Paramahansa Yogananda

Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.

Feel the love of God; then in every person you will see the face of the Father, the light of love which is in all. You will find a magic, living relationship uniting the trees, the sky, the stars, all people, and all living things; and you will feel a oneness with them. This is the code of divine love.

Freedom means the power to act by soul guidance, not by the compulsions of desires and habits. Obeying the ego leads to bondage; obeying the soul brings liberation.

God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature.

God is the life behind your life, the sight behind your eyes, the taste behind your tongue, and the love behind your love. To realize this to the fullest extent is Self-realization. Without God’s power you can do nothing. If you always hold this thought, you cannot go wrong, because you will have purified the temple of your mind and your soul with the vibrations of God.

God’s grace flows into us the more we open ourselves to Him. It doesn’t come from outside. It's the operation from within of our own higher reality the more we live in soul-consciousness. The more you attune to His will the more you will find His blessing in everything you do.

Have only love in your heart for others. The more you see the good in them, the more you will establish good in yourself.

I am just coming from the inner perception of my Self. I am not the body. I am invisible. I am Joy. I am Light. I am Wisdom. I am Love. I dwell in the dream body through which I am dreaming this earth life; but I am ever eternal Spirit.

It is the Spirit of God that actively sustains every form and force in the universe; yet He is transcendental and aloof in the blissful uncreated void beyond the world of vibratory phenomena. Those who have attained Self-realization on earth live a similar twofold existence. Conscientiously performing their work in the world, they are yet immersed in an inward beautitude.

Know that this universe is nothing but a dream bluff of nature to test your consciousness of immortality.

Man lives in one body and with one name only once. He never reincarnates again with the same form and identity. A person may wear a garment for some time and then discard it, never to use it again. Similarly, the soul wears a different body in each of many lifetimes until, through reincarnation and spiritual evolution, it ascends back to Spirit. Thus you live only once as any particular person, but the soul, the eternal you, lives through numerous reincarnations, carrying with it the cumulative personality and karmic tendencies of its past existences.

My thoughts with open mouths seek to drink of bliss in all activities of life. My wild fancies dip their curiosity-parched lips in the golden river of bliss. My feelings swim on waves of ever new bliss. My intuition, spread like the ubiquitous ether through everything, mingles with the all-pervading, inly flowing bliss.

Feeling Ever-Increasing Bliss in Meditation is the Surest Sign of the Divine Presence

Bliss is the polestar to which all mariner souls, storm-tossed on the waves of tumultuous sorrow and exciting pleasure, look for guidance.

Bliss is God’s consciousness - His being, His supreme quality, His infinite life. Feeling an ever-increasing bliss in attentive meditation is the surest sign of His presence. The greater the bliss, the deeper the contact with God.

No matter what you are doing, keep the undercurrent of happiness, the secret river of joy, flowing beneath the sands of your various thoughts and the rocky soil of your hard trials. Learn to be secretly happy within your heart in spite of all circumstances.

Only he, who is free from the sense of self-importance,becomes richer and richer in spirituality until he is one with God.

Our real self, the soul, is immortal. We may sleep for a little while in that change called death, but we can never be destroyed. We exist, and that existence is eternal. The wave comes to the shore, and then goes back to the sea; it is not lost. It becomes one with the ocean, or returns again in the form of another wave. This body has come, and it will vanish; but the soul essence within it will never cease to exist. Nothing can terminate that eternal consciousness.

The body is only a garment. How many times you have changed your clothing in this life, yet because of this you would not say that you have changed. Similarly, when you give up this bodily dress at death you do not change. You are just the same, an immortal soul, a child of God.

The greatest romance is with the Infinite. You have no idea how beautiful life can be. When you suddenly find God everywhere, when He comes and talks to you and guides you, the romance of divine love has begun.

