Autobiography of a Yogi (Complete Edition)

by Paramahansa Yogananda

The soul is ever free; it is deathless because birthless. It cannot be regimented by stars. “Man is a soul, and has a body.

The truth is that man reincarnates on earth until he has consciously regained his status as a son of God.

Certain Shiva sects wear no clothing in honour of the Lord who owns nothing—and everything.

A guru’s work in the world is to alleviate the sorrows of mankind, whether through spiritual means or intellectual counsel or will power or physical transfer of disease.

The Hindu scriptures teach that an imperative duty of man is to keep his body in good condition; otherwise his mind is unable to remain fixed in devotional concentration.

The distinguishing qualifications of a master are not physical but spiritual.

St. Francis de Sales: “A saint that is sad is a sad saint!”

The world is a bridge; pass over it, but build no house upon it.”

Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit.

Fulfilling one’s earthly responsibilities need not separate man from God, provided he maintains mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires and plays his part in life as a willing instrument of the Divine.

Master of his body and mind, the Kriya Yogi ultimately achieves victory over the “last enemy,” 13 Death.

So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men: And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then.

Kriya, controlling the mind directly through the life force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue of approach to the Infinite.

Gross man seldom or never realizes that his body is a kingdom, governed by Emperor Soul on the throne of the cranium, with subsidiary regents in the six spinal centres or spheres of consciousness.

The desire to smoke disappears when voluntary respiration stops, even in patients who have been accustomed to smoke two packages of cigarettes daily.

“God is the Honey, organisations are the hives; both are necessary.

“Do you not agree that the family man, engaged in useful work to maintain his wife and children, thus plays a rewarding role in God’s eyes?”

he who rejects the usual worldly duties can justify himself only by assuming some kind of responsibility for a much larger family.”

As no action of any kind is possible without willing, man may avail himself of the prime mover, will, to renew his strength without burdensome apparatus or mechanical exercises.

In the course of natural righteousness (rita), each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. Whatever universal energies he himself, wisely or unwisely, has set in motion must return to him as their starting point, like a circle inexorably completing itself.

Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.” —Emerson, “Compensation.”

An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying life’s inequalities serves to free the human mind from...

“A child is in his natural setting amidst the flowers and the songbirds. There he may more easily express the hidden wealth of his individual endowment. True education is not pumped and crammed in from outward sources, but aids in bringing to the surface the infinite hoard of wisdom within.”

“The soul having been often born, or, as the Hindus say, ‘travelling the path of existence through thousands of births’...there is nothing of which she has not gained the knowledge; no wonder that she is able to recollect...what formerly she knew....For enquiry and learning is reminiscence all.” —Emerson, “Representative Men.”

The law of miracles is operable by any man who has realized that the essence of creation is light.

Dull minds discredit the possibility of divine justice, love, omniscience, immortality. “Airy scriptural conjectures!” Men with this insensitive viewpoint, aweless before the cosmic spectacle, set into motion in their lives a discordant train of events that ultimately compels them to seek wisdom.

The awakening of the seven cerebrospinal centres constitutes the true path to the Infinite.

‘Always know that the omnipotent Paramatman can heal anyone, doctor or no doctor.’

Cosmic law cannot be stayed or changed, and man would do well to put himself in harmony with it.

Not cruelty but goodwill upholds the universal sinews; a humanity at peace will know the endless fruits of victory, sweeter to the taste than any nurtured on the soil of blood.

she was an ardent devotee of Lord Shiva, scripturally designated as the “King of Yogis.”

The whole cosmos is a projected thought of the Creator. The heavy clod of the earth, floating in space, is a dream of God’s. He made all things out of His mind, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures.

‘By serving wise and ignorant sadhus, I am learning the greatest of virtues, pleasing to God above all others—humility.’

To humble the ego or false self is to discover one’s eternal identity.

“On the other hand, when the self is in communion with a higher power, Nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain, the will of man. This effortless command over Nature is called ‘miraculous’ by the uncomprehending materialist.

Be like the wise ant that seizes only the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched.

Religion, he maintained, is universal and it is one. We cannot possibly universalise particular customs and conventions; but the common element in religion can be universalised, and we may ask all alike to follow and obey it.”

“Do not do what you want, and then you may do what you like.”

The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all of man’s slavery.

“Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over milky ways and the starry spaces.

A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos.

Someday that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever. All dream-bubbles must eventually burst at a final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda, between dreams and Reality!”

Grovelling, man knows well; despair is seldom alien; yet these are perversities, no part of man’s true lot. The day he wills, he is set on the path to freedom.

The cow is a poem of pity; one reads pity in the gentle animal. She is the second mother to millions of mankind. Protection of the cow means protection of the whole dumb creation of God.

It takes a fairly strenuous course of training to attain a mental state of nonviolence. It is a disciplined life, like the life of a soldier. The perfect state is reached only when the mind, body, and speech are in proper coordination.

Forgiveness is holiness; by forgiveness the universe is held together.

Forgiveness is the might of the mighty; forgiveness is sacrifice; forgiveness is quiet of mind. Forgiveness and gentleness are the qualities of the Self-possessed. They represent eternal virtue.”

“The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind,” Lao-tzu taught. “The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning.”

which a man finds himself at any given time. The scriptures define dharma as “the natural universal laws whose observance enables man to save himself from degradation and suffering.”

The central message of the Gita is that man may win emancipation through love for God, wisdom, and performance of right actions in a spirit of nonattachment.