AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI:
20 QUOTATIONS (18 + 2 bonus :)

PLEASE NOTE: These quotes will make a lot more sense if you read Yogananda's book first. Then they will serve as a nice synopsis of some of the author's most important points and essential teachings. The book's final chapter (#49) is Yogananda's summation of his entire life and his lineage's teachings. I have chosen not to include any excerpts of it here because it stands alone, and should be read in its entirety. Other essential chapters are: #12, #14, #26, #33, and #43. But again, it's all good --on my personal list of desert island books. Repeat readings will be rewarding. [Also note that page numbers refer to the 2007 edition.]

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LAHIRI MAHASAYA'S PREDICTION

'Sri Yukteswar...motioned me to a blanket seat at his feet.'

"Yogananda," he said with unusual gravity,"you have been surrounded from birth by direct disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya. The great master lived his sublime life in partial seclusion, and steadfastly refused to permit his followers to build an organization around his teachings. He made, nevertheless, a significant prediction."

"'About fifty years after my passing,' he said, 'an account of my life will be written because of a deep interest in yoga that will arise in the West. The message of yoga will encircle the globe. It will aid in establishing the brotherhood of man; a unity based on humanity's direct perception of the One Father.'

"My son Yogananda," Sri Yukteswar went on, "you must do your part in spreading that message, and in writing that sacred life."

Fifty years after Lahiri Mahasaya's passing in 1895 culminated in 1945, the year of completion of this present book..."

~ Yogananda & Sri Yukteswwar, pp. 325-326.

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WHAT IS KRIYA YOGA?

"Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which human blood is decarbonated and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life currents to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centers. By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogis is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues. The advanced yogi transmutes his cells into energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir, and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to materialize and dematerialize at will.

Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his great guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages. Babaji renamed it, simply, Kriya Yoga.

~Yogananda, pp. 263-264
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YOGANANDA'S EXPERIENCE OF COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS

[Sri Yukteswar] struck gently on my chest above the heart.

My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead; yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap.

The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far down Rai Ghat Lane, and noticed also a white cow that was leisurely approaching...I observed her as with my two physical eyes...

All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master's, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.

An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. A swelling glory within began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being...

I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. Blissful amrita, nectar of immortality, pulsated through me with a quicksilverlike fluidity. The creative voice of God I heard resounding as Aum, the vibration of the Cosmic Motor.

Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost...

A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him. Mere intellectual willingness or open-mindedness is not enough. Only adequate enlargement of consciousness by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare one to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence...

Sri Yukteswar taught me how to summon the blessed experience at will, and also how to transmit it to others when their intuitive channels are developed.

~Yogananda, pp. 161-166 (see there for more)
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CONSERVATION OF SEXUAL ENERGY (BRAHMACHARYA)

'Students seeking to escape from the maya-induced sex delusion received from Sri Yukteswar patient and understanding counsel.'

"Just as hunger, not greed, has a legitimate purpose, so the sexual instinct has been implanted by Nature solely for the propagation of the species, not for the kindling of insatiable longings," he said. "Destroy wrong desires now, otherwise they will remain with you after the astral body has been separated from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered."

"Conserve your powers. Be like the capacious ocean, absorbing quietly all the tributary rivers of the senses. Daily renewed sense yearnings sap your inner peace; they are like openings to a reservoir that permit vital waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful, activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self-control; don't let the frogs of sense weakness kick you around!"

"A true devotee is finally freed from all instinctive compulsions. He transforms his need for human affection into aspiration for God alone -- a love solitary because omnipresent."

~ Yogananda & Sri Yukteswar, pp. 144-145.
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ON MIRACLES

"Wonder-workings such as those shown by the "Perfume Saint" are spectacular but spiritually useless. Having little purpose beyond entertainment, they are digressions from a serious search for God.

"Ostentatious display of unusual powers is decried by masters.

~Yogananda, p. 55

"A man of realization does not perform any miracle until he receives an inward sanction," Master explained. "God does not wish the secrets of His creation revealed promiscuously. Also, every individual in the world has an inalienable right to his free will. A saint does not encroach on that independence."

~Sri Yukteswar, p. 133 (see also footnote, p. 245: "Any man of divine realization could perform miracles, because, like Christ, he understood the subtle laws of creation; but not all masters choose to exercise phenomenal powers...")

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THE ILLUMINED MASTER

"Great saints who have awakened form the cosmic mayic dream and have realized this world as an idea in the Divine Mind, can do as they wish with the body, knowing it to be only a manipulatable form of condensed or frozen energy. Though physical scientists now understand that matter is nothing but congealed energy, illumined masters have passed victoriously from theory to practice in the field of matter control."

