Meditations

Please apply for Paramahansa Yogananda’s Lessons for Home Study here : https://yssofindia.org/yss-lessons.php or here: https://yogananda.org/ I meditate daily according to Paramhansa Yogananda's Hong Sau technique. This blog is kept as a diary to record my experience of my meditation sessions. These notes are an honest description of my meditation experiences. ‘Hoping it will help. Gurudev’s teachings work!

[godsnameisjoy]

936 & 937

Date: 10 June 2026

1 Duration: 39 minutes at 2:22 PM

2 Duration: 24 minutes at 10:34 PM

Depth:

Yesterday’s afternoon session was unusual. Inner peace was liquid again. A few posts back, I have written about inner peace feeling firm.

The fluid or firm texture is granted by the mind-space I happen to be in. Yesterday, life energy as inner peace chose to clean up some more the shallow surface of my waking consciousness.

On the meditation path, the very beginnings of calmness takes away conscious waking control of one’s attention. One hopes and prays for attention to follow feelings of calm from the moment one learns to let go of direct waking control over one’s attention.

Calmness results in freeing up of life energies. The best I have done for the last 6 years in 2 months is to have my attention hook itself to the freed force during my meditation sessions.

Life energy as inner peace chose to clean up my waking consciousness yesterday. I consider myself hugely blessed to be able to follow life energy as inner peace during my meditation sessions.

If my waking mind requires to be prepared for the next steps into my deep sleeping mind, then may I be able to exercise the will to sit for meditation. To observe the blessed force work on my mind is a pleasure by itself.

In contrast, the bedtime session was spent at an entire concentration level less than the afternoon session. The bedtime session had its share of ‘peculiar “knocking” sounds’. Most of the recent afternoon sessions have been about the silences that accompanies the motionless deep sleeping mind.

[godsnameisjoy]

935

Date: 9 June 2026

Duration: 43 minutes at 2:01 PM

Depth:

Yesterday’s only session is typically what I have been referring to as ‘maintenance session’ for many years. These are sessions when one can’t see any progress. One can’t detect any regress either. Sessions like these aren’t exactly filler sessions either.

My physical self isn’t a deterrent to such sessions. Yet, it seems like I went only as far as an older depth of mind. I am familiar with the depth of mind I spend such sessions in. They distinctly lack the glimpse of the new depth that I have been shown recently.

These are sessions that seem like a step backwards but they are not. There is a subtle strengthening of the attention muscle through such sessions. Without the strengthening, the next steps into inward progress isn’t possible.

Maintenance sessions provide an honest snapshot of where one’s irreversible progress stands. On 9th June 2026, my meditational advancement was at a sublayer of my deep sleeping mind where it isn’t yet possible to make my attention perfectly still.

[godsnameisjoy]

933 & 934

Date: 8 June 2026

1 Duration: 43 minutes at 2:54 PM

2 Duration: 8 minutes at 10:50 PM

Depth:

My physical self wasn’t doing too well yesterday. Since I have been blaming it all on the inevitable hormonal changes, I accepted the possibility of not making any progress in meditation. All freed life energies tend to physical imbalances before they help further attention’s progress into the depths of the meditator’s mind. I know this from experience.

I sat for meditation twice yesterday, knowing full well that my attention won’t get to the depths I desire. Between the afternoon session and the bedtime session, my physical state had worsened. Physical imbalances had grown. That explains the short duration of 8 minutes for the bedtime session. I am glad that I was able to exercise my will power to sit up despite my hormones dictating otherwise.

The afternoon session revealed that my attention is able to meditate even when my physical self is demanding attention. That’s the power of the deep sleeping mind. It is motionless by nature. When the attention is blessed with the meditational advancement into the deep sleeping mind, it is possible to have the attention seated in such motionlessness.

Stepping into the deep sleeping mind in meditation is an extraordinary advancement. It is a blessing. I am able to place my attention where I want to rather than where my hormones dictate! That’s a big win, if you ask me.

[godsnameisjoy]

931 & 932

Date: 7 June 2026

1 Duration: 44 minutes at 1:09 PM

2 Duration: 33 minutes at 10:38 PM

Depth:

The afternoon session didn’t have unidirectional life energies in the head like it had had in the afternoon before it. There was rest of mind equal to 44 minutes simply because of the depth of the session.

My attention spent most of those 44 minutes in the quiet of the deep sleeping mind. Through a variety of lifetronic images, life energy contributes to the advanced meditator’s collection of inner peace. In the deep sleeping mind, inner peace is fortified with deep-sleep’s silence.

