Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.

– Emily Dickinson

Colour me Now, before You leave me
Colour me with Your Song.
Colour me in Your secret Melody
Colour me in the Light of Your Laughter
Colour me with the Kindness of Your tears
May Your Colours, Colour my very Soul.

– – Rabindranath Tagore
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Wishing all the readers of Spiritual Diary a happy Holi

Follow this procedure to purge yourself of weaknesses:
Imagine your Deity or your Master before you. Worship him repeatedly and surrender flowers of different colours of your choice at His feet. Each of the colours represent different propensities such as; anger, conceit, lust, greed, hatred, attachment and arrogance. By Offering those flowers you will purge yourself of the propensities that those colours represent. This is equivalent to playing ‘Holi’ with the Lord

Will Power

Remember, in your will lies the almighty power
of God. When a host of difficulties comes and you
refuse to give up in spite of all obstacles; when your
mind becomes “set,” then you will find God responding
to you.

— Paramahansa Yogananda, “How You Can Talk With God”

Unless you deposit an amount in the Bank, how will the Bank honour a cheque you issue? So too, ask yourself: `Have I deposited enough devotion to the Lord, service to my fellow-beings and faith in my spiritual practices?’ If you do, then you will most certainly draw the Grace of the Lord. Always remember and be sure that you will get as much Grace, in proportion to your perseverance to attain the Lord. The Supreme Divine has and will yield many benefits to you, that you cannot deny. I bless you that you may grow more and more in devotion to the Lord, in whatever Name and Form you choose and I wish you earn the Lord’s Grace to a very large extent.

– Satha Sai Baab
Divine Discourse, Mar 13 1964

When you do things from your
soul, you feel a river moving in
you, a JOY.

Rumi…

Habits

Habits of thought are mental magnets that draw to
you certain things, people, and conditions. Weaken a
bad habit by avoiding everything that occasioned it or
stimulated it, without concentrating upon it in your
zeal to avoid it. Then divert your mind to some good
habit and steadily cultivate it until it becomes a
dependable part of you.

–Paramahansa Yogananda, “The Law of Success”

Habits

It is not your passing inspirations or brilliant
ideas so much as your everyday mental habits that
control your life.

— Paramahansa Yogananda, “The Law of Success”

A man without desires is a lion. When the senses see him, it is they who take flight! They run away like elephants, as quietly as they can. As if they cannot escape, they serve him like slaves.

– Ashtavakra Gita 18:46

God is the basis of everything. He is omnipotent, omniscient and pervades all creation. Who can say that only this is Brahman (God) and that is not. The only eternal, existent entity is Brahman. The rest is all evanescent. Just as without cotton, there can be no cloth, similarly, there can be no world without God. Do not mistake this Deha (physical body) as real. It is the Dehi (indwelling Divinity) that is the true reality. This Divinity is beyond birth and death, the one without any beginning or end, and is the eternal witness. Recognise this truth.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Laugh when troubles come your way. There is nothing better to conquer calamity. A flood of troubles will vanish the moment The mind of a wise man collects itself to face them.

– Tirukkural 63: 621-622

Meditation will help you to find your bonds, loosen them, untie them and cast your moorings. When you are no longer attached to anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you.

– Neem Karoli Baba

If, thinking to gain praise, honour, or respect, or to achieve a good
rebirth or to win salvation, or to escape pain, a man sins against earth
or causes or permits others to do so he will not gain joy or wisdom

Injury to the earth is equivalent to striking, cutting, maiming, or killing a blind man.
Knowing this, man should not sin against earth or cause or permit others to
do so. He who understands the nature of sin against earth is called a true sage
who understands karma. . . – Angas (Jain Quote)
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Angas
(sanskrit) The eight limbs of yoga. These are yama (abstinences), niyama
(observances), asana (postures for meditation), pranayama (breath control for
meditation), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentration),
dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (contemplation).

Make four resolutions about your life hereafter and live in joy.

1. Practise Purity – Desist from wicked thoughts, bad habits and mean activities that weaken your self-respect.

2. Do Service – Serve others, for they are the reflections of the same entity of which you yourself are another reflection. No one of you has any authenticity on your own, except with reference to your Creator, the Lord.

3. See Mutuality – Feel always the kinship with all creation. See the same current flowing through all objects in the Universe.