-- Yogananda, p. 317
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INDIA'S ESCAPE FROM OBLIVION

"Though India possesses a civilization more ancient than that of any other country, few historians have noted that her feat of survival is by no means an accident, but a logical incident in the record of devotion to the eternal verities that India has offered through her best men in every generation. By sheer continuity of being, by intransitivity before the ages (can dusty scholars truly tell us how many?), India has given the worthiest answer of any people to the challenge of time.

The Biblical story of Abraham's plea to the Lord that the city of Sodom be spared if ten righteous men could be found therein, and the Divine Reply: "I will not destroy it for ten's sake," gains new meaning in the light of India's escape from oblivion. Gone are the empires of mighty nations, skilled in the arts of war, that once were India's contemporaries: ancient Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome.

The Lord's answer clearly shows that a land lives, not in its material achievements, but in its masterpieces of man.

Let the divine words be heard again, in this twentieth century, twice dyed in blood ere half over: No nation that can produce ten men who are great in the eyes of the Unbribable Judge shall know extinction.

Heeding such persuasions, India has proved herself not witless against the thousand cunnings of Time. Self-realized masters in every century have hallowed her soil. Modern Christlike sages, like Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar, rise up to proclaim that a knowledge of yoga, the science of God-realization, is vital to man's happiness and to a nation's longevity."

~Yogananda, p. 327
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THE PURPOSE OF LIFE/CHANGE MUST BEGIN FROM WITHIN

"The Hindu scriptures teach that man is attracted to this particular earth to learn, more completely in each successive life, the infinite ways in which the Spirit may be expressed through, and dominant over, material conditions. East and West are learning this great truth in different ways, and should gladly share with each other their discoveries,. Beyond all doubt it is pleasing to the Lord when His earth-children struggle to attain a world civilization free from poverty, disease, and soul ignorance. Man's forgetfulness of his divine resources (the result of his misuse of free will) is the root cause of all other forms of suffering.

"The ills attributed to an anthropomorphic abstraction called "society" may be laid more realistically at the door of Everyman. Utopia must spring in the private bosom before it can flower in civic virtue, inner reforms leading naturally to outer ones. A man who has reformed himself will reform thousands."

~ Yogananda, pp. 535-536
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YOGA IS NOT ESCAPISM

"To buy and sell, yet never to forget God!" The ideal is that hand and heart work harmoniously together. Certain Western writers claim that the Hindu goal is one of timid "escape," of inactivity and antisocial withdrawal. The fourfold Vedic plan for man's life, however, is a well-balanced one for the masses, allotting half the span to study and householder duties; the second half to contemplation and meditational practices...

Solitude is necessary to become established in the Self, but masters then return to the world to serve it. Even saints who engage in no outward work bestow, through their thoughts and holy vibrations, more precious benefits on the world than can be given by the most strenuous humanitarian activities of unenlightened men. The great ones, each is his own way and often against bitter opposition, strive selflessly to inspire and uplift their fellows. No Hindu religious or social ideal is merely negative. Ahimsa, "noninjury," called "virtue entire" (sakalo dharma) in the Mahabharata, is a positive injunction by reason of its conception that one who is not helping others in some way is injuring them."

~Yogananda, footnote, pp. 55-56
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THE VEDIC HERITAGE IS STILL VALID IN MODERN TIMES

"What rishis perceived as essential for human salvation need not be diluted for the West. Alike in soul though diverse in outer experience, neither West nor East will flourish if some form of disciplinary yoga be not practiced."

~ Nagendra Nath Bhaduri, The Levitating Saint, pp. 70-71

*Also note the mystery Sadhu's words to Yogananda:

"India too is young. The ancient rishis laid down ineradicable patterns of spiritual living. Their hoary dictums suffice for this day and land. Not outmoded, not unsophisticated against the guiles of materialism, the disciplinary precepts mold India still. By millenniums -- more than embarrassed scholars care to compute! -- the skeptic Time has validated Vedic worth. Take it for your heritage."

-- Mystery Sadhu, p. 51
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ON AHIMSA (NONVIOLENCE)

"By ahimsa Patanjali meant removal of the DESIRE to kill." Sri Yukteswar had found my mental processes an open book. "This world is inconveniently arranged for a literal practice of ahimsa. Man may be compelled to exterminate harmful creatures. He is not under a similar compulsion to feel anger or animosity. All forms of life have an equal right to the air of maya. The saint who uncovers the secret of creation will be in harmony with Nature's countless bewildering expressions. All men may understand this truth by overcoming the passion for destruction."

Yogananda: "Guruji, should one offer himself a sacrifice rather than kill a wild beast?"

"No, man's body is precious. It has the highest evolutionary value because of unique brain and spinal centers. These enable the advanced devotee to fully grasp and express the loftiest aspects of divinity. No lower form is so equipped. It is true that a man incurs the debt of a minor sin if he is forced to kill an animal or any other living thing. But the holy shastras teach that wanton loss of a human body is a serious transgression against the karmic law."

-- Yogananda & Sri Yukteswar, pp. 127-128

Compare with this selection from the chapter on Gandhi:

'Nonviolence is a natural outgrowth of the law of forgiveness and love. "If loss of life becomes necessary in a righteous battle," Gandhi proclaims, "one should be prepared, like Jesus, to shed his own, not others', blood. Eventually there will be less blood spilt in the world.'

"Epics shall someday be written on the Indian satyagrahis who withstood hate with love, violence with nonviolence, who allowed themselves to be mercilessly slaughtered rather than bear arms. The result on certain historic occasions was that opponents threw down their guns and fled -- shamed, shaken to their depths by the sight of men who valued the lives of others above their own."

~ Yogananda & Gandhi, p. 492
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ON THE CHILDLIKE ANANDA MOYI MA

(Outer Rites Vs. Inward Communion)

"Casting aside every inferior attachment, Ananda Moyi Ma offers her sole allegiance to the Lord. Not by the hair-splitting distinctions of scholars but by the sure logic of faith, the childlike saint has solved the only problem in human life -- establishment of unity with God.

"Man has forgotten this stark simplicity, now befogged by a million issues. Refusing a monotheistic love to the Creator, nations try to disguise their infidelity by punctilious respect before the outward shrines of charity. These humanitarian gestures are virtuous, because for a moment they divert man's attention from himself; but they do not free him from his prime responsibility in life, referred to by Jesus as the "first commandment." The uplifting obligation to love God is assumed with man's earliest breath of an air freely bestowed by his only Benefactor."

~ Yogananda, p. 503
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ON ASTROLOGY

~"Superstitious awe of astrology makes one an automaton, slavishly dependent on mechanical guidance. The wise man defeats his planets -- which is to say, his past -- by transferring his allegiance from the creation to the Creator. The more he realizes his unity with Spirit, the less he can be dominated by matter. The soul is ever free; it is deathless because birthless. It cannot be regimented by stars.

"Man is a soul, and has a body. When he properly places his sense of identity, he leaves behind all compulsive patterns. So long as he remains confused in his ordinary state of spiritual amnesia, he will know the subtle fetters of environmental law." ...

"The deeper the Self-realization of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux."

~ Sri Yukteswar, pp. 182-183, 186


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YOGA MASTERS & JESUS

'The great masters of India mold their lives by the same godly ideals that animated Jesus; these men are his proclaimed kin: "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." "If ye continue in my word," Christ pointed out, "then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Freemen all, lords of themselves, the Yogi-Christs of India are par of the immortal fraternity: those that attain a liberating knowledge of the One Father.'

~ Sri Yukteswar, p. 189


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QUALIFICATIONS OF A SPIRITUAL MASTER

"Many persons believe that a great master should have the health and strength of a Sandow. The assumption is unfounded. A sickly body does not indicate that a guru is lacking in divine powers, any more than lifelong health necessarily indicates inner illumination. The distinguishing qualifications of a master are not physical but spiritual.

Numerous bewildered seekers in the West erroneously think that an eloquent speaker or writer on metaphysics must be a master. Proof that one is a master, however, is supplied only by the ability to enter at will the breathless state (sabikalpa samadhi) and by the attainment of immutable bliss (nirbikalpa samadhi). The rishis have pointed out that solely by these achievements may a human being demonstrate that he has mastered maya, the dualistic cosmic delusion. He alone may say from the depths of realization: "Ekam sat" ("Only One exists").

~ Yogananda, pp. 229-230


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THE NATURE OF GOD

"Ever-new Joy is God. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the year, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness; He is seductive beyond thought of competition.

"How quickly we weary of earthly pleasures! Desire for material things is endless; man is never satisfied completely, and pursues one goal after another. The 'something else' he seeks is the Lord, who alone can grant lasting joy.

"Outward longings drive us from the Eden within; they offer false pleasures that only impersonate soul happiness. The lost paradise is quickly regained through divine meditation. As God is unanticipatory ever-Newness, we never tire of Him. Can we be surfeited with bliss, delightfully varied throughout eternity?"

~ Sri Yukteswar, pp. 166- 167

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MASTERS ARE EVERYWHERE

"Masters are under no cosmic compulsion to live on mountains only." My companion glanced at me quizically. "The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears nearby."

~ Ram Gopal, The Sleepless Saint, p. 156