The deep sleeping mind’s nature is most suitable to hold and not scatter any amounts of inner peace. Up until my attention was granted access to my deep sleeping mind, I experienced and spoke of inner peace as a cleansing, purifying, concentrating and refreshing liquid. Inner peace is fluid.

With a seat provided by the motionless nature of my deep sleeping mind, my attention is now making it possible to collect inner peace. The thick layer of collected inner peace is giving it its firmness. I can’t even imagine fully how a day of activity will be like if the activities weren’t able to thin my peace.

Unshakable peace is a wonderful cushion to place one’s actively engaged attention on. Instead of taking on the struggle that’s part of any activity if my attention performed according to inner peace, it would change my perspective on every activity.

[godsnameisjoy]

929 & 930

Date: 6 June 2026

1 Duration: 38 minutes at 2:13 PM

2 Duration: 11 minutes at 11:05 PM

Depth:

A few days back I had written about getting goosebumps on my scalp while meditating. Yesterday’s afternoon session had a much larger part of my scalp with goosebumps and it lasted much longer than the older session.

The goosebumps kept coming through the 38 minutes session and it was mostly around the top and the scalp above the ears. In the two sessions that I have experienced such goosebumps on my scalp, I have remembered words written by Swami Vivekananda in his book Raja Yoga (1896).

Unfortunately, I am unable to find the quote right now. However, it had to do with all energies of the mind pointing in the same direction. Those goosebumps on the scalp felt like that. It felt as if all the energies that I had freed up were now flowing in one direction.

The direction was given by the stream of life energy rising up the spine, into the head and now above the head, while touching the scalp around the temples too. It is possible that occasionally life energies are overflowing from my head now.

When life energies are not overflowing and are getting collected at a spot within my head, my attention has the task of avoiding lifetronic imagery. It is likely the goosebumps are a sign of an overflow. Again, an overflow doesn’t quite further my meditational growth.

May I remain patient while awaiting the blessing of even greater motionlessness of my deep sleeping mind. My attention really needs to be stilled to the point of not being disturbed by my breathing. With attention so fixed and fixed at the point between my eyebrows will I find further meditational advancement.

It has taken me 6 years and 2 months since my first spinal vibration to have my head overflow with life energy. Overflowing life energies is the same as losing life energies through spinal vibrations. These are the ounces of freed life energies that my body couldn’t contain during meditation.

That’s because my meditational depth isn’t as much as is required to contain the magnificent force. I am hoping and praying for my attention to be blessed with access to yet another sublayer of my deep sleeping mind. With greater stillness will come greater concentration of life energy.

[godsnameisjoy]

927 & 928

Date: 5 June 2026

1 Duration: 38 minutes at 1:51 PM

2 Duration: 16 minutes at 10:29 PM

Depth:

I was able to hear the silence of my deep sleeping mind during the afternoon session. Despite lifetronic imagery, I could hear the silence that is the highlight of the dream-free mind-space. It is likely that I am getting somewhat proficient in avoiding lifetronic imagery.

I haven’t yet advanced enough as a meditator to arrive at a sublayer of the deep sleeping mind where my attention has access to spiritually significant lifetronic imagery. Since it will be the first time in all the lives I have lived, I am highly uncertain about when I’ll be viewing spiritually significant imagery.

It could be a wait of a handful of sessions or a wait of years of regular meditation, I can’t tell. Presently, I am content to occasionally hear the silence that accompanies the dreamless deep sleeping mind. Although I would love to advance right into viewing visions, in reality I don’t know what the next sublayer of the deep sleeping mind will bring.

Listening to the silences of a motionless consciousness is wonderful. When I came out of the afternoon session yesterday, I sat with my hobby stitching project. For hours of stitching, the muscles of my face and eyes felt like I had woken up after 6 hours of dream packed nightly sleep.

It felt like my mind and body had rested in the deep sleeping mind but not in the deepest part of the deep sleeping mind that I am capable of sleeping in. Yesterday’s bedtime session had depth but not length of duration.

[godsnameisjoy]

925 & 926

Date: 4 June 2026

1 Duration: 39 minutes at 1:34 PM

2 Duration: 25 minutes at 10:49 PM

Depth:

Yesterday’s afternoon session was peculiar. With every conscious inhalation, a short series of lifetronic images would present themselves to my attention. I would barely be able to keep an eye on the corresponding exhalation and then the whole experience would repeat. It was so unusual.

It was almost as if each breath intake was an opportunity for one set of self fulfilling lifetronic imagery to flood my attention. Every breath intake generated a new series of lifetronic content. Since I am growing in skill to avoid such imagery, I was able to avoid them through 39 minutes.