4. Live in Truth – Do not deceive yourself or others by distorting your experience.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Guru-Disciple Relationship

God does not talk directly to you. He manifests
Himself to you through the channel of a guru and the
guru’s teachings. Disciples are those who allow
themselves to be fully disciplined by the channel.

–Paramahansa Yogananda, “Self-Realization Magazine”

Divine Love

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.”

–Paramahansa Yogananda, Lecture

All my questions have been answered, not through
man but through God. He is, He is. It is His spirit that
talks to you through me. It is His love that I speak of.
Thrill after thrill! Like gentle zephyrs His love comes
over the soul. Day and night, week after week, year
after year, it goes on increasing–you don’t know where
the end is. And that is what you are seeking, every one
of you. You think you want human love and prosperity,
but behind these it is your Father who is calling you. If
you realize He is greater than all His gifts, you will find
Him.

–Paramahansa Yogananda, “The Divine Romance”

The Divine is present in man like the unseen thread which holds a garland together. The entire cosmos is permeated by the Divine and is the visible manifestation of the Divine. Consider yourselves the children of one mother and belonging to the family of humanity. Do not give room for differences of race, creed and nationality. Believe firmly that all belong to the caste of humanity, follow the religion of love and speak the language of the heart. Water is called by different names in different languages. Likewise God is one, whatever name you call Him by, be it Allah, Jesus, Buddha or Rama – have that faith. Develop this universal outlook and don’t criticize any religion.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba

We completed 601 inspiring quotes yesterday. Today I sent you the 602nd quote. None of the quotes were repeated. They were all different. Sometimes it is also good to re-look at the quotes and pick out the ones you didn’t understand, or the ones you want to re absorb. I suggest you go to the spiritual diary page and browse through the Masters, their quotes and their pictures. Make it an occasional habit to visit the page. Sometimes a second look reveals something new you might not have noticed earlier. Also try to contemplate in silence on the quotes that affected you. You will discover a new dimension of experience.

I hope you enjoyed reading the quotes, as much as I did while curating them for you and for myself. So please click on this URL and Go Man Go!

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Spiritual_Diary/

As you already know Spiritual Diary is now on facebook as well. There it’s called mystic trail. You can click on this URL and take part in the spiritual discussions if you want to.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mystic-Trail/232177050129199

If you trust me, believe when I tell you that you are the pure awareness that illumines consciousness and its infinite content. Realize this and live accordingly. If you do not believe me, then go within, enquiring `What am I’? or, focus your mind on `I am’, which is pure and simple being.

– Neem Karoli Baba

Do not be afraid of freedom from desire and fear. It enables you to live a life so different from all you know, so much more intense and interesting, that, truly, by losing all you gain all.

– Neem Karoli Baba

When we use the mind to stop the thoughts, the mind will not stop the thoughts at all, because the mind wants to go on living. Stopping the thoughts is annihilating the mind, and the mind does not wish to be annihilated. The mind wants to live on to fill you full of nonsense, superstitions. Therefore we do not try to stop, the thoughts.

You cause the thoughts to cease by doing absolutely nothing. By being yourself.

– Robert Adams

What is holy, what in unholy, these are all wrong ideas of the mind. Forget all these. In whatever state of mind you are in, in that state call on God.

– Prahlad Baba

As a drunken soldier cannot shoot accurately at a target, so the mind tossed by desires cannot find real, abiding, permanent happiness.

-Dada Vaswani,

So many bodies, so many opinions! But my Beloved, though invisible, is in all these bodies.
There is no life at all without the Beloved; the Self lives as each and every one.
What, then, 0 friend, are you searching for like a fool?
The object of your quest is within you, as the oil is in the sesame seed.
As the pupil is in the eye, so is the Lord in the body;
The deluded do not know Him, and search for Him without.
The lock of error shuts the gate; open it with the key of Love.
By opening the door, you shall wake the Beloved.
Kabir says: 0 brother, do not pass by such good fortune as this!
– Sant Kabir

A man who is averse from harming even the wind, knows the sorrow of all things living. He who knows what is bad for himself, knows what is bad for others, and he who knows what is bad for others, knows what is bad for himself. This reciprocity should always be borne in mind. Those whose minds are at peace and who are free from passions, do not desire to live [at the expense of others]. He who understands the nature of sin against wind, is called a true sage who understands karma.

