Quotes from Paramahansa Yogananda

Sacred writings are beneficial in stimulating desire for inward realization, if one stanza at a time is slowly assimilated. Continual intellectual study results in vanity and the false satisfaction of an undigested knowledge." Sri

Wisdom is the greatest cleanser.

To seek the Lord, one need not disfigure his face," he would remark. "Remember that finding God will mean the funeral of all sorrows.

Good manners without sincerity are like a beautiful dead lady," he remarked on suitable occasion. "Straightforwardness without civility is like a surgeon's knife, effective but unpleasant. Candour with courtesy is helpful and admirable.

The Atomic Age will see men's minds sobered and broadened by the now scientifically indisputable truth that matter is in reality a concentrate of energy.

Sense yearnings sap your inner peace; they are like openings in a reservoir that permit vital waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism.

Man's conscious state is an awareness of body and breath. His subconscious state, active in sleep, is associated with his mental, and temporary, separation from body and breath. His superconscious state is a freedom from the delusion that "existence" depends on body and breath.

The adhesive force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man's slavery.

Unkind words are ruthless murderers of lifelong friendships and the harmony of homes. Banish unkind words from your lips forever, and make your home life safe from trouble. Sincere, sweet words are nectar to thirsty souls. They are in demand everywhere. Sweet words create happiness in friends, enemies, churches, business offices, and everywhere. People feel happy when a crabby person leaves the room, and they are glad when a sweet-voiced, sincere friend appears.

The rent left in the family fabric by Mother's death was irreparable.

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

The sleeping man becomes a yogi; each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos of his spinal centers. The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.

please tell me your definition of ahimsa." "The avoidance of harm to any living creature in thought or deed." "Beautiful

Anyone who practices a scientific technique for divine realization is a yogi.

Taking nothing for granted on emotional grounds or by faith, a yogi practices a thoroughly tested series of exercises that were first mapped out by the ancient rishis.

To love both the invisible God, Repository of All Virtues, and visible man, apparently possessed of none, is often baffling! But ingenuity is equal to the maze. Inner research soon exposes a unity in all human minds?the stalwart kinship of selfish motive. In one sense at least, the brotherhood of man stands revealed. An aghast humility follows this leveling discovery. It ripens into compassion for one's fellows, blind to the healing potencies of the soul awaiting exploration.

Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirirt.

The Chinese mystic Lao-tzu rightly taught: "He who knows, tells it not; he who tells, knows it not.

The master never counseled slavish belief. 'Words are only shells,' he said. 'Win conviction of God's presence through your own joyous contact in meditation.' "No

Lord Krishna pointed out the holy science by which the yogi may master his body and convert it, at will, into pure energy.

Kumbha Mela is held every third year, successively, in Hardwar, Allahabad, Nasik, and Ujjain, returning to Hardwar to complete a twelve-year cycle. Each city holds Ardha (half) Kumbha in the sixth year after its Kumbha; thus Kumbha and Ardha Kumbha are held, in different cities, every three years.

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

Good and positive suggestions should instruct the sensitive ears of children. Their early ideas long remain sharply etched.

The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.