Conversations with Yogananda: Stories, Sayings, and Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda

by Kriyananda

"God will never let you down," he assured his disciples, "so long as you make the effort. If ever you tell yourself, `I am lost,' it will be so-at least for this incarnation. But if you keep on trying, the Lord will never stop trying on His part to help you."

"Remember," he told us, "It is Divine Mother who tests you through sex. And it is She also who blesses, when you pass Her test. "As soon as the first thought of sex enters the mind, that is the time to catch it. However tempting it seems now, once you are out of it you will see that it is the greatest delusion." Those words, "the first thought of sex," mean more than when that thought assails the mind pleasurably. Even the idle thought, the Master would have added, when there is no desire, is best avoided.

Don't depend too much on reason, for that is where Satan catches you. Intelligence is a tricky guide. To seek the guidance of devotion is much surer and more trustworthy."

"When sex temptation comes," the Master said, "say to yourself, `Lord, Your power is manifesting in me. I will use it to grow stronger in myself, and to create through proper channels.' Then inhale, tense; exhale and relax. Repeat that several times. "Don't let the frogs of weakness kick you around! (That is how my Master put it.) The more you control sex, the more powerful you will become in every way, but if you declare weakly, `Oh, I have to spill it,' you will enslave yourself for life. The more you give in, the less you will be able to free yourself from the meshes of delusion."

To speak of it before others invited their consciousness into the process, and might have diluted his subtle vibrations.

"Truth is always beneficial. Boone wasn't telling the truth, for what he did resulted in harm. What he stated was a fact only, not a truth. He need not have answered at all! It would have been far better for him to say nothing. If he needed to speak, however, it would have been better at least to equivocate than to let someone be hurt as a consequence."

"I have always considered Los Angeles to be the Benares of America."

"Nothing the master ever did was out of habit. His every action was a conscious and deliberate exercise of free will."

asseverated.

co...

"I could walk away from this work right now, and never look back."

"The other day," he added, "I invited some people to dinner. `Come on Wednesday,' I said to them. They replied, `Thursday would be better.' I didn't try to dissuade them, but as it happened, on Thursday it rained heavily."

syncretism.

When one is bad, he is always afraid. When one is good, on the other hand, he is afraid of nothing and no one.

the arts both can and should be a means of inspiring people, and not merely of entertaining them.

peccadillo

plumbed

"Fools argue," the Master used to say, "but wise men discuss. How is discussion different from argument? When discussing, one approaches his subject constructively, with a view to reaching a conclusion. When people argue, they settle all the more firmly in their beliefs, and try to overwhelm others by fighting it out with them."

wisdom doesn't come from books. It comes with discrimination.

"Discrimination is necessary," he said, "and doesn't come by reasoning only, but by soul-intuition.

"Never count your faults. Just think whether you love God enough. He doesn't mind your faults. He minds your indifference."

"Society even in those days was not so simply stratified as to contain only peasants, merchants, soldiers, and priests! These were symbolic designations of the stages of spiritual refinement. They were not intended as social categories. And they were not intended to be hereditary. "Things changed as the yugas [cycles of time] descended toward mental darkness. People in the higher castes wanted to make sure their children were accepted as members of their own caste. Thus, ego-identification caused them to freeze the ancient classifications into what is called the `caste system.' Such was not the original intention. In obvious fact, however, the offspring of a brahmin may be a sudra by nature. And a peasant, sometimes, is a real saint."