoming humble. Special experiences and abilities do not matter at all. In fact, they can distract one and give false pride. God makes one special AFTER one sheds pride completely or almost completely. Also, stop correlating things happening to or around you, with your actions, and think that you caused events X or Y. Engaging in actions is your sacred duty and giving whatever results are fit at a given time is god's prerogative. That is the simplest and safest model one can imbibe in one's thinking. Remember the absolute bottomline: The only meaningful measure of spiritual progress is how deflated your ego is and how humble you become (not how humble you act or behave, but how humble you have really become internally). It is how well you are able to resist the temptations of following the voice of your conditioning (which inflates ego) and how well you can follow the voice of conscience. When inflations in ego occur, it is the job of a guru/mentor to notice it, bring it to the attention and perhaps even be ruthless in belling the cat [of ego]. But most gurus now-a-days may not do that well. So, you have to do your best to avoid any serious ego inflations. Unfortunately, the path of spiritual progress and self-realization IS very very very likely for most of us to include many many many opportunities for very very very serious ego inflation! So keep a strict watch on your ego. *** If I offended anybody with some strong assertions in this email, my apologies. Om Tat Sat. Krishnarapanamstu, Narasimha