– Angas (Jain Quote)

It is true we are not bound and that the real Self has no bondage. It is true that you will eventually go back to your source. But meanwhile, if you commit sins, as you call them, you will have to face the consequences of such sins. You cannot escape them. If a man beats you, then, can you say, `I am free, I am not bound by these beatings and I don’t feel any pain. Let him beat on’? If you can feel like that, you can go on doing what you like. What is the use of merely saying with your lips ‘I am free’?

Ramana Maharshi

The One Self

All are deceived, do what the One Power dictates,
Yet each thinks his own will his nature moves;
The hater knows not ’tis himself he hates,
The lover knows not ’tis himself he loves.

In all is one being many bodies bear,
There Krishna flutes upon the forest mood,
There Shiva sits ash-smeared, with matted hair.
But Shiva and Krishna are the single God.

In us too Krishna seeks for love and joy,
In us too Shiva struggles with the world’s grief.
One Self in all of us endures annoy,
Cries in his pain and asks his fate’s relief.

My rival’s downfall is my own disgrace,
I look on my enemy and see Krishna’s face.

Sri Aurobindio (Collected Poems)

A renunciant couple were once proceeding through a thick jungle on a pilgrimage to an inaccessible shrine. The husband saw on the footpath a precious stone, shining brilliantly when the Sun’s rays fell upon it from between the leaves. He hastily threw some sand over it with the movement of his foot, so that his wife may not be tempted to pick it up and become a slave to the tinsel. The wife saw the gesture and chided the husband for still retaining in his mind, a distinction between sand and gold. For her, both were the same. This habit of judging and labelling others is a prevalent practice today. What can you know of the inner working of another’s mind?

– Sri Sathya Sai Baba

The greatest love you can experience is in communion with God in meditation. The love between the soul and Spirit is the perfect love, the love you are all seeking. When you meditate, love grows. Millions of thrills pass through your heart….If you meditate deeply, a love will come over you such as no human tongue can describe; you will know His divine love, and you will be able to give that pure love to others.

Paramahans Yogananda

Be thankful to the Lord, for He gave you Time, as well as action to fill it with. He gave you food, as well as hunger to relish it. But that does not entitle you to engage yourself in action indiscriminately. When you build a house, you install a door in it, don’t you?

What is the purpose of the door? It has dual objectives – to welcome all you would like to offer hospitality to, and to keep out all and sundry, so that they cannot walk in whenever they like.

So too, install a door in your mind. Select the impulses, the motives, and the incentives that appear in your mind and welcome them in. Keep out the demeaning, the debasing and the deleterious. Then, gradually you will be able to admit and experience the highest wisdom of the scriptures, the wisdom culled out of the crucible of experience.

Anubhava Jnanam

Many human beings say “I love you” one day and reject you the next. That is not love. One whose heart is filled with the love of God cannot willfully hurt anyone. When you love God without reservation, He fills your heart with His unconditional love for all.

That love no human tongue can describe….The ordinary man is incapable of loving others in this way. Self-centered in the consciousness of “I, me, and mine,” he has not yet discovered the omnipresent God who resides in him and in all other beings.

To me there is no difference between one person and another; I behold all as soul-reflections of the one God. I can’t think of anyone as a stranger, for I know that we are all part of the One Spirit. When you experience the true meaning of religion, which is to know God, you will realize that He is your Self, and that He exists equally and impartially in all beings. Then you will be able to love others as your own Self.

Paramhans Yogananda

Everything will improve in the future
if you are making a spiritual effort today.

~Swami Sri Yukteswar

I am not starved for want of food, but it is Janardana who deserves my reverence.
I have looked on God as one who sees everything, on bright and dark days, alike.
God is like a father with his child,
who both feels and gives pleasure at the same time.
Good acts and bad acts vanish.
Tuka says, ‘God’s glory alone is left.’

Sant Tukaram
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Sant Tukaram was a prominent Varkari Sant (Saint) and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement in India.

Sant Tukaram was initiated without any intermediaries as the other saints usually were. He dreamt that he was initiated by the Lord Hari himself dressed as a Brahman.

Tukaram continuously sang the praises of the Lord, he sang it in the form of abhangs which he wrote. These were in his mother tongue Marathi. The abhangs express his feelings and philosophical outlook. During his 41 years, Tukaram composed over 5,000 abhangs. Many of them speak of events in his life, which make them somewhat autobiographical. Yet, they are focused on God, Pandurang, and not Tukaram. His abhangs became very popular with the masses of common people. It was this very popularity that caused the religious establishment (the high caste Brahmins) to hate and persecute Tukaram. as, he was causing them to lose their power over the people.

There are many miracles attributed to Tukaram.

Without a worshipper, how can God assume a form and accept service?

The one makes the other beautiful, as a gold setting shows off a jewel.

Who but God can make the worshipper free from desires?

Tuka says, ‘They are drawn to each other like mother and child.’

– Sant Tukaram

The greatest man is he who considers himself to be
the least, as Jesus taught. A real leader is one who first
learned obedience to others, who feels himself to be the
servant of all, and who never puts himself on a pedestal.
Those who want flattery don’t deserve our admiration,
but he who serves us has a right to our love. Isn’t God
the servant of His children, and does He ask for praise?
No, He is too great to be moved by it.

Paramahansa Yogananda, “Sayings of Paramahansa
Yogananda”

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened

. (Luke 11:9-10)

You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.

Gautam Buddha

Tejo Bindu Upanishad says:

Nimishardham na thisthanthi vrittim brahma mayeem vina
Yatha Thisthanthi brahmaadhyaah sukadhayah sanakaadh for a single moment should a person remain without the thought that “I am Brahman”. People like Brahma, Suka and Sanaka sages all remain with the thought of “I am Brahman”.

Any action has five components
Kartha – Doer
Chesta or Karma – Action
Karanam – Instruments
Adhisthaanam – Base or Substratum
Daivam – Vidhi or previous birth effects.

Raman Maharishi

However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you If you do not act on upon them?

Gautam Buddha

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.

Gautam Buddha

Desires are silken threads of material pleasures which the spider of habit continuously spins around the soul to form the shrouding cocoon of ignorance. The soul must manage to cut through this stifling cocoon of ignorance to reemerge as the butterfly of omnipresence.

~ Paramahansa Yogananda

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is; and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds grow into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and a God seed into God.

Philokalia

Brahman cannot be realized by those Who are subject to greed, fear, and anger. Brahman cannot be realized by those Who are subject to the pride of name and fame Or to the vanity of scholarship.

Brahman cannot be realized by those Who are enmeshed in life’s duality.
But to all those who pierce this duality, Whose hearts are given to the Lord of Love, He gives himself through his infinite grace.

– Tejabindu Upanishad

O my Guru! If all the gods are wroth, and yet thou art satisfied with me, I am safe in the fortress of thy pleasure. And if all the gods protect me by the parapets of their blessings, and yet I receive not thy
benediction, I am an orphan, left to pine spiritually in the ruins of thy displeasure.

–Paramahansa Yogananda, “Whispers from Eternity”

There is a key for everything, and the key to Paradise is to love the poor.

– Hadith The Prophet Muhammad (SAW)

“Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
Jesus replied, “`You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: `Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:36-40

And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.

Luke 11:9-10

“You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be the slave of everyone else. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

(Mark 10:42-45)

Let not anyone else know how deeply you feel for the Lord. The Master of the Universe knows of your love; don’t display it before others, or you may lose it.

–Paramahansa Yogananda, “Man’s Eternal Quest”

This is the gist of all worship: to be pure and to do good to others.
He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva.

And if he sees Shiva only in the image, his worship is but preliminary.
He who has served and helped one poor man seeing Shiva in him, without thinking of his caste or creed or race or anything, with him Shiva is more pleased than with the man who sees Him only in temples.

– Vivekananda
(Research: Sukhwani)
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The Spiritual Nomad apologises for his long absence. Also he is overwhelmed by the response of the readers who missed the daily motivation. This has also convinced him that he is not imposing himself on his readers

Bereft of life, bereft of knowledge, bereft of power and will,how shall I
describe my state?

For I do not exist, only He exists.
I am deaf; the hearer is He.
I am blind; the seer is He.
I am mute; the orator is He.
I do not exist; only He exists.

– Shah Kamal,
(research: sukh wani)

As a great fish swims between the banks of a river as it likes,
so does the shining Self move between the states of dreaming and waking.

– Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
(Research: Sukh Wani)

Christmas

Through the transparency of my deepest meditation
I will receive the light of the Father passing through
me. I will be a son of God, even as Jesus was, by
receiving God fully through my meditation-expanded
soul consciousness. I will follow the shepherds of faith,
devotion, and meditation, who will lead me through
the star of inner wisdom to the omnipresent Christ.

–Paramahansa Yogananda, “Self-Realization Magazine”