Most quotes are from the book Science of Religion by Paramhansa Yogananda

At first I ignored this volume as it sat on my bookshelf, mainly because the preface is so long and unextraordinary. However, upon further examination, we have here a man who knew, had knowledge and saw Truth. I highly recommend this book for those who are seekers after Truth. Along with the Quran, the Bible and other texts, it is helpful to understanding the nature of Divinity and the goal that awaits those who walk, crawl or stumble along the Path.

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The following statements have been confirmed through investigation. The Mortuary Director in question had no affiliation to the yogi Yogananda and therefore had no motive for making these statements. Secondary confirmation is provided in a book whose title escapes me at the moment,but which I will provide tomorrow. (Grit Magazine 1972)

"The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramhansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience...No physical disintegration was visible in his (unembalmed)body even twenty days after death...No indication of mold was visible on his skin, and no visible dessication (drying up) took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annuals, an unparalleled one...At the time of receiving Yogananda's body, the Mortuary personnel expected to observe, through the glass lid of the casket, the usual progressive signs of bodily decay. Our astonishment increased as day followed day without bringing any visible change in the body under observation. Yogananda's body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability...No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time...The physical appearance of Yogananda on March 27th, just before the bronze cover of the casket was put into position, was the same as it had been on March 7th. He looked on March 27th as fresh and as unravaged by decay as he had looked on the night of his death. On March 27th there was no reason to say that his body had suffered any visible physical disintegration at all."

- Mr. Harry T. Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary Director, Forest Lawn Memorial Park

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"Now it is necessary for us to investigate the ultimate cause of pain and suffering, mental and physical, in the avoidance of which the Universal Religion partly consists.

First of all we should assert, from our common universal experience, that we are always conscious of ourselves as the active power performing all of our mental and bodily acts.

Indeed many different functions are we performing--perceiving, thinking, remembering,feeling, acting and so forth.

Yet underlying these functions we can perceive that there is an "ego" or "self," which governs them and thinks of itself as essentially the same through all its past and present existence.

The Bible says, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" All of us as individuals are so many reflected selves of the universal Blissful Spirit--God.

Just as there appear many images of the one sun, when reflected in a number of vessels of water, so are we apparently divided into many souls, occupying these bodily and mental vehicles, and thus outwardly separated from the One Universal Spirit. In reality, God and man are one, and the separation is only apparent."

-Parhamansa Yogananda

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"Loving God "with all thy mind" means withdrawing one's attention from the senses and giving it to God; giving to Him one's whole concentration in meditation. Every seeker of God must learn to concentrate. A prayer that one utters while at the same time thinking of other things in the background of the mind is not a true prayer."

"If you have a lump of gold and you cover it with mud are you going to claim it's no longer gold? Of course not; it is still gold...We are like gold in the mud. When the mud of ignorance is cleansed away, the shining gold of the soul, made in God's image, is seen within."

- Paramhansa Yogananda
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This analogy seemed particularly helpful:

"Now, being blessed and reflected Spiritual selves, why is it that we are utterly unmindful of our Blissful State and are instead subject to physical and mental pain and suffering?

The answer is, that the Spiritual self has brought on itself this present state(by whatever process it may be) by identifying itself with a transitory bodily vehicle and a restless mind. The Spiritual self being thus identified, feels sorry for or delighted at a corresponding unhealthy and unpleasant or healthy and pleasant state of the body and mind. Because of this identification, the Spiritual self is being continually disturbed by their transitory states. To take even the figurative sense of identification: a mother who is in deep identification with her only child suffers and feels intense pain merely by the very hearing of her child's rumored or real death, whereas she may feel no such pain if she hears of the death of a neighboring mother's child with whom she has not identified herself.

Now we can imagine the consciousness when the identification is real and not figurative. Thus the sense of identification with the transitory body and restless mind is the source of our Spiritual self's misery."

-Parhamansa Yogananda

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"As the sun's true image cannot be perceived in the surface of moving water, so the true blissful nature of the Spiritual self--the reflection of the Universal Spirit--cannot be understood owing to the waves of disquietude that arise from identification of the self with the changing states of the body and mind. As the moving waters distort the true image of the sun, so does the disturbed state of mind, through identification, distort the true, Ever-Blissful nature of the Inner Self...

A general idea of the religious method (for freeing the Ever-Blissful, Spiritual self from its baneful connection and identification with the transitory body and mind) is given in one, among a great many, of Christ's teachings. He says, 'Unless ye have lifted up the Son of man, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' The 'Son of man' means the progeny of man, i.e. the body which is born out of another human body. It may seem to us that 'Son of man' means something other than this--that it means Christ. Granting this, we are then to interpret the next saying of Christ, 'The Son of man shall be delivered unto the Gentiles and He shall be crucified,' as meaning that Christ, the Eternal Spirit, was to be crucified by material nails and His Spirit destroyed, an explanation which is obviously absurd; for it was the material body only, in which the Spirit of Christ was clothed, that could possibly be crucified, not the Spirit.

We can explain the first quoted saying of Christ in this way: unless we can transcend the body and realize ourselves as spirit, we cannot enter into the kingdom or state of that Universal Spirit.

We find an echo of this in a Sanskrit couplet of the Oriental scriptures: 'If thou canst transcend the body and perceive thyself as spirit, thou shalt be eternally blissful and free from all pain.'

(When Christ called himself Son of God, he meant the Universal Spirit dwelling in him.)"

- Paramhansa Yogananda

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