Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Paramahansa Yogananda. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Paramahansa Yogananda
Paramahansa Yogananda (born Mukunda Lal Ghosh; January 5, 1893 – March 7, 1952) was an Indian Hindu monk, yogi and guru who introduced millions to the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga through his organization Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) / Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS) of India, and who lived his last 32 years in America. A chief disciple of the Bengali yoga guru Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, he was sent by his lineage to spread the teachings of yoga to the West, to prove the unity between Eastern and Western religions and to preach a balance between Western material growth and Indian spirituality. His long-standing influence in the American yoga movement, and especially the yoga culture of Los Angeles, led him to be considered by yoga experts as the "Father of Yoga in the West.
"Yogananda was the first major Indian teacher to settle in America, and the first prominent Indian to be hosted in the White House (by President Calvin Coolidge in 1927); his early acclaim led to him being dubbed "the 20th century's first superstar guru," by the Los Angeles Times. Arriving in Boston in 1920, he embarked on a successful transcontinental speaking tour before settling in Los Angeles in 1925. For the next two and a half decades, he gained local fame as well as expanded his influence worldwide: he created a monastic order and trained disciples, went on teaching-tours, bought properties for his organization in various California locales, and initiated thousands into Kriya Yoga. By 1952, SRF had over 100 centers in both India and the US; today, they have groups in nearly every major American city. His "plain living and high thinking" principles attracted people from all backgrounds among his followers.
He published his book Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946 to critical and commercial acclaim; since its first publishing, it has sold over four million copies, with HarperSan Francisco listing it as one of the "100 best spiritual books of the 20th Century". Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs had ordered 500 copies of the book for his own memorial, for each guest to be given a copy. The book has been regularly reprinted and is known as "the book that changed the lives of millions." A 2014 documentary, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, won multiple awards at film festivals around the world. His continued legacy around the world, remaining a leading figure in Western spirituality to the current day, led authors such as Philip Goldberg to consider him "the best known and most beloved of all Indian spiritual teachers who have come to the West....through the strength of his character and his skillful transmission of perennial wisdom, he showed the way for millions to transcend barriers to the liberation of the soul."
As a broken microphone cannot broadcast a message, so a restless mind cannot transmit prayers to God.
Wise guidance never violates people's free will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their innate right to their own free will.
Evil spreads with the wind; truth is capable of speading even against it.
The kingdom of God is just behind the darkness of closed eyes, and the first gate that opens to it is your peace.
Be inwardly ever newly joyous, like the ever-fresh laughing waters of a gurgling brook.
No one appears on our stage unless the director has placed them there for our benefit.
Success is hastened or delayed by one's habits.
Longer Version:
Success is hastened or delayed by one’s habits. It is not your passing inspirations or brilliant ideas so much as your everyday mental habits that control your life.
Faithfulness in the performance of small duties gives us strength to adhere to difficult determinations that life will someday force us to make.
Great healers, people of divine realization, do not cure by chance but by exact knowledge.
The entire universe is God's cosmic motion picture, and that individuals are merely actors in the divine play who change roles through reincarnation; mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current role, rather than with the movie's director, or God.
Remain quiet. Don't feel you have to talk all the time. Go within and you will see the Loveliness behind all beauty.
Everything is Spirit -- in essence, though hidden in manifestation. If you had the perception, you would see God in everything.
Is a diamond less valuable because it is covered with mud? God sees the changeless beauty of our souls. He knows we are not our mistakes.
Success is not rightly measured by the worldly standards of wealth, prestige and power. None of these bestow happiness unless they are rightly used. To use them rightly one must possess wisdom and love for God and man.
Cosmic energy enters the body through the medulla and then passes to the cerebrum, in which it is stored or concentrated.
The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness.
You must methodize your life. God created routine. The sun shines until dusk and the stars shine until dawn.
He is the wisest who seeks God. He is the most successful who has found God.
Those who are socially inclined will find a new power to help humanity through the lessons of books written by noble and gifted people.
Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; see that the frogs of weakness don't kick you around.
One may have many teachers, but only one guru, who remains as one's guru even in many different lives, until the disciple reaches the final goal of emancipation in God. You must remember this, once that relationship is formed.
Thoughts are universally and not individually rooted; a truth cannot be created, but only perceived. The erroneous thoughts of man result from imperfections in his discernment. The goal of Yoga Science is to calm the mind, that without distortion it may mirror the Divine vision in the Universe.
Weaken a bad habit by avoiding everything that occasioned it or stimulated it, without concentrating upon it in your zeal to avoid it. Then divert your mind to some good habit and steadily cultivate it until it becomes a dependable part of you.
The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean. So each wave of creation is a part of the eternal Ocean of Spirit. The Ocean can exist without the waves, but the waves cannot exist without the Ocean.
God made us angels of energy, encased in solids -- currents of life dazzling through a material bulb of flesh.
The ills attributed to an anthropomorphic abstraction called society may be laid more realistically at the door of Everyman. Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower into civic virtue, inner reforms leading to outer ones. A man who has reformed himself will reform thousands.
Just behind the darkness of closed eyes shines the light of God. When you behold that light in meditation, hold onto it with devotional zeal. Feel yourself inside it: That is where God dwells.
As water by cooling and condensation becomes ice, so thought by condensation assumes physical form. Everything in the universe is thought in material form.
Release for constructive purposes the power you already have, and more will come. Move on your path with unflinching determination, using all the attributes of success. Tune yourself with the creative power of spirit.
