Goswami Kriyananda quotes:

Leadership is an opportunity to serve. It is not a trumpet call to self- importance.

Sociologically, I think it is the most important thing going on in the world today. Because you can't change people by force. Communism made a great mistake in trying to inflict its beliefs on everybody. People have to find their own understanding, and if you can offer them an example that will inspire, they will come naturally to it. Ananda tries to offer this inspiring example.

Happiness is understanding that friendship is more precious than mere things, more precious than getting your own way, more precious than being in situations where true principles are not at stake.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

I was always seeking truth from childhood. And I identified truth with many things, with science, with politics, with art, and I kept coming back to the thought that without God I can't get to what I'm looking for.

My master's visualizations were so powerful their condensation into matter was mere signature. Donald Walters, formerly Kriyananda, author of The Path about his guru Yogananda.

Self-acceptance comes from meeting life's challenges vigorously. Don't numb yourself to your trials and difficulties, nor build mental walls to exclude pain from your life. You will find peace not by trying to escape your problems, but by confronting them courageously. You will find peace not in denial, but in victory.

Happiness is NOW! It isn't tomorrow. It isn't yesterday. Happiness is like a morning glory: Yesterday's won't bloom again; tomorrow's hasn't opened yet. Only today's flower can be enjoyed today. Be happy this very moment, and you'll learn how to be happy always.

Live more quietly. Live more seeking God's presence in your own heart.

The essence of Ananda is both personal and sociological. Personally for people who seek truth or identities of God, it helps to be with other people who share those ideals. Environment is stronger than willpower, and when you are with people who have high ideals, it helps you to grow in your ideals.

Happiness is a smile of comfort to the sorrowful.

Master said if you want to be happy no one in the world can take happiness from you; if you want to be unhappy, no one in the world can make you happy. So choose to be happy.

We've got to be long distance runners on the spiritual path. We want to run as fast as we can, but at the same time realize that if God isn't at the end of that 100 yards, we don't fall flat of exhaustion. We've got to have whatever rhythm it takes to be able to go on for incarnations until we find that state of perfection we've been seeking.

Attachment is the state of ignorance or forgetfulness, and thus clinging to a memory of enjoyment

Become more and more centered in the Self. To live more and more in the thought that God is here in your consciousness.

Feel that you are happy without any cause for happiness.

Understand that there is no relationship between your inner happiness and your inner joy and the outer things that you experience and behold in the world, that it all begins with you, the world is a mirror to your own Self, when you can look at things and feel joy not in the things but in yourself.

There are realities we all share, regardless of our nationality, language, or individual tastes. As we need food, so do we need emotional nourishment: love, kindness, appreciation, and support from others.

In a sense, each of us is an island. In another sense, however, we are all one. For though islands appear separate, and may even be situated at great distances from one another, they are only extrusions of the same planet, Earth.

Happiness is a question of attitude, not a question of what's happening out there.

A deliberate attitude that you have to hold in your mind as one of the basic rules of yoga is to remain even-minded and cheerful..

As you begin this day, tell yourself, Today I am incarnated anew! I am released from the hypnosis of my old habits and mistakes! Everything that I have long dreamed of doing I will accomplish in this, my new life.

Be able to laugh at difficulties.

Be thou a true yogi. A yogi who understands that everything he's looking for is really inside himself. Learn to live more in the Self.

But surrender also means your back's to the wall and saying, "Okay, I give up." But rather it's a joyful self-offering. When you come to the point of realizing that "I never get it right. I always make a mess of things; I can't do anything right. Let him do it." And then you ask his power to do it through you and you find suddenly that it works that way.

But what is your true self is the God within you who became you, and when you realize that you are not yourself but you are he, then you discover that you and he are one, just as Jesus said. Jesus was a great master, and he had great teachings for the world, and when it says in the Bible, "All those who received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God."

Don't live to be unhappy, live to be happy. If you live to be happy you'll find the things that make you happy. And as you do that you find that sharing with others makes you much happier than taking from them.

Even-minded and cheerful. When things go bad, you'll find that the same kind of attitude comes to you naturally.

Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances.

Happiness is like a plant: It must be watered daily with giving thoughts and actions.

Happiness is reverence for all life.

Happiness is self-generated. It depends on one's attitude of mind. The basis of happiness, is the simple fact that the deepest reality of our own nature is ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new joy.

I had always been very rational, but I'd always used reason in such a way as to convince myself that reasoning alone would not solve anything, really. Reasoning is theoretical. Until you feel with your heart, you don't know if a thing is true. I found that book was absolutely authentic. I absolutely knew it was the truth. My whole heart accepted it.

I know that everybody is seeking bliss. And they're all looking for it mostly in the wrong ways, and as a result of that, they err, but there's no reason to hate them; they just don't know any better. Jesus himself on the cross said, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." And so people who hate you, that's their problem. It doesn't have to be your problem. I wish them well.

If anything or anyone distresses you, think how you'll feel a week - a month - a year later. If you can imagine yourself being happy and peaceful then, why waste all that time? Be happy and peaceful now.

If it (the good circumstances) changes will you be able to keep onto your happiness just as much? Because if not then your happiness is really built on sand.

If you begin to identify yourself with that inner awareness, and then you realize you're not really doing anything. As long as there's the thought, "I'm trying to wake up," that thought of "I" is still there.

