Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes Page 5

“All creation is nothing but Spirit, seemingly and temporarily diversified by Spirit’s creative vibratory activity.”

“At night human beings have a glimpse of their real Self, the soul; each morning upon awakening the majority again take up their mistaken identity as a mortal man or woman.”

“By self-mastery in meditation, the attention is focused steadily on the center of divine perception at the point between the eyebrows, the searchlights of life force and consciousness are reversed. Withdrawing from the senses, they reveal the light of the spiritual eye. Through this eye of omnipresence the devotee enters into the realms of divine consciousness.”

“Essential sons of God, clear reflections of the Father untarnished by delusion, have become sons of man by identification with the flesh and forgetfulness of their origin in Spirit. Deluded man is just a beggar on the street of time. But as Jesus received and reflected through his purified consciousness the divine sonship of Christ Consciousness, so also every man, by yoga meditation, can clarify his mind and become a diamondlike mentality who will receive and reflect the light of God.”

“God can live without man’s love; but as the wave cannot live without the ocean, so it is not possible for man to exist without the love of God.”

“He who concentrates on one isolated wave of life will suffer, because that wave is unstable and will not last.”

“Man’s body, unique among all creatures, possesses spiritual cerebrospinal centers of divine consciousness in which the descended Spirit is templed. These are known to the yogis, and to Saint John—who described them in Revelation as the seven seals, and as seven stars and seven churches, with their seven angels and seven golden candlesticks.”

“The creative vibration vitalizes the individual life force in the body, which conduces to health and well-being, and can be consciously directed as healing power to those in need of divine aid.”

“The spiritual man is trying to free himself from the materiality that is the cause of his prodigal wandering in the maze of incarnations, but the ordinary man does not want more than a betterment of his earthly existence.”

“The truths taught by Jesus went far beyond blind belief, which waxes and wanes under the influence of the paradoxical pronouncements of priest and cynic. Belief is an initial stage of spiritual progress necessary to receive the concept of God. But that concept has to be transposed into conviction, into experience. Belief is the precursor of conviction; one has to believe a thing in order to investigate equitably about it. But if one is satisfied only with belief, it becomes dogma —narrow-mindedness, a preclusion of truth and spiritual progress. What is necessary is to grow, in the soil of belief, the harvest of direct experience and contact of God. That indisputable realization, not mere belief, is what saves people.”

“We are all made in the image of God, beings of immortal consciousness cloaked in diaphanous heavenly light — a heritage buried beneath the cloddish flesh. That heritage we can only acknowledge by meditation. There is no other way — not by reading books, not by philosophical study, but by devotion and continuous prayer and scientific meditation that uplifts the consciousness to God.”

“When one can perceive that he is not the mortal body but a spark of the Infinite Spirit cloaked in a concentration of life energy, then he will be able to see the kingdom of God.”

“Making others happy, through kindness of speech and sincerity of right advice, is a sign of true greatness. To hurt another soul by sarcastic words, looks, or suggestions, is despicable.”

“To fly away from problems may seem the easiest solution. But you gain strength only when you wrestle with a strong opponent. One who doesn’t have difficulties is one who doesn’t grow.”

“When you say to me that you can’t do this or that, I don’t believe it. Whatever you make up your mind to do, you can do. God is the sum total of everything, and His image is within you. He can do anything, and so can you, if you learn to identify yourself with His inexhaustible nature.”

“Who can stop you from thinking you are a god? No one. You are your only obstruction.”

“As we watch, therefore, the tragic mistakes and misfortunes in people’s lives – including our own – we should shed only tears of joy at the privilege of being able to offer help, even to ourselves. We should approach tragedy, whether in others’ or in our own lives, with an attitude of dynamic inner joy. The way to emerge from suffering is to raise to a higher level our own, or other people’s, consciousness. For ourselves, consciousness can be raised by right attitudes. In souls made in the image of God there is no room for disturbing emotions such as grief. The fundamental cure for all human ills is everywhere one and the same: to raise one’s consciousness.”

“Just as a wet match, when struck, does not produce fire, so a mind saturated with restlessness cannot produce the fire of concentration even when one makes great efforts to strike the cosmic spark.”

“Only when the slumbering ego perceives itself, not as a body, but as a free soul, a son of God residing in and working through the body, can it rightfully and lawfully demand its own divine rights.”

“Remember, people suffer only because they think things ought to be different from what they are.”

“The fundamental cure for all human ills is everywhere one and the same: to raise one’s consciousness.”

“To repeat a prayer-demand over and over again, whether mentally or out loud, with ever-deeper attention and devotion, spiritualizes the prayer; it changes conscious, concentrated repetition into superconscious experience.”