I come not to entertain you with worldly festivities but to arouse your sleeping memory of immortality.
Forget your dream-born mortal weakness. Wake up and know that you and God are one.
The sun shines equally on diamond and charcoal, but the former has developed qualities that enable it to reflect the sunlight brilliantly, while the latter is unable to reflect the sunlight. Emulate the diamond in your dealings with people. Brightly reflect the light of God's love.
The scenery of mountains painted on the ever-changing azure canvas of the sky, the mysterious mechanism of the human body, the rose, the green grass carpet, the magnanimity of souls, the loftiness of minds, the depth of love -- all these things remind us of a God who is beautiful and noble.
Realize that enough hidden strength lies within you to overcome all obstacles and temptations. Bring forth that indomitable power and energy.
Whatever I do, I do with the greatest love that I have in me. Try this, and you will see that you do not become fatigued at all. Love is one of the greatest stimulants to the will. Under the influence of love the will can do almost anything.
Do not think of yourself as the body, but as the joyous consciousness and immortal life behind it.
The rains of Life's Blessings cannot gather on mountaintops of pride, but flow easily into valleys of humbleness.
You naturally love those who are dear to you, and you must learn to give that kind of love to the whole world.
He who finds joy within himself discovers that his body is charged with electric current, life energy, not from food but from God.
The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul's power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.
When you make up your mind to do good things, you will accomplish them if you use dynamic will power to follow through. No matter what the circumstances are, if you go on trying, God will create the means by which your will shall find its proper reward.
Work for god, love god alone, and be wise with god. When an ordinary man puts the necessary rime and enthusiasm into meditation and prayer, he becomes a divine man.
Death is only an experience through which you are meant to learn a great lesson: you cannot die.
The mother's love is not given to us to spoil us with indulgence, but to soften our hearts, that we may in turn soften others with kindness.
By the definite science of meditation known for millenniums to the yogis and sages of India, and to Jesus, any seeker of God can enlarge the caliber of his consciousness to omniscience to receive within himself the Universal Intelligence of God.
No matter what you are doing, keep the undercurrent of happiness. Learn to be secretly happy within your heart in spite of all circumstances.
When you know God as peace within, then you will realize Him as peace existing in the universal harmony of all things without.
It is foolish to be afraid of death. Just think. No more repaired tires on the body vehicle, no more patchwork living.
Most of the world is like a mental hospital. Some persons are sick with jealousy, others with anger, hatred, passion. They are victims of their habits and emotions. But you can make your home a place of peace.
If religion means primarily God-consciousness, or the realization of God both within and without, and secondarily a body of beliefs, tenets and dogmas, then, strictly speaking, there is but one religion in the world, for there is but one God.
Happiness blooms naturally in the hearts of those who are inwardly free. It flows spontaneously, like a mountain spring after April showers, in minds that are contented with simple living.
Happiness lies in making others happy, in forsaking self-interest to bring joy to others.
I don't want people to think that they can attain realization simply by listening to others or by reading books. They must practice what they read and hear.
Truths are not truths to you unless you realize them within yourself. Without realization, they are just ideas. For spiritual perception, spiritual consciousness, lies not in vague theological ideas, but in the acquisition of Self-realization.
Self-realization may be and sometimes is attained even by people who are struggling with sick and otherwise imperfect bodies; but it cannot be attained unless one can concentrate and meditate uninterruptedly upon God.
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 Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light.
Each time a swarm of worries invades your mind, refuse to be affected; wait calmly, while seeking the remedy. Spray the worries with the powerful chemical of your peace.
The Spirit could not create matter as anything different from Itself, for it had only Itself as the tissue or material with which to build the cosmos.
You do not have to struggle to reach God, but you do have to struggle to tear away the self-created veil that hides him from you.
When you worry, there is static coming through your mind radio. God's song is the song of calmness. Nervousness is the static; calmness is the voice of God speaking to you through the radio of your soul.
He who has realized oneness with God possesses all knowledge contained in Him. Knowing the Lord as Beginning and End of all beings and worlds, a true Brahmin has knowledge of the hereafter and of the workings of nature on this plane of existence.
We don't become angels merely by the instrument of death. If we are angels now, we will be angels in the hereafter. If we are dark, negative personalities now, we will be the same after death.
A genuine smile distributes the cosmic current, Prana to every body cell.The happy man is less subject to disease, for happiness actually attracts into the body a greater supply of the Universal life energy.
The man of Self-realization knows a bliss that cannot be compared to anything in this world. His joy is independent of any object or sensory experience. It is an incomparable happiness that cannot be described in words. Such joy is known as sattvik-ananda.
The soul's first adventure is the fight between two ideas: the wish to return to earth in a human form, and the desire to feel the freedom of having no form.
Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty is to be abhorred. For it is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.
Group Meditation is a castle that protects the new spiritual aspirants as well as the veteran meditators. Meditating together increases the degree of Self-realization of each member of the group by the law of invisible vibratory exchange of group magnetism.
I relax and cast aside all mental burdens, allowing God to express through me His perfect love, peace, and wisdom.
Most people consider the course of events as natural and inevitable. They little know what radical changes are possible through prayer.
Music that is saturated with soul force is the real universal music, understandable by all hearts.
Quotes by Paramahansa Yogananda are featured in:
Silence Quotes
Simplicity Quotes
Time Quotes
Paradise Quotes
Success Quotes
Short Inner Peace Quotes