Quotes from Paramahansa Yogananda

The sun shines equally on diamond and charcoal, but one has developed qualities that enable it to reflect the sunlight brilliantly, while the other absorbs all the sunlight. Emulate the diamond in your dealings with people. Brightly reflect the light of God's love.

All creative scientists know that the true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions they uncover the laws of truth.

Do not allow yourself to be thrashed by the provoking whip of a beautiful face," he told the disciples. "How can sense slaves enjoy the world? Its subtle flavours escape them while they grovel in primal mud. All nice discriminations are lost to the man of elemental lusts.

India, materially poor for the last two centuries, yet has an inexhaustible fund of divine wealth; spiritual "skyscrapers" may occasionally be encountered by the wayside, even by worldly men like this policeman.

The ills attributed to an anthropomorphic abstraction called society may be laid more realistically at the door of Everyman. Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower into civic virtue, inner reforms leading to outer ones. A man who has reformed himself will reform thousands.

within the soul is a source of infinite

The more your mind resists a bad habit instead of embracing it gleefully, the more you will build up the inner strength eventually to overcome it. Thus

? You are, and ever will be, a perfect reflection of Spirit. You were Spirit; now you imagine yourself to be mortal; but by meditation on your true Self, and by performing God-reminding actions constantly, you can remember your forgotten Spirit-nature and remain in that consciousness through all futurity. Since you are immortal, do not burden yourself with earthly limitations.

Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass.

He who has surrounded us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted in us the desire to question and understand.

Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognised visitor will flee!

Continual intellectual study may result in vanity, false satisfaction and undigested knowledge.

A university degree, in any case, is not remotely related to Vedic realization. Saints are not produced in batches every semester like accountants." After

In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion. In oceanic minds, the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.

All creation is nothing but Spirit, seemingly and temporarily diversified by Spirit's creative vibratory activity

The life and teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda are described in his Autobiography of a Yogi. An award-winning documentary film about his life and work, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, was released in October 2014.

The weakling who has refused the conflict, acquiring nothing, has had nothing to renounce. He alone who has striven and won can enrich the world by bestowing the fruits of his victorious experience.

The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of Kriya. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and foolproof methods of Kriya, man's body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy, which constitutes the first materially active expression of Spirit.

If you want to be sad, no one in the world can make you happy. But if you make up your mind to be happy, no one and nothing on earth can take that happiness from you. If you have given up hope of ever being happy, cheer up.

Another early memory is my wish for an ugly dog belonging to a neighbour. I kept my household in turmoil for weeks to get that dog. My ears were deaf to offers of pets with more prepossessing appearance. Moral: Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire. "A

Hindu architecture and sculpture achieved their highest perfection in Mysore under the patronage of Hindu kings from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. The temple at Belur, an eleventh-century masterpiece completed during the reign of King Vishnuvardhana, is unsurpassed in the world for its delicacy of detail and exuberant imagery.

Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candor with courtesy is helpful and admirable." Master

Surcharge Your Will Power Through Concentration The way to become receptive is to sit quietly and concentrate your thoughts on a worthy wish until your mind and thought become completely dissolved in that idea. Then will power becomes divine — omniscient and omnipotent — and can be successfully applied toward realizing your goal.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city."24