Swami Vivekananda

When you come to know yourself the darkness of ignorance is destroyed; it is then that you dwell in the Light of Truth,

1. Love Is the Law of Life: All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore, love for love's sake.

2. It's our Outlook That Matters: It is our own mental attitude, which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.

3. Life is Beautiful: First, believe in this world - that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

4. It's the Way You Feel: Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

5. Set Yourself Free: The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
6. Don't Play the Blame Game: Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

7. Help Others: If money helps a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

8. Uphold Your Ideals: Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

9. Listen to Your Soul: You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

10. Be Yourself: The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves!

11. Nothing Is Impossible: Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin - to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

12. You Have the Power: All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

13. Learn Everyday: The goal of mankind is knowledge... now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

14. Be Truthful: Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.

15. Think Different: All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

16. You are bound to be beaten by waves if you stay on surface, go deeper and you would know the difference.

Prayer by Paramahansa Yogananda

O Spirit, make my soul Thy temple, but make my heart Thy beloved home where Thou wouldst dwell with me in ease and everlasting understanding.

Divine Mother, with the language of my soul I demand realization of Thy presence. Thou art the essence of everything. Make me see Thee in every fiber of my being, in every wisp of thought. Awaken my heart!

O Bestower of unceasing bliss! I will seek to make others truly happy, in gratitude for the divine joy Thou hast given me. Through my spiritual happiness I will serve all.

Heavenly Father, teach me to remember Thee in poverty or prosperity, in sickness or health, in ignorance or wisdom. Teach me to open my closed eyes of unbelief and behold Thine instantaneously healing light.

O blazing Light! awaken my heart, awaken my soul, ignite my darkness, tear the veil of silence, and fill my temple with Thy glory.

Heavenly Father, charge my body with Thy vitality, charge my mind with Thy spiritual power, charge my soul with Thy joy, Thine immortality.

O Father, Thine unlimited and all-healing power is in me. Manifest Thy light through the darkness of my ignorance.

O Eternal Energy, awaken in me conscious will, conscious vitality, conscious health, conscious realization.

Heavenly Spirit, bless me that I may easily find happiness instead of becoming worried at every test and difficulty.

Father, teach me to include the prosperity of others in the pursuit of my own prosperity.

Teach me to feel that Thou art the power behind all wealth, and the value within all things. Finding Thee first, I will find everything else in Thee.

Invincible Lord, teach me to use my will unceasingly in the performance of good actions, until the little light of my will burns as the cosmic blaze of Thine all-powerful will.

Glossary

Advaita signifies non duality.

Ahamkara signifies ego.

Ajnana a term of Vedanta is ignorance individual or cosmic.

Akasha is for space, ether.

Ananda, Bliss.

Antakarana signifies the inner organ, comprising manas or mind, buddhi or intellect, chitta or pleasure seeking function and ahamkara or ego.

Astral body – man’s subtle body of light, prana, the second of three sheets that encase the soul: the causal body, the astral and the physical body.

The power of the astral body enlivens the physical body.

The astral body has 19 elements:

4 intelligence, ego feeling, and mind (sense consciousness);

5 instruments of knowledge (the sensory powers within the physical organ of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch;

5 instruments of action (the executive power in the physical instruments of procreation, excretion, speech, locomotion and the exercise of manual skills;

5 instruments of life force that perform the functions of: circulation, metabolization, assimilation, crystallization and elimination.

Astral world, the subtle sphere of creation, a universe of light and color composed of finer than sub atomic forces, i.e. vibrations of life energy, prana. Every being, every object, every vibration on the material plane has an astral counterpart, for in the astral universe (heaven) is the blue print of the material universe.

At death, the soul of man, clothed in the astral body of light, ascends to one of the higher or lower astral planes, according to merit, to continue his spiritual evolution in the greater freedom of the subtle realm.

Atman Self or Soul.

Aum (Om), the Sanskrit root symbolizes that aspect of the Godhead which creates and sustains all things; Cosmic Vibration.

Aum of the Vedas became the sacred word Hum of the Tibetans, Amin of the Muslims, Amen of the Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and Christians.

The world’s great religions state that all created things originate in the cosmic vibratory energy of Aum or Amen, the word or the Holy Ghost.

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God .. All things were made by him (the word or Aum) and without him there was not anything that was made, (John 1:1:3).

Avatar is one who attains union with Spirit and then returns to earth to help mankind; divine incarnation.

Avidya denotes literarily non-knowledge, ignorance; the manifestation in man of maya, the cosmic delusion. It is man’s ignorance of his divine nature and of the sole reality, Spirit.

Brahma is the creator God, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer.

Brahman is the absolute, the Supreme Reality of non dualistic Vedanta, God beyond creation.

Buddhi is the determinative faculty of the mind.

