Quotes from Paramahansa Yogananda

Just as oil is present in every part of the olive, so love permeates every part of creation.

May Thy Love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion. And may I be able to awaken Thy love in all hearts.

Love is the heartbeat of all life.

Remember this: When I am gone, only love can take my place. Be absorbed night and day in the love of God, and give that love to all.

You naturally love those who are dear to you, and you must learn to give that kind of love to the whole world.

Trust in God and destroy fear, which paralyzes all efforts to succeed and attracts the very thing you fear.

Love is the song of the soul singing to God. It is the balanced rhythmic dance of planets - sun and moon lit

God is love. His plan for creation can only be rooted in love. Does not that simple thought, rather than erudite reasoning, offer solace to the human heart?

Through love and sincerity continuously beautify your inner life in every way, by daily looking into the mirror of introspection.

Consider no one a stranger. Learn to feel that everybody is akin to you.

Truth is not afraid of questions.

Truth is exact correspondence with reality.

All Nature will commune with you when you are in tune with God. Realization of this truth will make you a master of your destiny.

The seeker of God is the real lover of vidya, unchangeable truth; all else is avidya, relative knowledge.

Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of spreading even against it.

Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevent all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Yoga cannot know a barrier of East and West any more than does the healing and equitable light of the sun.

No one can be a yogi, maintaining a state of mental equilibrium, free from inner involvement in planned desireful activities, unless he has renounced identification with his ego and its unsatisfiable lust for the fruits of actions.

I find my earliest memories covering the anachronistic features of a previous incarnation. Clear recollections came to me of a distant life, a yogi amidst the Himalayan snows. These glimpses of the past, by some dimensionless link, also afforded me a glimpse of the future.

When the yogi starts to meditate, he must leave behind all sensory thoughts and all longings for possessions by quieting the waves of feeling (chitta), and the mental restlessness that arises therefrom, through the application of techniques that reinstate the controlling power of the untrammeled superconsciousness of the soul.

The yogi should meditate on a firm seat, one that is clean - untainted by dirt or unspiritual vibrations of others. The thought or life force emanating from an individual saturates the objects he uses and his dwelling.

A swami may conceivably follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi engages himself in a definite, step-by-step procedure by which the body and mind are disciplined, and the soul liberated.

The yogi offers his labyrinthine human longings to a monotheistic bonfire dedicated to the unparalleled God. This is indeed the true yogic fire ceremony, in which all past and present desires are fuel consumed by love divine.

A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there, he is like butter on water and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity.

The ordinary man considers solids and liquids and the energy manifestations of the material world to be vastly different, but the yogi sees them as various vibrations of the one cosmic light.