Quotes from Paramahansa Yogananda

I have now mentioned several important attributes of success — positive thoughts, dynamic will, self-analysis, initiative, and self-control. Many popular books stress one or more of these, but fail to give credit to the Divine Power behind them. Attunement with the Divine Will is the most important factor in attracting success.

The vibrations in turn are regulated by prana, "lifetrons," subtle life forces or finer-than-atomic energies intelligently charged with the five distinctive sensory idea-substances.

The tragedy of death is unreal... Children of light; they will not sleep forever in delusion [in the physical world of maya illusions]. [...] Creation is only a vast motion picture; and not in it, but beyond it, lies [one's] own reality.

If you don't like my words, you are at liberty to leave at any time, Master assured me. I want nothing from you but your own improvement. Stay only if you feel benefited.

A saint that is sad is a sad saint!

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.' "Knowing

Lahiri Mahasaya often said: 'If you don't invite God to be your summer Guest, He won't come in the winter of your life.

The hard core of human egotism is hardly to be dislodged except rudely.

Keen intelligence is two-edged," Master once remarked in reference to Kumar's brilliant mind. "It may be used constructively or destructively like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate one's self. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability of spiritual law.

What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon.

Mr. Shaw urges the adoption of a new alphabet with forty-two characters (see his preface to Wilson's The Miraculous Birth of Language, Philosophical Library, New York). Such an alphabet would approximate the phonetic perfection of the Sanskrit, whose use of fifty letters prevents mispronunciations.

He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things of the world, how he may please his wife." 1 I had analysed the lives of many of my friends who, after undergoing certain spiritual discipline, had then married. Launched on the sea of worldly responsibilities, they had forgotten their resolutions to meditate deeply. To

But divine insight is painful to worldly ears;

One little-known fact is that the proper jewels, metals, or plant preparations are valueless unless the required weight is secured, and unless these remedial agents are worn next to the skin.

To serve mankind as one's larger Self.

Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing within all the tributary rivers of the senses. Small yearnings are openings in the reservoir of your inner peace, permitting healing waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don't kick you around.

The devotee's irrationality springs from a thousand inexplicable demonstrations of God's instancy in trouble. "Hello

Each man is a part of the Creator, or Cosmic Man; he has a heavenly body as well as one of earth.

Do not confuse understanding with a larger vocabulary

When Emerson's poem BRAHMA appeared in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY in 1857, most the readers were bewildered. Emerson chuckled. "Tell them," he said, "to say 'Jehovah' instead of 'Brahma' and they will not feel any perplexity.

A worthy leader has the desire to serve, not to dominate.

Offering inhaling breath into the outgoing breath, and offering the outgoing breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both these breaths; he thus releases the life force from the heart and brings it under his control.

Noumenon beyond phenomena. Thought of the divine incorporeity

Seeds of past karma cannot germinate if they are roasted in the divine fires of wisdom.