The Wisdom of Yogananda

When you are absorbed in love for God, His response is there at the heart center, a tremendous feeling of calmness and divine joy welling up in the heart that draws your attention or concentration to that center. That feeling in the heart is like a great comet of light; and in that light is the love of God. It is that feeling which you should concentrate on in the heart. Those who are in earnest about God are aware of these subtle spiritual experiences. As soon as I concentrate on the heart, I feel that light, that glow of God’s all-consuming love.

Why do you permit yourself to remain entrapped in the cycles of births and deaths and their untold miseries? How many lifetimes will you helplessly go through all this? Don’t waste your time. I condemn anything that keeps you away from God. To seek Him is the eternal way of happiness. This, every man and woman should realize.

Everything one has done to develop the “sixth sense” of intuition while on earth helps one after death. Since it is the degree of realization and the amount of virtue one has expressed on earth that determines one’s experience in the astral region, there is much work to be done to purify the indwelling consciousness by God-contact and by persistence in exercising the godly virtues.

Suffering, created by your wrong living, is the call of God. When you suffer, it is a reminder not to stray from the heavenly consciousness of your true divine nature. But you should not need painful reminders. God prefers that you instead heed the call of wisdom. Realize that even though today you are so filled with life, enjoying the world around you, sooner or later you will suddenly be snatched away by death. Nothing in the world will be able to bring you back. Why wait until it is too late to reflect on the purpose for which you are here? You are not an animal; you have the power to think and reason and plan; and that power you must use to find God.

If you would develop Christ Consciousness, learn to be sympathetic. When genuine feeling for others comes into your heart, you are beginning to manifest that great consciousness….Lord Krishna said: “He is a supreme yogi who regards with equal-mindedness all men….”

Always think of your mind as a garden, and keep it beautiful and fragrant with divine thoughts; let it not become a mud pond, rank with malodorous hateful moods. If you cultivate the heavenly scented blooms of peace and love, the bee of Christ Consciousness will steal into your garden. As the bee seeks out only those flowers that are sweet with honey, so God comes only when your life is sweet with honeyed thoughts.

Presence of life in man is existence; absence of it is death. Hence the method that teaches life’s direct power to control itself must be the best of all.