Kriyananda > Quotes

“Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one’s own.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“The company you keep is important. If you leave your coat in a room where people are smoking, pretty soon it will smell of smoke. If you leave it outside in the garden, later on, when you bring it indoors, it will carry with it the fragrance of fresh air and flowers.
"Such is the case with the mind. Your garment of thoughts absorbs the vibrations of those with whom you mix.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“Where motion ceases," the Master said, "God begins.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“Those who walk, run, or slide downhill eagerly would rather not think about the long, hard climb back up the hill again.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: Explained By Paramhansa Yogananda, As Remembered By His Disciple, Swami Kriyananda

“Visualize many pots filled with water, standing in a garden. Then imagine the moon shining down from above. In every pot, the moon's reflection will appear separate. In fact, however, all the pots reflect the same moon.
"That is how God is in the souls of men. Though reflected in every human being, He is forever untainted by human consciousness. Even if you broke all the pots, the moon's light would remain the same.
"Wise is he who, beholding the light of life shining in his little `pot' of human consciousness, looks up to its origins in the `moon' above-in God. But foolish, he who becomes
engrossed in the moon in its reflection. When the pot breaks, what will he have left?”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.'
"I always like to remind people of this simple truth: A saint is a sinner who nevergave up!”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“Success is achieving what one really wants.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“What is the use of spending all one's time on things that don't last? The drama of life has for its moral the fact that it is merely that: a drama, an illusion.
"Fools, imagining the play to be real and lasting, weep through the sad parts, grieve that the happy parts cannot endure, and sorrow that the play must, at last, come to an end. Suffering is the punishment for their spiritual blindness.
"The wise, however, seeing the drama for the utter delusion it is, seek eternal happiness in the Self within.
"Life, for those who don't know how to handle it, is a terrible machine. Sooner or later it cuts them to pieces.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything, Desire pleasure in nothing. In order to arrive at possessing everything, Desire to possess nothing. In order to arrive at being everything, Desire to be nothing. In order to arrive at the knowledge of everything, Desire to know nothing.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The New Path: Life with Paramhansa Yogananda: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda

“A disciple asked, "How can intuition be developed?"
Yogananda: "The best way is, every time you meditate, to sit calmly for a long time after doing the techniques. It is during this period that you will be able to deepen your awareness of God's presence within you. Go ever deeper in your enjoyment of that presence.
"The longer and more deeply you enjoy the peace within, the more quickly will your intuition develop.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“The mastery of any subject requires that one identify himself with the particular state of consciousness appropriate to that subject.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“Lord,” I prayed, “though I stumble countless times, I will never stop seeking Thee. Lead my footsteps ever onward toward Thy infinite light!”
― Swami Kriyananda, The New Path: Life with Paramhansa Yogananda: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda

“The lesson of reincarnation is to neutralize the waves of likes and dislikes, of desire and aversion, by the expression of kindness, forgiveness, and compassion to all, and by steadfast contentment in the Self. We must love others not for their human personalities, but because they are manifestations of God, Who dwells equally in all.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“A human being, in order to function fully and effectively in this world, needs to develop in himself all four of these tools of maturity: 1) physical energy and bodily self-control; 2) emotional calmness and expansive feeling; 3) dynamic, persistent will power; and 4) a clear-sighted, practical intellect. Remove any one of these aspects from the equation and the equation itself becomes distorted. Each aspect depends for its perfection on the other three....These tools are best developed in sequence: bodily awareness first, then sensitivity of feeling, then will power, and last of all, intellect.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“The Secret of Meditation is radiating blessings from your heart outward to all the world.”
― Swami Kriyananda

“The Master, addressing a new disciple: "What keeps the earth from shooting out into space, away from the sun?"
"The sun's gravitational pull, Sir," replied the disciple.
"Then what keeps the earth from being drawn back into the sun?"
"The earth's centrifugal force, which pulls it constantly outward, away from that center."
The Master, with an inward smile, dropped the subject. Months later, the disciple realized that his guru had been speaking metaphorically of God as the sun, Who draws all things back to Himself, and of man as the earth, ever trying to escape the pull of God's love while chasing after worldly desires.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“All of us are waves on the ocean of divine consciousness.”
― Swami Kriyananda

“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! It is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the core of all human suffering.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“God, for everyone, is the only answer. Anything less is a compromise.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The New Path: Life with Paramhansa Yogananda: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda

“Society cannot but depend to a disproportionate degree on its capable few to develop and flourish.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“The two-fold goal of all human striving is the avoidance of pain, and the fulfillment of happiness.”
― Swami Kriyananda, Education for Life: Preparing Children to Meet Today's Challenges

“Renunciation is an inner state of consciousness, not an outward act.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The New Path: Life with Paramhansa Yogananda: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda

“Spiritual ignorance is the greatest sin. It is what makes all other sins possible.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“God wants nothing from us. In that sense, then, He is completely impersonal. At the same time, however, He is very intimately personal where we ourselves are concerned, for He wants for each of us, His creatures, the perfection of absolute Bliss. Sanaatan Dharma offers a blend, one which, to reason itself, is perfectly acceptable, between God as both impersonal and personal. God, as Krishna explains in the Bhagavad Gita, and as I said earlier, dreamed everything into existence. He couldn’t mold anything, outwardly, for there was nothing “out there” to mold nothing in existence anywhere but His own consciousness.”
― Kriyananda, Revelations of Christ: Proclaimed by Paramhansa Yogananda, Presented by his disciple, Swami

“A visitor asked Paramhansa Yogananda, "Is renunciation necessary on the spiritual path?"
"Yes!" declared the Master emphatically. "Whether married or single, one should always feel in his heart that God is his one true Beloved, Who alone resides in the temple of all human hearts.
"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.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“History books report one war after another. 'History' is the dates of wars, who won and who lost. But in truth, no one ever wins a war. Someone obtained the spoils, but no one wins.

'Intermediate Guide To Meditation”
― Kriyananda

“Let no one tell you what your path to God ought to be. Many are the paths. Select your own according to the dictates of your own nature, no matter how out of step that puts you with other people.”
― Kriyananda, Rays of the One Light: Weekly Commentaries on the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita

“A room may be in darkness for thousands of years, but if a light is brought into it, in that very instant the darkness vanishes.
"So is it with sin. You cannot drive sin out of the mind any more than you can beat darkness out of a room with a stick. By concentration on delusion, indeed, you may only increase its hold on your mind. Bring in the light of God, however, through deep meditation and devotion, and the darkness will vanish as though it had never been.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The Essence of Self-Realization: The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

“Without inner transformation, outer improvements in the human lot were like attempts to reinforce a termite-ridden building with a fresh coat of paint.”
― Swami Kriyananda, The New Path: Life with Paramhansa Yogananda: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda

“Badrinarayan section of the Himalayas,”
― Swami Kriyananda, The New Path: Life with Paramhansa Yogananda: My Life with Paramhansa Yogananda