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How to Be Happy All the Time by Paramhansa Yogananda

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How to Be Happy All the Time by Paramhansa Yogananda

The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda, Volume 1

http://www.crystalclarity.com/content.php?type=sample & code=BHBH

http://www.salvationscience.com/v224.htm

 

Introduction

 

This book offers you simple yet profound secrets for bringing happiness into

your life in all circumstances. The thoughts are engaging, practical, and deeply

inspiring.

 

The author, Paramhansa Yogananda, came to the United States from India in 1920,

bringing Americans the teachings and techniques of yoga, the ancient science of

soul-awakening. He was the first master of yoga to make his home in the West,

and his Autobiography of a Yogi quickly became a worldwide bestseller, fueling

the awakening fascination with Eastern teachings in the West.

 

Yoga is the ancient science of redirecting one's energies toward spiritual

awakening. In addition to bringing Americans the most practical and effective

techniques for meditation, Yogananda applied these principles to all areas of

life, showing students how to approach life from a center of inner peace and

happiness. He was a prolific writer, lecturer, and composer during the 32 years

he lived in America.

 

The quotations included in this book are taken from many of the lessons he wrote

in the 1930s, from Inner Culture and East West magazines published before 1943,

as well as from his original interpretation of The Rubaiyat, edited by Swami

Kriyananda, and from notes taken by Swami Kriyananda during his years living

with Yogananda as a close disciple.

 

Chapter 1: Looking for Happiness in the Wrong Place

 

To seek happiness outside ourselves is like trying to lasso a cloud. Happiness

is not a thing: It is a state of mind. It must be lived. Neither worldly power

nor moneymaking schemes can ever capture happiness. Mental restlessness results

from an outward focus of awareness. Restlessness itself guarantees that

happiness will remain elusive. Temporal power and money are not states of mind.

Once obtained, they only dilute a person's happiness. Certainly they cannot

enhance it.

 

The more widely we scatter our energies, the less power we have left to direct

toward any specific undertaking. Octopus habits of worry and nervousness rise

from ocean depths in the subconscious, fling tentacles around our minds, and

crush to death all that we once knew of inner peace.

 

True happiness is never to be found outside the Self. Those who seek it there

are as if chasing rainbows among the clouds!

 

* * * *

 

Like the short-lived roses, countless human beings appear daily in earth's

garden. In their youth, they open fresh, hopeful buds, welcoming life's promises

and nodding with eager expectancy to every breeze of sense-enjoyment. And

then—the petals begin to fade; expectancy turns to disappointment. In the

twilight of old age they droop, gray in disillusionment.

 

Mark the rose's example: Such is the destiny of human beings who live centered

in the senses.

 

Analyze, with understanding born of introspection, the true nature of

sense-pleasures. For even as you delight in them, don't you sense in your heart

a chilling breath of doubt and uncertainty? You cling to them, yet know in your

heart that someday they cannot but betray you.

 

Closer scrutiny reveals that sense-indulgence actually mocks its votaries. What

it offers is not freedom, but soul-bondage. The way of escape lies not, as most

people imagine, down moss-soft lanes of further indulgence, but up hard, rocky

paths of self-control.

 

* * * *

 

People forget that the price of luxury is an ever-increasing expenditure of

nerve and brain energy, and the consequent shortening of their natural life

span.

 

Materialists become so engrossed in the task of making money that they can't

relax enough to enjoy their comforts even after they've acquired them.

 

How unsatisfactory is modern life! Just look at the people around you. Ask

yourself, are they happy? See the sad expressions on so many faces. Observe the

emptiness in their eyes.

 

A materialistic life tempts mankind with smiles and assurances, but is

consistent only in this: It never fails, eventually, to break all its promises!

 

* * * *

 

As a man allows himself to depend increasingly on circumstances outside himself

for his physical, mental, and spiritual nourishment, never looking within to his

own source, he gradually depletes his reserves of energy.

 

* * * *

 

Possession of material riches, without inner peace, is like dying of thirst

while bathing in a lake. If material poverty is to be avoided, spiritual poverty

is to be abhorred! It is spiritual poverty, not material lack, that lies at the

core of all human suffering.

 

* * * *

 

The material scientist uses the forces of nature to make the environment of man

better and more comfortable. The spiritual scientist uses mind-power to

enlighten the soul.

 

Mind-power shows man the way to inner happiness, which gives him immunity to

outer inconveniences.

 

Of the two types of scientist, which would you say renders the greater service?

The spiritual scientist, surely.

 

* * * *

 

Pure love, sacred joy, poetic imagination, kindness, wisdom, peace, and

happiness are felt inside first in the mind or the heart, and are then

transmitted through the nervous system to the physical body. Understand and feel

the superior joys of the inner life, and you will prefer them to the fleeting

pleasures of the outer world.

 

All physical pleasures arise on the surface of the body and are experienced by

the mind through the nervous system. You love the outer pleasures of the senses

because you happened to be captured by them first, and then you remained their

prisoner. Even as some people get used to jail, so we mortals like the outward

pleasures, which shut off the joys from within.

 

For the most part, the senses promise us a little temporary happiness, but give

us sorrow in the end. Virtue and inner happiness do not promise much, but in the

end always give lasting happiness. That is why I call the lasting, inner

happiness of the soul, ?Joy' and the impermanent sense thrills, 'Pleasure.'

 

Outer environment and the company you keep are of paramount importance. The

specific outer environment of early life is especially important in stimulating

or stifling the inner instinctive environment of a child. A child is usually

born with a prenatal 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 will, no

doubt, increase his goodness.

 

Have you thought seriously why you love fleeting, deceiving pleasures in

preference to the lasting peace and joy of the Soul—found so distinctly and

ever-increasingly in meditation? It is because in the beginning you happened to

cultivate the habit of indulging in sense pleasures and did not cultivate the

superior joy of the inner life found in meditation. Understand and feel the

superior joys of the inner life, and you will prefer them to the fleeting

pleasures of the outer world.

 

* * * *

 

It is important to differentiate between your needs and your wants. Your needs

are few, while your wants can be limitless. In order to find freedom and bliss,

minister only to your needs. Stop creating limitless wants and pursuing the

will-o'-the-wisp of false happiness. The more you depend upon conditions outside

yourself for happiness, the less happiness you will experience.

 

* * * *

 

Fostering the desire for luxuries is the surest way to increase misery. Do not

be the slave of things or possessions. Boil down even your needs. Spend your

time in search of lasting happiness or bliss. The unchangeable, immortal soul is

hidden behind the screen of your consciousness, on which are painted dark

pictures of disease, failure, death, and so forth. Lift the veil of illusive

change and be established in your immortal nature. Enthrone your fickle

consciousness on the changelessness and calmness within you, which is the throne

of God. Let your soul manifest bliss night and day.

 

Happiness can be secured by the exercise of self-control, by cultivating habits

of plain living and high thinking, and by spending less money, even though

earning more. Make an effort to earn more so that you can be the means of

helping others to help themselves. One of Life's unwritten laws is that he who

helps others to abundance and happiness will always be helped in return, and he

will become more and more prosperous and happy. This is a law of happiness which

cannot be broken. Is it not better to live simply and frugally and grow rich in

reality?

 

http://www.crystalclarity.com/content.php?type=sample & code=BHBH

http://www.salvationscience.com/v224.htm

***************************************************************

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