There was a change in ‘peculiar “knocking” sounds’ during the bedtime session. Beginning with year 2025, the inward guiding sound has undergone changes nearly every time I have heard it.

I have a feeling that I have just barely stepped into the 7th stage of Dhyana within Patanjali’s 8 limbed instructions for Raja Yoga. I first heard a ‘peculiar “knocking” sound’ back in June of 2023. The inward guiding sound was possible because life energy chose to withdraw from its incessant outward flow through my sense of hearing.

The sound in the medium of an ever growing inner peace, has guided my attention right into my deep sleeping mind. My attention wouldn’t have learned to be seated without the blessing of the inward guiding sound.

For my attention’s seat to become fixed at the point between my eyebrows, it is likely the blessed phenomenon of sound has to guide my attention some more. I have absolutely no idea how my next session will be but I am most definitely looking forward to it.

[godsnameisjoy]

923 & 924

Date: 3 June 2026

1 Duration: 33 minutes at 2:18 PM

2 Duration: 29 minutes at 6:13 PM

Depth:

For a few weeks now, there has been a change in the manner in which I hear ‘peculiar “knocking” sounds’. I can guess accurately when the sound will be played next.

Before I attempted fixing my gaze and focus at the point between my eyebrows, I couldn’t anticipate the guiding sound. I heard the first clacking sound back in June of 2023. In the first half year of 2024 I even assumed that the phenomenon of inward guiding sound was in my past. I was wrong.

Between mid-2024 and a few weeks back, my attention had learned to be seated in the centre of my head where the nose meets the throat. When the blessed sound wouldn’t guide my meditation, I would remain content waiting for it in attention’s seat.

With the seat in the centre of my head, all previously freed life energy began gathering in the spot every time I meditated. Gathered life energies began turning into self-fulfilling lifetronic imagery. Gurudev Paramahansa Yogananda suggests avoiding lifetronic images.

I have been somewhat successful in shifting attention’s new found seat more to the front of my head. For the past few weeks, my sessions have been either about avoiding lifetronic imagery or an unfamiliar advancement of being seated between my eyebrows.

As and when my attention finds its seat in the centre of my head where the nose meets the throat, I can tell that the next inward guiding ‘peculiar “knocking” sound’ will be played. That’s a change since life energies began their gentle withdrawal from my sense of hearing back in June of 2023.

Now my attention also turns to the sound being played from close to the forehead. I can feel the subtlest of vibrations running along the nasal tract and upper incisors when the sound comes from the forehead. When will there be enough advanced meditators in the world to have dedicated clinical observations conducted for such advancements?

Until life energy can be measured in units of inner peace, I guess I can continue writing this blog.

[godsnameisjoy]

920, 921 & 922

Date: 2 June 2026

1 Duration: 28 minutes at 1:29 PM

2 Duration: 24 minutes at 4:17 PM

3 Duration: 20 minutes at 10:58 PM

Depth:

During yesterday’s first session, my attention was split between my body and meditation. Thankfully, my attention is able to access the relatively motionless parts of my deep sleeping mind even when my body is hormone influenced.

After yesterday’s second session I realised that the session wasn’t enough for my attention to catch up with the sleep deprivation from the night before. At around 6:30 PM, I did sleep for an hour. I abandoned hobby stitching and fell asleep.

Yesterday’s bedtime session had the best depth of all 3 sessions. I didn’t last long in those wonderful depths but I had given myself the opportunity to, simply by sitting upright before sleep.

As I write this post in the morning after, I feel good about having covered more than 60 minutes of meditation yesterday. May today be equally good.

[godsnameisjoy]

919

Date: 1 June 2026

Duration: 33 minutes at 3:00 PM

Depth:

The circumstances I live in, the one I have lived in for decades now, is most unusual. I know for a fact that the greater the details I describe my circumstances in, the more I’ll feel distant to anyone who listens to it. No one I know likes to say ‘I understand’ even if they did. No one who has said ‘I understand’, meant it.

I wept through a large part of those 33 minutes yesterday. I wept because of the lack of human connection that is an inevitable part of everyone’s life now. I wept because I still have memory of one deep connection with a loved one who passed away exactly 13 years back.

I can’t tell anymore if my desire for a divine connection is alienating me from fellow humans or has the alienation been the favourable condition to develop a deep inner peace. ‘Fellow humans’ is an umbrella term in which I include family members.