The hardest obstacle to overcome is yourself. When you sit to meditate at night, your nervousness and restlessness are still with you. Learn to control your mind and body. Be king of yourself. Carry within you a portable heaven, and in life or in death, in heaven or in hades, that inner heaven will be with you.
Pray deeply, sincerely, "O God, I yearn to know You. You must answer me!" and next morning pray again, "Lord, You must come to me!" and pray again the next night in the same way, in the language of your heart; if you keep on, He must respond. But when you pray halfheartedly, while thinking in the back of your mind about something else, He knows He is not first with you, and He does not respond.
Have God first. Have God now. Don't wait, because delusion is very strong. Before you know it, the time will have come for you to quit this world. Whenever you have a moment, sit down and meditate. No matter how many times your prayers have not been answered, don't worry; keep on praying. Pray with sincerity. Believe that your prayer is answered.
I urge you to pray not for little things, but for His presence. Only that prayer is worthwhile To be able to demonstrate health or wealth or power or friends with God's help is fine, but if you can coax God Himself to respond to your prayers, you are a man of destiny. So don't rest until you demonstrate God in your life. He will give you everything you ever wished for; and He will test you. The tests in the spiritual life are greater than in any other. But you who pass His tests shall say: "Lord, my greatest prayer has been answered. What else could my heart want or need, but You?"

The kingdom of God is not in the clouds, in some designated point of space; it is right behind the darkness that you perceive with closed eyes. Feel that, just behind the screen of your devotional demands, God is listening to the silent words of your soul.

The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness.

The spine is the highway to the Infinite. Your own body is the temple of God. It is within your own self that God must be realized.

‘The stream of knowledge,’ Sir James Jeans writes in The Mysterious Universe, ‘is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine.’... From science, then, if it must be so, let man learn the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is maya, illusion.

THE TRUE EXPERIENCE OF SPIRITUAL ECSTASY - BEYOND THE KALEIDOSCOPE OF SUBCONSCIOUS: In the subconscious dreamland you can drink a glass of hot milk, but this experience comes to you unbidden; in the superconscious state you can create that or any other experience consciously and at will. Unless you are able to do this, do not delude yourself that you have reached superconsciousness.

…In the superconscious state you can see or know anything that you wish to - not by imagination but in reality. I can sit in this chair and transfer my mind to India and see exactly what is going on in my old home there.

The advancing devotee progresses through three stages of spiritual awareness…First he experiences superconsciousness, oneness with the creative power in creation: Aum…Next comes Christ Consciousness, merging in the Infinite Intelligence within creation: Tat..Finally, He attains the highest, Cosmic Consciousness, the Truth beyond creation, the ineffable Absolute: Sat.

The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.

There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first… when you learn to live for others, they will live for you. Learn to be calm and you will always be happy. The happiness of one’s own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one’s own happiness, the happiness of others. From Joy we came; for Joy we live; and in the sacred divine joy we will one day melt again.

They say that all the thoughts of all one's incarnations are reflected in the eyes. The eyes reveal the whole story of the soul, not only of this life but of lives past.

We think of the baby Jesus as helpless in his crib, dependent on his mother’s milk and care; yet within that tiny form was the infinite Christ, the light of the universe in which we are all dancing as motion-picture shadows. During one of our day-long Christmas meditations, when I prayed to see the baby Christ, the light of the spiritual eye in my forehead opened its rays, and I saw Jesus as an infant. He appeared in such beauty and power of God. All the forces of nature were playing in that baby-face. In the light of those eyes the universe trembled–waiting for the command of those eyes. Such was the infant the Wise Men beheld—a little child over whom the angels stood watch, and in whom the whole universal consciousness was manifest.

When you transform your consciousness into divine consciousness so that you feel for everyone else’s well-being as you feel for yourself, when all the world becomes your greater self, you will become completely dissociated from the sufferings of your little body. You will behold creation as a sort of dramatic experience in which nothing can hurt you.

Wrath springs only from thwarted desires. I do not expect anything from others, so their actions cannot be in opposition to wishes of mine. I would not use you for my own ends; I am happy only in your own true happiness.

You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that God’s creative principle works in you.

YOUR NEW WORK SHOULD BE YOUR ONLY CONCERN NOW. DO NOT FEEL ATTACHMENT TO THE OLD. ACCEPT CHANGES WITH EQUANIMITY, AND PERFORM IN A SPIRIT OF DIVINE FREEDOM WHATEVER DUTIES COME YOUR WAY. IF GOD WERE TO SAY TO ME TODAY: “COME HOME!” WITHOUT A BACKWARD GLANCE I WOULD LEAVE ALL MY OBLIGATIONS HERE - ORGANIZATION, BUILDINGS, PLANS, PEOPLE - AND HASTEN TO OBEY HIM. RUNNING THE WORLD IS HIS RESPONSIBILITY. HE IS THE DOER, NOT YOU OR I.