Swami Satyananda says that the best way to experience God in one’s life, is to cultivate atmabhava, the ability to see oneself in others, and that is the most practical way too. For instance, you have a family, you have children, and if your child falls sick, you will worry about this child incessantly. If the child has high fever, you will worry about the fever and spend sleepless nights until the child gets better. Your concern is for the welfare, happiness and peace of your child; if the neighbour’s child falls sick it does not affect you at all. If other children fall ill it does not affect you at all, for you do not consider them to be your own. When you can consider other children to be your own children, then you have established a connection with them, and that connection is known as atmabhava, or what people call the heart connection.
For example, two boys have gone for a drive, they have an accident and both land up in hospital. One boy is your son and the other boy is your son’s friend. You get the news that your child has had an accident and is in hospital, and you rush there immediately. You know that two people had gone driving, yet you are only worrying about one, your child. When you reach the hospital, the first person you go to see straight away is your child, who may have only superficial injuries. The other boy may have broken bones, yet the first person you will rush to see is your own child, for there is a direct connection with him, not with the other boy who had accompanied him.
This first level of connection is atmabhava - I see myself in my child. Swami Satyananda said that if you can cultivate the same feeling, if you can begin to feel the same intensity of emotion for everyone, then only is it possible to realize God, otherwise God is only a concept in the mind. So the practical way to experience Brahman is the cultivation of atmabhava, this gives a tangible dimension to that idea.