Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes

The Creator, in taking infinite pains to shroud with mystery His presence in every atom of creation, could have had but one motive - a sensitive desire that men seek Him only through free will.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first; when you learn to live for others, they will live for you.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

When your mind is fully withdrawn in superconsciousness, it becomes centered in the bliss of the spine. You are then in your ideational, or causal, body. That is the level of the soul.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Introspection, or 'sitting in the silence,' is an unscientific way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life currents.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Ignoring all prejudices of caste, creed, class, color, sex, or race, a swami follows the precepts of human brotherhood. His goal is absolute unity with Spirit.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

It is wisest to be impartial. If you have health, but are attached to it, you will always be afraid of losing it. And if you fear that loss, but become ill, you will suffer. Why not remain forever joyful in the Self?

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Only the wise know just where predestination ends and free will begins. Meanwhile, you must keep on doing your best, according to your own clearest understanding. you must long for freedom as the drowning man longs for air. Without sincere longing, you will never find God.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The sense of being a separate, egoic self begins with the astral, not with the physical, body. The soul is individualized spirit.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The man who has perceived God looks upon all types of men as dream motion-picture images, made of the relativities of the light of Cosmic Consciousness and the shadows of delusion.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Sri Yukteswar showed no special consideration to those who happened to be powerful or accomplished; neither did he slight others for their poverty or illiteracy. He would listen respectfully to words of truth from a child, and openly ignore a conceited pundit.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

To allot God a secondary place in life was, to me, inconceivable. Though He is the sole Owner of the cosmos, silently showering us with gifts from life to life, one thing yet remains which He does not own, and which each human heart is empowered to withhold or bestow - man's love.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

My keen love of travel was seldom hindered by Father. He permitted me, even as a mere boy, to visit many cities and pilgrimage spots.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Careless indifference and bodily restlessness in meditation cause negative vibrations.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Truth is exact correspondence with reality.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The season of failure is the best time for sowing the seeds of success.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

All honest work is good work; it is capable of leading to self-development, provided the doer seeks to discover the inherent lessons and makes the most of the potentialities for such growth.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Cosmic energy enters the body through the medulla and then passes to the cerebrum, in which it is stored or concentrated.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The physical ego, the active consciousness in man, should uplift its body-identified self into unity with the soul, its true nature; it should not allow itself to remain mired in the lowly delusive strata of the senses and material entanglement.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The man form is higher than the angel form; of all forms it is the highest. Man is the highest being in creation, because he aspires to freedom.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The Western day is indeed nearing when the inner science of self-control will be found as necessary as the outer conquest of nature. This new 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.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Hypnotism is trespass into the territory of another's consciousness. Its temporary phenomena have nothing in common with the miracles performed by men of divine realization.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Many great works of art, poetry, and music are inspired by astral memories. The desire to do noble, beautiful things here on Earth is also often a carryover of astral experiences between a person's earth lives.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The ideal of an all-sided education for youth had always been close to my heart. I saw clearly the arid results of ordinary instruction, aimed only at the development of body and intellect.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

This life is not man's own show; if he becomes personally and emotionally involved in the very complicated cosmic drama, he reaps inevitable suffering for having distorted the divine 'plot.'

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Man is important in one sense only. He was made in the image of God: That is his importance. He is not important for his body, ego, or personality. His constant affirmation of ego-consciousness is the source of all his problems.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Everything, at first, is an idea, a special creation.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

Whoever comes to me finds me a mirror to whatever is in his heart. Thus, I try to help him to see qualities in himself that he needs to overcome.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

There are always two forces warring against each other within us.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

If one marries out of necessity, he will have to reincarnate to reach the point where he wants to live only for God.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The physical ego serves as its own worst enemy when, by delusive material behavior, it eclipses its true nature as the ever blessed soul.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

The happiness of one's own heart alone cannot satisfy the soul; one must try to include, as necessary to one's own happiness, the happiness of others.

- Paramahansa Yogananda

As often as you fail, get up and try again. God will never let you down, so long as you don't let Him down, and so long as you make the effort.

- Paramahansa Yogananda