God is not a mute unfeeling Being. He is love itself. If you know how to meditate to make contact with Him, He will respond to your loving demands. You do not have to plead; you can demand as His child. But which of you will spend the necessary time?
Which of you will persist until you become so concentrated that you receive an answer from Him?
Paramhansa Yogananda
I am the boundless ocean. This way and that, The wind, blowing where it will, Drives the ship of the world. But I am not shaken. I am the unbounded deep In whom the waves of all the worlds Naturally rise and fall. But I do not rise or fall.
Ashtavakra Gita 7:1-2
Material objects which give joy remain outside of the mind; they only gain entry into the mind through imagination. Joy, from its very nature, is something born of the mind and lives closest in it. External, material objects can be destroyed, but this joy within can never be destroyed if one knows how to keep it and unless the possessor of joy changes his mind and becomes sorrowful. This joy is ever-new and indestructible.
Paramhansa Yogananda
That one I love who is incapable of ill will, and returns love for hatred. Living beyond the reach of I and mine, and of pain and pleasure, full of mercy, contented, self-controlled, of firm resolve, with all his heart and all his mind given to Me – with such a one I am in love.
– Bhagavad Gita
If you succeed in finding happiness in your soul, then even though you die tomorrow and join the long procession of departed souls that slowly moves down pillared corridors of centuries, you will always carry with you that priceless treasure.
– Paramhansa Yogananda
Outward environment and the company you keep is of paramount importance. The specific outer environment of early life is specially important in stimulating or stifling inner instinctive environment of a child. A child is usually born with a pre-natal mental environment. This is stimulated if the outer environment is like the inner environment, but if the outer environment is different from it, the inner environment is likely to be suppressed. An instinctively bad child may be suppressed and made good in good company, and vice versa, while an instinctively good child placed in good company would, no doubt, increase his goodness.
Paramhansa Yogananda
Your duty is to be and not to be this or that. ‘I am that I am’ sums up the whole truth. The method is summed up in the words ‘Be still’. What does stillness mean? It means destroy yourself. Because any form or shape is the cause for trouble. Give up the notion that ‘I am so and so’. All that is required to realize the Self is to be still. What can be easier than that?
– Raman Maharishi
God is in all men, but all men are not in God; that is why we suffer.
– Ramakrishna Paramahansa
If you are a slave to your senses, you cannot be happy. If you are a master of your desires and appetites, you can be a really happy person. If you overeat against you will; if you wish anything contrary to your conscience; if you act wrongly, forced by your senses, against the wish of your Inner Self, then you cannot be happy. People who are slaves to the senses find that their evil habits compel them to do things that will hurt them. Stubborn bad habits bludgeon your will power every time it tries to take the lead and guide your thoughts to the kingdom of right action. The remedy lies in rescuing your will power from the imprisoning power of the senses.
– Paramahansa Yogananda
Develop the love of God so that I see in your eyes that you are drunk with God and not asking, “When will I have God?” When you ask that, you are not a devotee. The devotee says: “I have Him, He is listening to me; my Beloved is always with me. He is moving my hands; He is digesting my food; He is gazing at me through the stars.”
– Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda