The sum and substance of spiritual life, the best teaching of Vedanta, is atmabhava, which means feeling the pain and distress of others as if it were your own, feeling the poverty, sickness and calamities of others as your own.

–Swami Satyananda Saraswati, “Atmabhava”

Since Satyananda alludes to Advaita Vedanta, one might be surprised to hear that the “sum and substance of spiritual life” is not self-knowledge. Nor does he suggest that it is peace or happiness. It is atmabhava: “feeling the pain and distress of others as if it were your own.”

Of course, nowhere does Satyananda preclude jnana yogic answers–self-knowledge, being-consciousness, abiding peace–and yet he is urging his disciples to go deeper still. They are to open their hearts. We all are. They are, we are to be loving, to be love itself.

In another talk, he relates that he was once a duty-bound, coldhearted man, and it was thanks to his guru (Sivananda) that his heart slowly opened. He draws the lesson for all of us: “You have to find a place in your heart for people who are not known to you.”

In a liberal society which purports to be bound together by a social contract, most everyone one meets is a stranger (as I argued in this long form essay). Therefore, the sense of separation–notwithstanding years of deep spiritual practice–can nonetheless loom large. I see you across an abyss. I remain on guard.

Atmabhava, we might say, is felt when one’s heart cracks or melts open. When? How? When another, who is my brother, who is my innermost Self, is in pain. How? Just by the keenest sensitivity: “Your heart,” Satyananda points out, “should be so sensitive that it responds immediately to another’s pain.”

We might do well to start in reverse. Is my heart closed? It likely is. Introspection may disclose a stoniness, a stern criticality, “a complaint of the heart” as I recently termed it. When, in particular, is my heart closed?I have to take a good, hard look.

I need, to begin with, to take note of my closed heart. Next, I need to engage in “experiments in opening the heart.” A smile. A wave. A tear. A hug offered to my spouse. Finally, I need to know, experientially, what seva–or selfless service to others–really means. Satyananda refers to serving lepers. Who are your lepers?

Little by little and thanks to atmabhava, I realize the truth that “all beings are verily One.”