Autobiography of Yogi by Paramhansa Yogananda
Excerpts from the book
God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature.
My mother once tried to frighten me with an appalling story of a ghost in dark chamber. I went there immediately, and expressed my disappointment at having missed the ghost. Mother never told me another horror tale. Moral: Look fear in the face and it will cease to trouble you.
Attachment is blinding; it lends an imaginary halo of attractiveness to the object of desire.
Good and positive suggestions should instruct the sensitive ears of children. Their early ideas long remain sharply etched.
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.
In shallow men the fish of little thought cause much commotion. In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.
"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.
Only he who has mastered the breathless state is freed from, cosmic imperatives.
The inflexible and the yielding methods are equally effective if applied with wisdom.
Keen intelligence is two edged. It may be use constructively or destructively, like knife either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate oneself. Intelligence is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inseparability of spiritual lay.
The more he realizes his unity with Spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter. The souls is ever free; it is deathless because birth-less. It can not be regimented by stars.
Man is a soul, and has a body. When he properly places his sense of identity, he leaves behind all compulsive patterns. So long as he remains, he will know the subtle fetters of environmental law.
The deeper the self–realization of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux.
The power of influencing others' minds and the course of events is a vibhuti (Yogic power) mentioned in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras (||| : 24), which explains it to be a result of "Universal sympathy".
All great one become "not virtuous, but Virtue; then is the end of the creation answered, and God is well pleased".
Anyone who practices a scientific technique for divine realization is a yogi. He may either married or unmarried, either a man of worldly responsibilities or one of formal religious ties.
Yoga is method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of spirit.
Every religious or philosophical practice means a psychological discipline, that is, a method of mental hygiene. The manifold, purely bodily procedures of Yoga also mean a physiological hygiene which is superior to ordinary gymnastics and breathing exercises, inasmuch as it is not merely mechanistic & scientific, but also philosophical: in its training of the part of the body, it unites them with the whole of the spirit, as is quite clear, for instance, in the Pranayama exercises where Prana is both the breath & the universal dynamics of cosmos.
Softer than the flower, where kindness is concerned: stronger than the hunger, where principles are at stake.
The goal of yoga science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may hear the infallible counsel of the Inner Voice.
Even in the world, the yogi who faithfully discharges his responsibilities, without personal motive or attachment, treads the sure of enlightenment.
Liberation is dependent on inner, rather than outer, renunciations.
He who vows to sacrifice all in the quest of the Divine is fit to unravel the final mysteries of life through the science of meditation.
He who has attained a state of calmness wherein his eyelids do not blink has achieved Sambhabi Mudra.
The self is in communion with a higher power, Nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain, the will of man. This effortless command over Nature is called 'miraculous' by the uncomprehending materialist.
Seek truth in meditation, not in mouldy books. Look in the sky to find the moon, not in the pond. - Persian Proverb
The secret of improved plant breeding, apart from scientific knowledge, is love. - Luther Burbank
Do not do what you want, and then you may do what you like.
Under the vast vault of blue Lives the divinity clothed in hide.
In the course of world travel I have observed much sufferings: in the Orient, suffering chiefly on the material plane; in the accident, misery chiefly on the mental or the spiritual plane. All nations feel the painful effects of unbalanced civilizations. India and many other Eastern lands can greatly benefit from emulation of the practical grasp of affairs, the material efficiency, of Western nations like America. The Occidental peoples, on the other hand, require a deeper understanding of the spiritual basis of life, and particularly of scientific techniques that India anciently developed for man's conscious communion with God.
Man's forgetfulness of his divine resources (the result of his misuse of free will) is the root cause of all other forms of suffering.
The liberated man overpasses the vibratory realms and entered the Vibrationless Original.
He who knows, tells it not; he who tells, knows it not.
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. God lives without breath; the soul made in His image becomes conscious of itself, for the first time, only during the breathless state.
He who sincerely yearns for wisdom is content to start his search by humbly mastering a few simple ABC's of the divine schema, not demanding prematurely a precise mathematical graph of life's "Einstein Theory".
Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy, no intellectual insight. Truth is exact correspondence with reality. For man, truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature, his seld as soul. Jesus, by every act and word of his life, proved that he knew the truth of his being – his source in God. Wholly identified with the omnipresent Christ Consciousness, he could say with simple finality: "Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice."
Be still, and know that I am God, Never flaunting His omnipresence, the Lord is heard only in the immaculate silences. Reverberating throughout the universe as the creative Aum vibration, the Primal Sound instantly translates Itself into intelligible words for the devotee in attunement.
The divine purpose of creation, so far as man's reason can grasp it, is expounded in the Vedas, The rishis taught that each human being has been created by God as a soul that will uniquely manifest some special attribute of the Infinite before resuming its Absolute Identity. All men endowed thus with a facet of Divine Individuality, are equally dear to God.
Shall my word [creative Aum] be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
The "ordinary man" must make a spiritual start somewhere, sometime. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step," Lao-tzu. Buddha: "Let no man think lightly of good, saying in his heart, 'It will not come nigh me.' By the falling of waterdrops a pot is filled; the wise man becomes full of good, even if he gather it little by little."
To liberate man from his threefold suffering: Physical disease, mental inharmonies, and spiritual ignorance.
To encourage "plain living and high thinking"; and to spread a spirit of brotherhood among all peoples by teaching the eternal basis of their unity: Kinship with God.
To demonstrate the superiority of mind river body, of soul over mind.
To overcome evil by good, sorrow by joy, cruelty by kindness, ignorance by wisdom.
To unite science and religion through realization of the unity of their underlying principles.
To advocate cultural and spiritual understanding between East and West, and the exchange of their finest distinctive features.
To serve mankind as one's larger Self.
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