Teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. (Shri Paramhansa Yogananda [1893 – 1952] was a Self-Realized yogi and mystic. He is considered as one of the most influential spiritual masters of modern times.)
- Calmness is more dynamic and more powerful than peace.
- Calmness gives you enough power to overcome all the obstacles in your life.
- Even in human affairs, the person who can remain calm under all circumstances is invincible.
- An unruffled calmness can be gained by deep and deeper meditation.
- You must meditate more and more deeply until you have ecstatic communion with God and forget the limitations of the body.
- During meditation you must realize that you are far above all bodily changes – formless, omnipresent, and omniscient.
- Someday, you will know yourself to be subject no longer to the tides of Destiny.
- Your strength will come from within; you will not depend on outer incentives of any kind for motivation.
- Be even-minded. Walk with courage. Go forward from day to day with calm, inner faith.
- Eventually, you will pass beyond every shadow of bad karma, beyond all tests and difficulties and will behold at last the dawn of divine fulfillment.
- In that highest of all states of consciousness will come freedom from every last, trailing vapor of misfortune.
- Therefore, it is important that you always remain inwardly calm and non-attached.
- Attachment to pleasure or aversion to pain, both destroy the equilibrium of the inner nature.
- The excitation of pleasures should be avoided as avidly as one seeks to avoid the unpleasantness of pain.
- Only when feeling is neutralized toward both opposites does one rise above all suffering.
- My master (Sri Yukteshwar) often repeated “The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due and no more”.
- Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all dualities with calmness, while trying at the same time to remove their hold.
- It is very difficult, indeed, to hurt an ever-smiling wise man.
- So remain ever calm within. Be even-minded. When working, be calmly active.
- Be calmly active and actively calm. That is the way of the yogi.
- The yogi who perceives the same Spirit pervading all creation cannot entertain hatred for any creature.
- Instead, he is friendly and compassionate to all. He recognizes God even in the guise of an enemy.
- Finding the joy of the Divine, he is ever contented under all conditions of existence.
- He attends to his meager bodily necessities, but is wholly detached from any sense of “my body” or “my possessions”.
- He considers himself to be serving God in his own body and in the bodies of all who cross his path.
- Whether a Yogi meets gain or loss in the course of performing dutiful actions, he remains even-minded.
- Both success and failure are bound to come at various times in response to the inherent duality in the structure of the body, mind and the world.
- The yogi who constantly reminds himself of his soul has little temptation to identify himself with worldly delusions.
- So long as man concentrates wholly on the changing waves of the alternates of this world of relativity.. so long will he forget to re-identify himself with the underlying changeless sea of all-protecting Spirit.
- Only in Self-Realization does he get away from the superficial flux and attain the changeless state.
- This changeless state (neutralization of restless thoughts) is attained by the continuous practice of meditation.
- … and by keeping the attention fixed at the point between the eyebrows.
- In this state of constant calmness, man witnesses the thoughts and emotions and their workings without being disturbed at all.
- … reflecting in his consciousness only the unchangeable image of the Spirit.
- If you can accomplish this even-minded calmness, nothing can ever hurt you.
- The lives of all great masters show that they have achieved this blessed state.
- Possessing the even-minded blessedness of Spirit, a yogi is unruffled by material sufferings and pleasures.