One morning early morning 1998,after a period of meditation, I finally saw the missing link that brought clarity and deeper meaning to my overview of Swami’s teachings. I suddenly understood more clearly process of the purification mind and heart and how it was a necessary and important part of the path.

On the one hand, our spiritual path results in character development and refined conscience that reveals what is right or wrong. On other hand, if we are to see everything as divine, we must give up seeing everything as separate, As we relinquish our attachment to things that promote our feelings of separateness, such as money, position, prestige, body, and mind in order to find our divine identity, we suffer a form of separation anxiety. Becoming empty is the dissolution side of purification and can be frighten and painful. We might experience the emptying as an annihilation of our mind and all that we think is real, and feel a profound nothingness. In accepting nothingness and releasing our fear into God’s love, we find everything including our divinity. This fullness is the transcendent side of purification. A deeper insight into both the emptying and transcendental aspects of the purification process helped me to better understand place of suffering and sacrifice on the spiritual path. With this sight, I have identified a number of spiritual and psychological elements that form a useful overview of Swami’s teachings about the path to union with God. These elements have evolved into total of nine, which form the core of this book — “With Love Man is God”