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| All souls are equal. The only difference between you and me is that I made the effort. |
The Voice of Paramahansa Yogananda |
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Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes
Happiness |
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AUM
Aum is the best symbol for those who want to worship a personal God. It is a better symbol than images, such as those of Kali, Krishna, and others; because in worshipping God as an image, the mind limits the Infinite to that form. It becomes difficult for the sadhaka ("practitioner", meditator) to think of God beyond that 'ishta', when in fact God is Spirit. While meditating on Aum, the mind expands with the omnipresence of that vibration, and the Spirit-nature of Brahman inherent therein is realized as Sat-chit-ananda — ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss.
Aum is the most sacred symbol that can be used to know God. The vibration of Aum contains all the concepts of Him and all His manifestations. No other mantra or symbol gives greater calmness and divine attunement of the mind to God. Chanting this sacred Name leads to perception of the Infinite.
FRIENDSHIP
The relationship that exists between friends is the grandest of human loves. Friendly love is pure, because it is without compulsion. One freely chooses to love his friends; he is not bound by instinct. The love that manifests in friendship can exist between man and woman, woman and woman, man and man. But in the love of friendship, there is no sexual attraction. One must practice celibacy and absolutely forget sex if one wants to know divine love through friendship; then friendship nurtures the cultivation of divine love.
The treasure of friendship is your richest possession, because it goes with you beyond this life. All the true friends you have made you will meet again in the home of the Father, for real love is never lost.
Divine love recognizes all good persons who enter our lives as expressions of God's love for us. Every friend — in the guise of relatives, friends, beloved, spouse — who is with us now or who has left this earth is a medium through which God Himself symbolizes His friendships. To ignore or abuse friendship, therefore, is an affront to God.
MARRIAGE
Two persons who unite their lives to help each other toward divine realization are founding their marriage on the right basis: unconditional friendship. Woman is motivated primarily be feeling, and man by reason; marriage is meant to balance these qualities.
First establish yourself irrevocably on the divine path; then if you marry you won't make a mistake.
When a man and wife are united as true soul mates they will be one flesh, they will act in harmony and unison in body, mind, and soul; their souls will not act with different ideals, but as two bodies, two minds, two souls, with one ideal.
Man should strive to see the God in woman, and to help her realise her spiritual nature.
Man and woman should look upon one another as reflections of the Divine.
The sin lies in marrying the wrong person, actuated by social custom or physical instinct. One should get married only when one finds soul unity with a proper mate. And the two thus united in holy vows should remain together, steadfastly loyal to one another. Proper marriage nurtures real love, union on a higher plane, and sublimates the uncontrolled lusts of living on the sex plane.
Marriage is unnecessary and hampering for those who, renunciants at heart, are intensely seeking God, the Eternal Lover.
DEATH
We should not seek death, but take life as it comes and death as it comes. Death is really beautiful; if it were bad thing, God would not let it happen to us. It is really freedom and entry into another, higher life. We must utilize this life in order to realize the life beyond this one.
Death is not a blotting-out of existence, a final escape from life; nor is death the door to immortality. He who has fled his Self in earthly joys will not recapture It amidst the gossamer charms of an astral world. There he merely accumulates finer perceptions and more sensitive responses to the beautiful and the good, which are one. It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity.
If death were the end, then there is no God, and there are no realised masters - it is all a pack of lies. The great ones wouldn't urge you to became better, for what would be the use if, good or bad, we are all junked at the end of life? What would be the value of the scriptures? There would be no justice whatsoever if this present existence is all there is to each individual life. What of those souls who lived only a few years, or lived in blind or crippled bodies?
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.
To face death itself should not daunt you. Fear of death is ridiculous, because as long as you are not dead you are alive, and when you are dead there is noting more to worry about!
Those who look at the surface of the sea must behold the birth and death of the waves, but those who seek the depths of the ocean behold one indivisible mass of water. Similarly, those who acknowledge "life" and "death" are tossed by sorrow, while those who live in the illimitable superconsciousness behold and feel the One Ineffable Bliss.
Love and Serve!
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