How to Know God Quotes

“The right relation between prayer and conduct," wrote Archbishop Temple, "is not that conduct is supremely important and prayer may help it, but that prayer is supremely important and conduct tests it.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“If we attempt nothing more than a rigid negative control of the waves of desire, without raising waves of love, compassion and devotion to oppose them, then the result may be even more tragic.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“To stress the negative aspect of self-discipline is to contribute to the vast amount of indirect propaganda which is made, in our society, against the spiritual life.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“If, at any given moment, we could take twenty human minds and inspect their workings, we should probably find one, or at most two, which were functioning rationally. The remaining eighteen or nineteen minds would look more like this: "Ink-bottle. That time I saw Roosevelt. In love with the night mysterious. Reds veto Pact. Jimmy's trying to get my job. Mary says I'm fat. Big toe hurts. Soup good...." etc., etc. Because we do nothing to control this reverie, it is largely conditioned by external circumstances.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“The truth is that we are all inclined to flatter our- sclvcs-despite our daily experience to the contrary-that we spend our time thinking logical, consecutive thoughts. In fact, most of us do no such thing.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“A sculptor decides to make a figure of a horse. The idea of this horse-the form of it which he sees in his imagination-is inspired by sattwa. Now he gets a lump of clay. This clay represents the power of tamas-its formlessness is an obstacle which has to be overcome. Perhaps, also, there is an clement of tamas in the sculptor's own mind. He may think: "This is going to be a lot of trouble. It's too difficult. I'm tired. Why should 1 make the effort?" But here the force of rajas comes to his aid. Rajas, in this instance, represents the sculptor's will to conquer his own lethargy and the difficulties of his medium; it represents, also, the muscular exertion
which he puts forth in order to complete his work. If a sufficient amount of rajas is generated, the obstacle of tamas will be overcome and the ideal form of sattwa will be embodied in a tangible clay object. From this example, it should be obvious that all three gunas are necessary for an act of creation. Sattwa alone would he iust an unrealized idea, rajas without sattwa would be mere undirected energy, rajas without”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“Prakriti is said to be composed of three forces, sattwa, rajas and tamas, which are known collectively as the three gunas. These gunas-whose individual characteristics we shall describe in a moment-pass through phases of equilibrium and phases of imbalance; the nature of their relationship to each other is such that it is subject to perpetual change. As long as the gunas maintain their equilibrium, Prakriti remains undifferentiated and the universe exists only in its potential state. As soon as the balance is disturbed, a re-creation of the universe begins. The gunas enter into an enormous variety of combinations-all of them irregular, with one or the other guna predominating over the rest. Hence we have the variety of physical and psychic phenomena which make up our apparent world. Such a world continues to multiply and vary its forms until the gunas find a temporary equilibrium once more, and a new phase of undifferentiated potentiality begins.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

“A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us.”
― Swami Prabhavananda, How to Know God: The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali