Be Nourished by the Soul : Balancing, Simplifying, Making Time for God

Excerpts from an article by Sri Daya Mata, President of Self-Realization Fellowship/YSS of India.

Humanity today is suffering from spiritual malnutrition. People in parts of the world suffering from physical starvation, but millions in all nations are suffering from spiritual starvation. Science has given the means to feed everyone on this planet; it is man's spiritual poverty that makes him cling to selfishness and small-minded prejudices, thereby preventing him from eradicating hunger and other forms of deprivation.

The life anchored in truth, in wisdom, in God, is a balanced life. It starts with meditation. That is the emphasis of the routine established by Paramahansa Yogananda... The way of life he taught us consists of mediation in the morning, before we begin our duties, and at intervals through out the day; at noon, and again in the early evening when we have finished our daily work, and once more late at night ...before retiring.

It is the spiritually balanced individual who is truly successful. I am not referring monetary success; it has little meaning. That has been my(Daya Mata) experience, as it was Master's(Paramahansa Yogananda); I have met scores of materially successful human beings who have been emotional and spiritual failures - stressful; lacking inner peace and the ability to give and receive love; unable to relate harmoniously to their families, or to other human beings, or to God. A person's success cannot be measured by what he has, only by what he is and what he is able to give of himself to others.

Meditation helps us to align our outer life with inner values of the soul as nothing else in this world can.It does not take away from family life or relationships with others. On the contrary, it makes us more loving, more understanding - it makes us want to serve our husband, our wife, our children, our neighbours. Real spirituality begins when we include others in our wish for well-being, when we expand our thoughts beyond"I and me and mine."

Most shun meditation not because they truly have no time, but because they do not want to face themselves - a definite result of the interiorization of meditation. There is too much they do not like in themselves, so they would rather keep the mind on externals, never thinking too deeply about the self-improvements they need to make. Get away from such mental laziness.

How marvelously different and fulfilling is the balanced life in God shown us by Master: "Divine Mother, teach me to live with delight. May I enjoy my earthly duties and the countless beauties of creation. Help me to train my senses and appreciate Thy wondrous world of Nature. Let me savour with Thy zest all innocent pleasures. Save me from negation and unwarranted kill-joy attitudes."

Today in Western civilization people do not know how to enjoy simple things.They have become so jaded in their tastes that nothing satisfies: overstimulated outwardly, starved and empty inwardly, they take to drink or drugs to escape.

Let us go back to the simple pleasures of life. Have you ever on your day off, for example, taken a drive up into the mountains, or out into the desert or some other quiet place, had a picnic, sat quietly, and thought about God? These are real pleasures. What joy they bring once you have cultivated the sensitivity of appreciating the Lord's presence in the beauty of nature.

You might say, "Well, it would be terribly boring." But just try it once instead of going to a movie, from which you usually return restless and moody. You wanted to enjoy it, but it did not make you happy. Instead, seek natural places of beauty and solitude and listen to the still voice of God speaking through His creation. What peace it will bring to you!

One who is seeking God must practice more stillness in his life - for at least a short time each day in meditation; for a few hours on the weekend, perhaps when you get out in nature; and for several days or a week every so often.

Making Time for God in Your Life

From " Where There Is Light " by Sri Paramahansa Yogananda

Mankind is engaged in an eternal quest for that "something else" he hopes will bring him happiness, complete and unending. For those individual souls who have sought and found God, the search is over: He is that Something Else.

Many people may doubt that finding God is the purpose of life; but everyone can accept the idea that the purpose of life is to find happiness. I say that God is Happiness. He is Bliss. He is Love. He is Joy that will never go away from your soul. So why shouldn't you try to acquire that Happiness? No one else can give it to you. You must continuously cultivate it yourself.

Everything has its place, but when you waste time at the cost of your true happiness it is not good. I dropped every unnecessary activity so that I could meditate and try to know God, so that I could day and night be in His divine consciousness.

Very few of us know how much we can put into life if we use it properly, wisely, and economically. Let us economize our time -- lifetimes ebb away before we wake up, and that is why we do not realize the value of the immortal time God has given us.

Do not while away your time in idleness. A great many people occupy themselves with inconsequential activities. Ask them what they have been doing and they will usually say, "Oh, I have been busy every minute!" But they can scarcely remember what they were so busy about!

Yoga is the art of doing everything with the consciousness of God. Not only when you are meditating, but also when you are working, your thoughts should be constantly anchored in Him. If you work with the consciousness that you are doing it to please God, that activity unites you with Him. Therefore do not imagine that you can find God only in meditation. Both meditation and right activity are essential, as the Bhagavad Gita teaches. If you think of God while you perform your duties in this world, you will be mentally united with Him.

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Yoga or Modern Science ?

An SRF publication " A World In Transition : Finding Spiritual Security in Times of Change"

(This article was written by Tara Mata ( SRF nun) in the early 1930s, before invention of the electron microscope.)

" Material science is more theoretical than true religion.Science is able to investigate, for example, the external nature and behaviour of atom. But, the practice of meditation bestows omnipresence; a yogi can become one with the atom." -- Paramahansa Yogananda
Modern invention merely copy nature. The telescope is only equivalent to a pair of abnormally bright eyes and brings us merely an extension of vision. It can not give us a new sense but simply enlarges the sense of sight we already possess. Knowledge of the electromagnetic world of atomic structure has opened to us universes so infinitely small that the microscope itself can not perceive them and we must represent them with mathematical equations. But we understand that, given a microscope of sufficient power, the atoms, being forms, could be seen. We see light, though it travels 186,000 miles a second. We see the Andromeda galaxy, and the inconceivably distant universes of stars, with the naked eye.

Because we cannot go beyond sensory perception (for even thought and imagination are forms perceived with the inward eye or the inward sight), the ancient Hindus, and doubtless every other great race of the past Golden Ages, built up their systems of mental science, Yoga (control), through which the senses are refined, broadened, and sharpened so that all natural phenomena lay open to their true-seeing gaze.

Inner Sight Needs No Spectacles

The whole body of scientific inventions that represents the genius of man at our present stage in this new cycle of upward evolution was unnecessary - like spectacles on a man of good vision - to Golden Age rishis (literally, seers). Red begins the spectrum of colours, and red ends it, but the intensity of one is not the intensity of the other. Though it is true that extremes seem to meet, and that both the most backward peoples, and those belonging to the highest civilizations, do not have inventions and observatories and scientific laboratories, yet in the first case it is due to the ignorance of Kali Yuga (Dark Age), an in the latter case to the perfected insight of Golden Age men. So we need not conclude , because the ancients left no records of inventions such as we have today, that they were ignorant men. Inventions are for Dwapara and Treta Yuga (the Bronze and Silver Ages), the midpoints between savagery and true civilization.

Thinkers of our own age are not failing to point out that our inventions are likely to lead us to ruin unless and until we are morally developed enough to direct and use them rightly. Without a better understanding of his own nature, man is unprepared for the responsibility of a knowledge of nature and her dynamic forces. So the golden Age men developed and perfected a science of man - Yoga - not a science of nature, for that follows automatically.

Note: If you like this article and would like to buy this book of great wisdom, place your order at: http://srfbooks.com/

or email me at : kalagara.suresh.kumar@gmail.com

The topics in this book are:

1. The New Millennium: End or Beginning?

2. The New Harmony Between Science and Spirituality

3. The New Religion

4.The New World

5.The New Humanity

Divine Love : Highest Goal of Religion and of Life

From SRF's new publication: The Yoga of Jesus

Though one must love God in order to know Him, it is equally true that one must know God, in order to love Him.No one can love anything of which he is entirely ignorant; no one can love a person who is completely unknown to him. But those who meditate deeply do "know," because the find the proof of the existence of God as the ever new Joy felt in meditation, or the Cosmic Sound of AUM heard in deep silence, or the Cosmic Love experienced while concentrating devotion at heart , or the Cosmic Wisdom that dawn as inner enlightenment, or the Cosmic Light evoking visions of Infinity, or the Cosmic Life felt during meditation when the little life is joined the greater Life in everything.

Any devotee who even once sensed God as anyone of His tangible manifestations in meditation cannot help but love Him when thus touched by His thrilling qualities. Most people never really love God because they little know how lovable the Lord is when He visits the heart of meditating devotee. This actual contact of the transcendental presence of God is possible to determined devotees who persist in meditation and continuous soulful prayers.

Wisdom from The Gita : Point Of No Return / The State Of Non-Return

From GOD TALKS WITH ARJUNA: THE BHAGAVAD GITA : Royal Science of God-Realization - By Paramahansa Yogananda

Chapter 5 : verse 17

To reach The State Of Non-Return, there are 3 stages:

1. Thinking on THAT (God) : Holding the attention on the object of meditation

2. Merged in THAT : Oneness with the object of meditation ( Savikalpa Samadhi)

3. Established in THAT : Permanently and continuously abiding in the state of divine oneness ( Nirvikalpa Samadhi)

After passing the above three stages, we reach to the point of no return and do not have to come back to take part in Delusion (rather don't have to come to this tragic life on earth). The " living happily ever after" will happen after we reach The State Of Non-Return.

What a simple formula and yet it takes incarnations to perfect it.

Wisdom Of The Bhagavad Gita : Freedom = Meditation on God + Desirless Activity

My Master's pearls of wisdom (from The Bhagavad Gita).

The Gita advises the most effective way to free oneself from the bad and good karma.

When a aspiring yogi ...

1. eats, he/she should enjoy eating only as a pleasurable suty for preserving the temple of God.
2. sleeps, he/she should think the body is being quited that he may subconciously enjoy the restful presence of God.
3. meditates, he/she should feel God manifesting as Joy.
4. thinks, he/she should feel that the Cosmic Wisdom is working through his/her discrimination.

By living in this consciousness the yogi dutifully acts out the plan assigned to him by God on the stage of life and no matter what he/she does, he/she is free.

Isn't it a simple formula? But, of course, quite challenging as well.

So, folks.... who ever is looking for freedom, freedom is not in money ( as the so called rich people say that financial freedom gives freedom).....get busy by following the wisdom of Gita.

My Meditation Centre in KL (Malaysia)

Our meditation centre is composed of devoted members and friends of Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsang Society of India, a worldwide religious non-profit organization, founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda for the purpose of disseminating Kriya Yoga, a definite scientific technique of attaining direct personal experience of God.

This meditation centre is my second home. I meet all my spiritual family members here once or twice a week. Here, we all meet together and meditate to spend some time with our Maker (God). It is a wonderful experience to meditate with all these wonderful souls who love God.

We love our family, our friends, our possessions etc..............but do we love the One who made us, gave us family, friends and possessions, the Lord God !!

Just think about it? Perhaps, it is worth spending some time, daily, with the One who gave us this life. :)

"Meditation is the most scientfic and cost-effective way to spend time with God".

My Guru

Paramahamsa Yogananda, my Guru, my Master.

Guru - means who dispels darkness.

My Guru showed me the purpose of life and the way to achieve it.

Meeting him (metaphysically) is another great thing happened in my life (during my stay in Malaysia).

Hindu scriptures say that "when a deciple is ready, his Master will come to him". I met my Master in the right moment when I needed someone to hang-on during my worst moments of my life. And my Master carried me through the storm of my life and brought me to the safe shores. Now, He is the captain of the boat of my life. When a Master is the captain, what to worry about? :)

To know more about my Master,
please visit http://www.srf-yogananda.org/py-life/index.html