Causal body is the cause of the astral and physical body.

Chakras or wheels denote in yoga the seven centres of life and consciousness in the spine and brain, which enliven the physical and astral body in man.

The seven centres are exits through which the soul has descended into the body and through which it must re-ascend by a process of meditation. By seven steps the soul escapes into Cosmic Consciousness. In its upward passage through the even open or awakened cerebrospinal centres, the soul traces its way back to the Infinite.

Yoga generally considers only the six lower centres as chakras, with sahasrara referred to separately. All seven centres however, are referred to as lotuses, whose petals turn upward in spiritual awakening as the the life and consciousness travels up the spine.

Chitta, in intuitive feeling; the aggregate of consciousness inherent in which is: ahamkara (ego), buddhi (intelligence) and manas (sense mind) or sense consciousness.

Christ consciousness is the projected consciousness of God immanent in all creation. In the Christian scriptures, the ‘only begotten son’ the only pure reflection in creation of God the Father; in yoga it is Kutastha Chaitanya or Tat, the universal consciousness, or cosmic intelligence of Spirit everywhere present in creation. It is the universal consciousness that manifested in Jesus and other avatars. Yogis and saints know it as the state of samadhi, wherein their consciousness has become identified with the divine intelligence in every particle of creation. They feel the entire universe as their body.

Consciousness states, in mortal consciousness man experiences three states: waking consciousness, sleeping consciousness and dreaming consciousness. But he does not experience his soul, superconsciousness and he does not experience God. The Christ man does. As mortal man is conscious throughout his body, so is the Christ man conscious throughout the universe, which he feels as his body. Beyond the state of Christ consciousness is cosmic consciousness, the experience of oneness with God in His absolute consciousness beyond vibratory creation as well as with the Lord’s omnipresent manifesting in the phenomenal worlds.

Cosmic consciousness denotes the Absolute transcendent Spirit existing beyond creation; God the Father.

Dharma is the eternal principle of righteousness that upholds all creation. It is man’s inherent duty to live in harmony with these principles. It also means to live in accordance with one’s own dharma or intrinsic nature.

Ether is the Sanskrit word for akasa, translated as both ether and space and refers to the vibratory element that is the subtlest in the material world. It is the subtle background against which everything in the material universe becomes perceptible.

Gunas are the three attributes of nature: tamas, rajas and sattva. In man the three gunas express themselves as ignorance or inertia, activity or struggle, and wisdom.

Jnana Yoga (pronounced gyana yoga) is the path to union with God through the discriminative power of the intellect.

Karma is the law of cause and effect.

Karma Yoga the path to God through non attached action and service. By selfless service, by giving the fruits of one’s action to God and seeing God as the sole Doer, the devotee becomes free from ego and karma.

Kriya Yoga is a spiritual science originating millenniums ago in India. It includes certain techniques of meditation the practice of which leads to God Realization.

Kundalini is a powerful current of creative life energy residing in the subtle coiled passageway at the base of the spine. In ordinary waking consciousness the body’s life force enters through the medulla oblongata flows down through the sushumna and is seated at the base of the spine. Through spiritual disciplines the flow of this dormant energy is reversed and ascends through the chakras that lie along the sushumna to the top of the head, or the sahasrara chakra.

Kutastha Chaitanya or Christ Consciousness in Sanskrit that which is unchanged.

 Life Force prana

Maya is the illusory power inherent in the structure of creation by which the One appears as the many. Maya is the principle of relativity, inversion, contrast, duality, oppositional states; the Satan, the adversary of the Old Testament and the devil whom Christ described as murderer and a liar because there is no truth in him.

In God’s plan (Lila), the soul function of Satan or maya is to attempt to deliver man from Spirit to matter, from Reality to unreality.

The manifestation of Christ consciousness within man’s own being, effortlessly destroys the illusions or works of the devil.

Manas is mind

Meditation or dhyana generally is interiorized concentration with the object of perceiving God.

Moksha is liberation

Prakriti is cosmic nature, the intelligent, creative vibratory power projected out of Spirit. When objectified, it become the triune manifestation of the causal, astral and universe and the microcosm in man.

Prana Sparks of intelligence finer than-atomic energy that constitutes life. In the astral world, it is perceived as condensed thoughts of God. In the physical world there are two kinds of prana:

1)   The cosmic vibratory energy that is omnipresent in the universe, structuring and sustaining all things;

2)   The specific prana or energy that pervades and sustains each human body through five currents or functions. Prana current performs the function of crystallization, Vyana current circulation, samana current assimilation, udana current metabolization, and apana current elimination.

Pranayama is conscious control of prana. In the yoga science it is the direct way to consciously disconnect the mind from the life functions and sensory perceptions that tie man to body consciousness. Pranayama thus frees man’s consciousness to commune with God.

