Paramhansa Yogananda: Pearls of Wisdom and Inspiration

Paramhansa Yogananda, from a color lithograph announcing his lecture tours in the 1930s

"God is Love; His plan for creation can be rooted only in love. Does not that simple thought . . . offer solace to the human heart? Every saint who has penetrated to the core of Reality has testified that a divine universal plan exists, and that it is beautiful and full of joy."

— P. Yogananda

"Working for God is very enjoyable and is divinely personal. Working for your own ego is selfishly personal, blinding, and creates misery. Therefore, perform all good deeds not for yourself but for God. In this way, the responsibility of actions and their results do not touch the soul. "
— P.Y.

" . . . it is ever the same though it may travel through many bodily residences in the long pathway of reincarnation which ultimately leads to God. This soul is not slain when the body happens to die."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

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"The Bhagavad Gita emphasizes the following qualities of the soul: the soul is unborn, though born in a body; it is eternal though it may dwell in an impermanent body; it is changeless though it may experience change; . . . "
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Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change.

Sri Yukteswar, Guru of Yogananda

"One who is in tune with the soul possesses all its qualities of peace, happiness and true unerring wisdom. A soul-tuned individual also displays self-control, morality, patience, super-soul attunement, divine devotion, and ecstasy."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

#peace #soul #happiness

"Peace is a true quality of the soul. Thus anyone not in tune with the soul has no peace."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

#peace #soul

Paramhansa Yogananda in reverie

"O, Divine Friend, if the darkness of my ignorance be as old as the world, still make me realize that with the dawn of Thy light, the darkness will vanish as though it had never been."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

" . . . That mental disinvolvement at the approach of death should remind everyone of the need for being inwardly non-attached all through life, even while busily engaged in worldly activities."
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— Paramhansa Yogananda

“Most people lose all interest in this world at the time of death. That is natural and right: After all, they are soon going to have to leave it! Besides, this world isn’t ours: It is God’s. . . .
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“This world seems real to you because God dreamed you into existence along with His cosmic dream. You are a part of His dream. . .

"Wake up to the one Reality, God, and you will see that this earth life is just a show. It is nothing but shadows and light!”

— Paramhansa Yogananda

“When we dream at night, this present dream fades into unreality, and only that subconscious dream-world seems real to us. When we return again to the dream of this world, that other dream is forgotten.

“Everything exists only in consciousness.”

— Paramhansa Yogananda

“Renunciation means, above all, non-attachment. It is not how you live outwardly that matters, but how you live within.

“Make your heart a hermitage, I always say, and your robe your love for God.”

— Paramhansa Yogananda

Paramhansa Yogananda gazing upward

"Wisdom must be approached with a positive outlook. Why sneer at the world? Accept, rather, the pure joy you feel in outer stimuli and feed it into the soul's joy, within. Use outer happiness as a reminder of the inner heaven."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

"See God's changeless beauty at the heart of change, and in every good thing. Seek, above all, that which the wise have: God-consciousness, immortality in Him. Release into the Infinite every attachment—even the least of them."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

"Fostering the desire for luxuries is the surest way to increase misery. Don’t be the slave of things or possessions; boil down even your “needs.” Spend your time in search of lasting happiness or bliss."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

"This earth is a place of mirth, a pleasure house for immortals. Because we forget this and become identified with the earthly play, we suffer. We must remember that our real home is the mansion of changeless, ever-new, blissful, omnipresent immortality."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

" . . . As one by one the reassuring props of a physical cosmos crash beneath him, man dimly perceives his idolatrous reliance, his past transgression of the divine command: “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.”"
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— Paramhansa Yogananda

"From science, then, if it must be so, let man learn the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is maya, illusion. Its mirages of reality all break down under analysis. . . "
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"Those who cling to the cosmic illusion must accept its essential law of polarity: flow and ebb, rise and fall, day and night, pleasure and pain, good and evil, birth and death. This cyclic pattern assumes a certain anguishing monotony, after man has gone through a few thousand human births."
— P.Y.

“The Cosmic Vibration is called Aum. It is the Amen in the Book of Revelation in the Bible. It is the Word in the Gospel of St. John. It is the ‘music of the spheres’ of the ancient Greeks. It is the Amin of the Muslims, the Ahunavar of the Zoroastrians."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

" . . . God became the universe. Without in any way altering His intrinsic nature, He manifested a portion of His consciousness as maya, the cosmic illusion.

“Nothing is as it appears to be. All that exists is a manifestation of the thoughts of God.”
— Paramhansa Yogananda
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“It is a mistake, really, to say that God created the universe. He didn’t create it—at least not in the way a carpenter would construct a table. . . "
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"Many would-be Yogis say, ‘My wife died, I lost my wealth; hence I will forsake everything and become a hermit.’ Why, they have nothing to forsake! Such sacrifice is not real. It is . . . the translation of selfish ambition into selfless service for all, that is true sacrifice.”
— P. Yogananda

Paramhansa Yogananda sitting

"A business man, literary man, artist, musician, laborer, or king; all can be Yogis, if they so choose. A Yogi aspires to know the Spirit through living according to the spiritual laws of life, thru renunciation of all material fruits of success and by devoting such fruits to the good of all."
—P.Y.

"Since patriotic selfishness and material prosperity are the sole aims of almost all nations, the world is thrown into chaos and confusion, resulting in famine and the avoidable miseries of wars."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

"To such brother nations who live in peace and God-consciousness, the Heavenly Father, who knows the needs of all, bestows lasting prosperity, well-earned by international brotherhood, good-will and international business."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

"Did Jesus fight for one nation to the exclusion of all others? No, he fought for Truth, which belongs to all. Jesus fought for the Truth that is true for all times. What was his motto? To love your enemies."
— Paramhansa Yogananda

"If a person even once really desires salvation, that desire will be firmly planted in the subconscious and superconscious minds and will wait there, no matter how long ignored, to germinate when the circumstance of favorable opportunity arises in this life or in a later incarnation."
— P. Yogananda

Paramhansa Yogananda standing, smiling in a garden, Ranchi, India

"Let me again remind you that it is NEVER too late to make the start. There is but the Eternal NOW, in this as in everything else."
— Paramhansa Yogananda