It will continue to remain peacefully sad if I am unable to form another deep human bond in this lifetime. It is human of me to desire so. If my divine connections overtake the depth of the last deep human bond, then I might have a chance at being peacefully happy. It is a pity that I don’t know who is furthering my journey as a meditator via blessings. Is the desire to know one’s spiritual benefactor a divine desire?

[godsnameisjoy]

917 & 918

Date: 31 May 2026

1 Duration: 27 minutes at 8:26 AM

2 Duration: 46 minutes at 2:31 PM

Depth:

I was surprised to find the depth of my deep sleeping mind at 8:30 AM. I wasn’t expecting anything beyond the shallow surface of the wakeful mind. I had found my deep sleeping mind. It was wonderful.

I was happy to have covered 60 minutes of meditation so early in the day. If I had meditated a third time, that meditation would have been about the pleasure of meditation, not any other consideration like minimum duration.

[godsnameisjoy]

916

Date: 30 May 2026

Duration: 55 minutes at 2:58 PM

Depth:

In yesterday’s blogpost, I wrote about the silences I listened to deeply during the afternoon session on 29th May. In the writing, I also contrasted the blessed silences with thousands of words that are instantly associated with imagery. Even when the imagery is as peaceful and satisfying as those generated by life energy, it isn’t the same as experiencing the rest of a silent image-free mind-space.

Yesterday’s single session brought me another level of lifetronic imagery. I experienced at least two short lived series of images in the 55 minutes session. The two series each had a different style and colour scheme to it! There were deeply satisfying variety of events being played out in each of the series but with a colour, brightness and style theme running through both.

I have never experienced a series of events even in my dreaming subconscious mind that had a colour, brightness and style consistent through those events. Often, my dreams have got stuck in a repeating loop of a single event that left the underlying desire unfulfilled. To have a bunch of satisfying scenes with the cushioned certainty of colour, brightness and style is most unusual.

Of course, I am supposed to avoid it all. According to Paramahansa Yogananda, in his book ‘God Talks With Arjuna’, the ‘serious God-seeker’ is supposed to ‘avoid lifetronic images’ that are of ‘no spiritual significance’. Since yesterday’s session wasn't the first time I was actively avoided such imagery, I was able to go on avoiding with a degree of stamina to do so. I ended up logging 55 straight minutes.

I chose to stop meditating when I experienced a zero gravity lightness of mind. I guess that at a certain moment, the task of avoiding lifetronic imagery wasn’t required any more. That’s probably when I found the lightness of mind that is free of imagery. It was deeply pleasant to remain with that lightness for a few moments before I closed the session.

[godsnameisjoy]

914 & 915

Date: 29 May 2026

1 Duration: 43 minutes at 2:24 PM

2 Duration: 17 minutes at 6:21 PM

Depth:

Yesterday’s afternoon session was peaceful in a humbling way. Even though I felt rested after the session, the session wasn’t about catching rest in my deep sleeping mind. This session was about the quiet that the deep sleeping mind offers.

I am grateful to each one of my anonymous spiritual benefactors for blessing me with a series of meditational advances. If not for such blessings I wouldn’t have come as far as observing my deep sleeping mind.

Awareness of the deep sleeping mind meant that my attention could learn to be seated. And with the seat came the gathering of life energy to one spot within the head. Such a focused gathering of energies led to lifetronic imagery. These images are peaceful and satisfying. Yet like all imagery, even the purest kind comes along with the formation of words to describe such imagery.

In meditation, who wants words? In meditation, every meditator seeks quiet. And there is no quiet bigger than the silence of the deep sleeping mind. Up until one arrives at the deep sleeping mind, inner peace undoes mental restlessness in degrees. Deep sleep’s quiet seems to be in proportion to inner peace’s power to gently quieten the forever restless mind.

Experiencing such a deep and vast quiet is humbling.

Yesterday’s evening session was necessary. No matter how low in quality it would be, I was committed to it long before I sat for it. It wasn’t as deep as the afternoon session but I did find a less quiet sublayer of my restful deep sleeping mind.

[godsnameisjoy]

911, 912 & 913

Date: 27 May 2026

Duration: 32 minutes at 1:13 PM

Depth:

I emerged rested from this session. Not only was my attention able to enter my deep sleeping mind but also remain in the motionless mind-space for long.

It is about 9 months since my attention has been given access to my deep sleeping mind during meditation. It is only now that I notice my attention sustaining the motionless rest of the mind-space.

In the last 9 months, my attention has learned to sit in the unmoving deep sleep. My attention has also advanced into greater stillness of deeper layers within the deep sleeping mind. My attention was born with a natural restlessness to it.