Rajas Yoga the Royal or Highest path to God union.

Rishis are seers, exalted beings who manifest divine wisdom.

Sadhana signifies the path to spiritual discipline based on certain instructions and practices.

Samadhi, Super Consciousness, Enlightenment are terms that are often interchanged.

Samadhi is the highest step of the Eightfold Path of yoga as outlined by Patanjali.

Samkhya or Sankhya is a system of creation.

Sanatana Dharma stands for eternal religion

Satan in Hebrew adversary

Sat-Chit-Amanda is the Sanskrit name for God that expresses the essential nature of Spirit as eternal Being or Truth (Sat), infinite consciousness (Chit) and ever new Bliss (Ananda).

Sat-Tat-Aum is Truth, the absolute, Bliss; Tat, universal intelligence or consciousness; Aum cosmic intelligent cosmic vibration, word symbol for God. In Christian terms, Father, Son and Holy Spirit

Sattva is the principle of balance or righteousness

Self, soul, pure consciousness, heart, purusha are different names denoting our true nature

Self Realization by Yogananda is the knowing in body, mind and soul that we are one with the omnipresence of God; that we do not have to pray that it come to us, that we not merely near it at all times, but that god’s omnipresence is our omnipresence; that we are just as much a part of him now as we ever will be. All we have to do is improve our knowing.

Shankara, Swami sometimes referred to as Adi (the first) Shankaracharya, India’s most illustrious philosopher.

Siddha is one who is successful, one who has attained Self Realization.

Soul is individualizes Spirit. The soul is the true and immortal nature of man. It is cloaked only temporarily in the causal, astral and physical bodies. The true nature of the soul is Spirit: ever existing, ever conscious, ever new bliss, joy.

Spiritual Eye, the single eye of intuition and omnipresent perception at the Christ centre (ajna chakra) between the eye brows. The deeply meditating devotee beholds the spiritual eye as a ring of golden light, encircling a blue orb with a white star in the centre.

The spiritual eye is the entryway into the ultimate states of divine consciousness.

Super-conscious mind is the all knowing power of the soul that perceives truth directly through intuition.

Trinity, when Spirit manifests creation, It becomes the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Ghost, or Sat, Tat, Aum. The Father (Sat)is God as the Creator existing beyond creation (Cosmic Consciousness). The Son (Tat) is God’s omnipresent intelligence existing in creation (Christ Consciousness). The Holy Ghost (Aum) is the vibratory power of God that objectifies and becomes creation.

Turiya transcends the waking, dream and deep sleep state.

Upanishads or Vedas are essential summaries that form the doctrine of the Hindu religion.

Vedanta, literally end of the Vedas is the philosophy stemming from the Vedas.

Vedas comprises the four texts the Hindus: Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda and Atharva Veda.

Viveka is philosophical discrimination.

Yoga or union, the highest connotation of the word is union of the individual soul with Spirit.

Yuga or cycles of creation

Wisdom Of Lahiri Mahasaya

Spiritual success and material success are both humanly possible-material success by hard work, and spiritual success through acquiring wisdom.

Self-realization does not occur through fasting, ritual or dipping in holy rivers. Control of body and mind, taking sattvic (pure) food and cultivating sattvic thoughts is conducive to God-realization.

Withdrawing the mind from worldly matters, if one turns it inwards he will rediscover the hidden treasure inside.

Constantly observe yourself!


As a rich harvest is reaped by regular cultivation, Godhood is attained by regular and constant practice of meditation.

The very touch of the Guru can elevate a sincere disciple to an advanced stage but only his unceasing practice combined with love, faith and devotion will lead him to God realization.


When a piece of charcoal is set on fire the dirt is removed.

When the sun shines, the wind blows or the rain comes down, they do not discriminate. They are equal to all.

God is very subtle beyond the perception of senses and beyond

description. He is omnipresent with no beginning and end. He is manifested by His own deeds and can be conceived only by consciousness.

In Search For Ultimate Reality

The purpose of this writing is to emphasize the relationship between man and his Creator. To indicate that nature with its infinite variety of inexorable laws, is veiled by maya, the magical measurer that makes the One appear as the many, in its embrace of individuality, form and intelligence.

As in nature, so also in man God has separated His consciousness as individualized soul from His own Being, but endowed with ego which leads man to believe that he is separate from Him.

To escape the illusion of separateness, one needs to renounce the ego. This can be achieved through abandoning all selfish desires springing from its interaction with the environment and through union with the Infinite in the practice of yoga meditation. In this practice, one detaches himself from the forces of nature that otherwise perpetuate the delusive dichotomy between Self or soul and Spirit.

It should be emphasized that God realization is difficult to attain by merely reading a book, but rather by primarily dwelling every day in the understanding that this world is play of ever changing, intelligent forces emanating from God, of which man is a part and in which he plays his role as a spiritual being.

