Paramhansa Yogananda - How to Be Happy All the Time - The Wisdom of Yoganada - Vol 1

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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. He showed people 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 of Omar Khayyam, edited by Swami Kriyananda, and from notes taken by Swami Kriyananda during his years living with Yogananda as a close disciple.

Our goal in this book is to let the Master's spirit come clearly through, with minimal editing. Sometimes sentences have been deleted because of redundancy, sometimes words or punctuation have been changed to clarify the meaning. Most of what is included here is not available elsewhere.

We sincerely hope that Yogananda's words will fill your life with greater peace, fulfillment, and true happiness.

Crystal Clarity Publishers

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 soulbondage. 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!