Restlessness has been seen as life by my attention all along. My attention has only just begun learning about lack of movement of the deep sleeping mind. Strangely, the mind space has much life to it. It is an unfiltered form of consciousness but there is consciousness here. Motion is the filter.

Date: 28 May 2026

1 Duration: 33 minutes at 2:21 PM

2 Duration: 30 minutes at 5:21 PM

Depth:

Both sessions helped me lower my cortisol levels, I think. My 51 years old female body is lowering oestrogen and progesterone whenever it feels like it. At 51 minus the last 2 years, I have taught my mind and body humungous amounts of stress.

They say that oestrogen is able to handle much stress. As long oestrogen hormone was of a decent level, my body was able to handle the stress. Now my body is making much cortisol to do one of oestrogen’s tasks.

In the last 2 years, inner peace has spread into my personality and has also concentrated in my mind. Inner peace has an effect on one’s stress levels. It is anti stress. Unless I have medical reports to support my hormonal narrative, I can’t say for sure if my meditations are changing my hormone levels.

I only just get around managing my attention during meditation. My attention is definitely NOT managing my hormones.

[godsnameisjoy]

908, 909 & 910

Date: 25 May 2026

1 Duration: 38 minutes at 9:44 AM

2 Duration: 21 minutes at 1:59 PM

Date: 26 May 2026

Duration: 40 minutes at 2:02 PM

Depth:

‘Was unable to write a post yesterday because I didn’t find the time. I don’t want to spend too much today either. It is going to be difficult writing a short one. I have begun accepting that the advance of meditation into the deep sleeping mind can do with a lot of description. There really is no upper limit to how many words might explain the most restful part of our minds.

The morning meditation on the 25th of May came with a rare experience. As I closed the session mentally, I chose to remain seated for another moment or two. In those moments, I felt zero gravity lightness of mind. The life energy that had got collected in the head during the session began its redistribution as I closed the session.

As the energies fell from the head towards my body, I felt light. Also, I could feel goosebumps form on the left hand side of the top scalp of my head. I am making a very conscious choice to not add descriptive explanations right now. I can explain but I don’t feel like it.

In yesterday’s only session, my attention was concentrated more on the point between my eyebrows than lifetronic images that show themselves more in the centre of my head. Being able to place one’s attention on a body part is always better than getting caught up with any kind of imagery.

A body part such as the forehead is in the here and now. It helps keep the attention in the present moment fully. Any image is instantly assigned a date and time. It is either the past or the future, never ever is it about the here and now. One’s actions in the present moment matters most in revealing every past decision and shaping every possible future.

[godsnameisjoy]

905, 906 & 907

Date: 23 May 2026

Duration: 28 minutes at 2:29 PM

Date: 24 May 2026

1 Duration: 41 minutes at 3:34 PM

2 Duration: 16 minutes at 5:52 PM

Depth:

Despite a few half hearted attempts at writing about the ‘depth’ of the session from 23rd May, I never wrote a single word yesterday. It was an uninspiring session that I had entered with expectations.

I guess that there still remain some expectations. Between March of 2020 and September of 2025, a distinct weakening of all kinds of expectations has taken place. However, these expectations aren’t burned to ashes just yet.

The weakening and dissolving agent is life energy as inner peace. Yesterday’s (24th May) afternoon session had a generous share of lifetronic images. There was one image that was a bit disturbing. I am glad that not only have I read Gurudev Paramahansa Yogananda’s suggestion to avoid such imagery but also taken it to heart.

2 hours later when I sat for 16 minutes in meditation, I was at peace. I experienced peace to the point of my breathing slowing down. My last meditation was short but wonderful.

[godsnameisjoy]

904

Date: 22 May 2026

Duration: 51 minutes at 1:19 PM

Depth:

This session was a step back rather than two steps forward in meditational depth. As usual, I did not want to interact with anyone after the session but I did. Also, I was able to keep meditating at the depth I found myself in.

Staying in the depths I was at, provided my head much rest. It is the kind of rest that seems to have gone missing through the nightly sleep, thanks to dramatically fluctuating hormones in this 51 years old body.

It is a blessing to have the depth of the deep sleeping mind in meditation at 51 years of age. If I hadn’t worked for two and a half decades to receive the blessing, I would most likely be taking my sleepless self to a doctor.

My life would be so different if I had begun my decades long meditation practice a decade earlier than I did. I wonder what it is like for meditators to find the depth of their deep sleeping minds while they are young and regularly getting a good night’s sleep.