For us to obtain a better understand of the creative processes of the world in which we live, we may want to take a look at how the seers and sages saw it.

The ancient seers and sages in their quest for understanding the world around them were turning inward to analyze the data that perception presented to their mind. Penetrating below the senses, they found, not a world of solid, separate objects but one of ceaseless process of change in matter coming together, dissolving and coming together again in a different form. Yet below this flux they found something changeless: an infinite indivisible reality. They called it Brahman (God), the divine ground of existence.

This analysis of existence corresponds much with contemporary physics. A physicist would remind us that the things we see are ultimately not separate from each other and from us. We perceive them as separate because of the limitations of our senses. If our eyes were sensitive to a much finer spectrum, we might see the world as a continuous field of matter and energy. Nothing would resemble a solid object.

In examining themselves, the sages made a similar discovery. Instead of identifying a single personality, they discovered various components, such as senses, emotions, will, intellect, ego all being in a constant flux at different times  and when in company of different people. The same person seems to display different personality trades under different conditions. They recognized the mood shifts, as well as changes in desires and opinions over time. Western philosophers like David Hume reasoned their way to a similar conclusion, but with them it was an intellectual exercise.

To the sages what they perceived were not logical conclusions, but personal discovery. They were actually exploring the mind, testing each level of awareness by withdrawing consciousness from the mind through the process of meditation. They found that when consciousness through profound concentration and meditation is withdrawn from the body, mind and senses, the idea of ego or separate existence disappears into a state which is beyond time and space in which all is one. They called this the Self.

To summarize this paper presents an explanation of how sages came to realize Brahman or God and the Self, or soul in man; God immanent and God transcendent. We have seen how in meditation sages discovered unity: the same indivisible reality without as within, oneness.

Every interested person through deep meditation can for himself realize the same truth. The Self, is the same in everyone and can be realized by everyone. It is the essence imminent in all creation and it is eternal.

“The image of God is found essentially and personally in all mankind. Each possesses it whole, entire and undivided, and all together not more than one alone. In this way we are all one, intimately united in our eternal image, which is the image of God and the source in us of all our life”.

                                                          Flemish mystic Jan Van Ruysbroek.

In deep meditation, Samadhi every trace of separateness disappears. Life is seen as a seamless whole. But the body cannot remain in this state for long and after a while awareness of body and mind returns and the conventional world of multiplicity rushes in again. The memory of unity once again seems like a distant dream. Yet after many super conscious, experiences, in meditation, one sees the One underlying the many, the Eternal beneath the ephemeral.

We may ask, what is it that makes undivided reality appear to be a world of separate objects?

In yoga it is called maya, (illusive, veiled) where the One becomes the many, through the creative power of the Godhead, the primal creative energy that makes unity disappear into innumerable separate things with names and forms.

Philosophers explained maya in contemporary terms. The mind, they say, observers the outside world and sees its own structure. It reports that the world consist of a multiplicity of separate objects in a framework of time, space and causality, because these are the conditions of perception. The mind looks at unity and sees diversity. It looks at what is timeless and reports transience. In fact, when man is in an ego state, this multiplicity is his reality. Man’s mistake is when he sees the ego state as ultimate, like the dreamer thinking that nothing is real except the dream. 

We are what we behold. When we look at unity through the instrument of the mind, we see diversity. When we transcend the mind, we enter a higher mode of knowing, a higher state of consciousness in which duality disappears. This does not mean that the phenomenal world is an illusion, but the illusion is the sense of separate existence.

To see the world as it is, it must be viewed from a perspective of wholeness, where one sees himself as the impartial witness of ever changing events without any sense of becoming attached to the objects of observation.

Looking at it from physics, the world of name and form exists only as a condition of perceptions. At a sub atomic level, separate phenomena dissolve into a flux of energy. The effect of maya is similar. The world of the senses is real, but it must be known for what it is: unity appearing as multiplicity.

The person who misidentifies himself with the condition of perception in maya may eventually, through the process of meditation wakes up into a higher state of knowing in which the unity of all life is realized.

In this state the individual realizes that he is not a physical being, but the Self, a spiritual being and thus not separate from God. Then he sees the world not as fragmented, but whole and sees in wholeness the manifestation of God. Once identified with the Self, he knows that although the body will die, his Self will not die and that his awareness of this identity with the Self is not severed by the death of the physical body. Thus, he has realized his essential immortality which is the birthright of every human being. He knows death is no more than taking off an old often worn out coat.

Life cannot offer any higher realization. The one who realizes the Self and God, has everything and lacks nothing. He cannot be shaken by the heaviest burden. Life cannot threaten such a person. All life holds for him is the opportunity to love, to serve and to give. Let it be so.