If you want to do one good thing in the world, the best thing you can do is give other people joy.

If you want to know me, listen to my music.

Intuition is the innate ability in everyone to perceive truth directly - not by reason, logic, or analysis, but by a simple knowing from within. That is the very meaning of the word "intuition": to know, or understand from within - from one's own self, and from the heart of whatever one is trying to understand. Intuition is the inner ability to see behind the outer forms of things to their inner essence.

It's a mistake to think that God has conflict with anything. He's everything. So the more close you are to God, how can you be in conflict with anybody? Conflict comes from ego, and from thinking, "I'm right and you're wrong." If I can reach the point where I understand that what is right for me may be different than what is right for you, that would be a good step. But most people don't reach that point, and so they fight about it.

It's not insincere to say you're happy if your determined to make it true and live in that consciousness.

It's the fact that your body and your personality are not God. God is you. But you can't say you are God just as the ocean is all the waves, but you can't say one wave is the ocean. And so you manifest God in a way that you don't understand. Man himself is the image of God, but he doesn't see that image in himself. And you need to meditate, and there will come your answer, not looking in the mirror.

I've've seen some people like this that no matter what happens they've got something cheerful to feel about it. It's not always easy, but if we do it as a deliberate sward of battle rather then thinking 'Well, I'm not really feeling that way and therefore I shouldn't say that I am'. No! Make yourself that way!

Joy is not dependent upon outward circumstances. Joy is something that we can have under all circumstances when we are sad or happy. Outward circumstances are always neutral. They seem to be happy or sad according to the happy or sad attitudes of the mind.

Laughter is a medicine you've got to use to drive away blues.

Learn to live more in the Self. Come down a little bit to eat and talk as necessary.

Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one's own.

Realize that to have friends one must first be a friend. Make friendship a priority in your life.

Religion is organized, and spirituality is what the individual feels in his relationship with truth and with God. And although spirituality may be expressed in a religion, many people are spiritual and never go to church. They aren't religious in the sense that they practice a certain type of discipline.

See what is worth learning, and what is worth doing. Thus, you gain an understanding of what is vital, and what is not vital. You need to learn what is important and what is not important. You need to understand what will move you upwards and onwards, and what will hinder you from traveling the higher path.

So what Jesus taught must be understood from the deepest level and that is one of the best sayings to show that he was talking in that way. In the book Revelations from Christ, I found out something that Yogananda said. That Jesus had said son of men and son of God, and people often misunderstand so sometimes the translations themselves are wrong for that reason. So when he said son of man he meant his human body and personality. When he said son of God, he meant the infinite Christ consciousness with which he'd obtained oneness.

Society cannot but depend to a disproportionate degree on its capable few to develop and flourish.

Spirituality means seeking experience. Not just belief.

Take whatever cause for outward happiness you might have and take it within yourself, so that, if the sun should go out, you will not be any less happy; if the birds stop singing you will not be any less happy.

That's what life is for, to find that joy in yourself.

The "kingdom of heaven" to which he referred was the state of God-consciousness, not the beautiful astral heavens that most people visualize, where virtuous souls go after death.

The churches had left me cold, but I thought there's got to be a God. I remember going out, this is in Charleston, South Carolina, and my desire then was to be a playwright, and I was studying theater, and I went out one night, late at night, and I asked, "What can God be if there is a God?" I wasn't sure there was a God, but if there is a God, what must he be? Well, he can't be a judge, who's up there just waiting for us to make a mistake so he can clap us into hell. There's got to be something more than that.

The greatest thing that will please God is that you maintain an attitude of unshakable joy.

The mastery of any subject requires that one identify himself with the particular state of consciousness appropriate to that subject.

The real sign of His blessings is if you can have more and more happiness inside. Learn always to be happy; to be happy with the happiness of God. Even- minded and cheerful. This is the fastest route to divine bliss.

The secret of friendship is expressing kindness with your eyes and through the tone of your voice, not only with words.

The secret of happiness is the determination to be happy always, rather than wait for outer circumstances to make one happy.

The secret of success is doing things not merely because they are popular, but because you deeply believe in them.

The thing is that the ego cannot cure itself of its own malady of egoism; it's already infected by the disease itself. And that is why it is necessary to go to a guru who knows God and by absorbing his consciousness into yourself, you discover that you aren't this ego. You cross that abyss and you find that you are infinite.

The truth is that we are a part of God. God could not have created anything except out of his own consciousness. We're all his dream, and our duty in life that God has assigned to us, that the universe has placed squarely in our laps, is to find out who we really are. "Gnothi seauton," as the Greeks used to say. "Know thyself." But to know thyself, if you trace it back, to the deeper and deeper levels, you discover that that self is not your body or your ego or your personality or your country or anything, that's just a sack of self-definitions that you carry around with you

The two-fold goal of all human striving is the avoidance of pain, and the fulfillment of happiness.

Those who walk, run, or slide downhill eagerly would rather not think about the long, hard climb back up the hill again.

To be happy, you must live in, but not for, the present moment.

Trust life, even if you cannot trust people. For human nature is unreliable, but life itself is ruled by immutable law. Right action leads always, in the end, to victory.

Until you've tasted it [anything], you can't really know it.

Whatever you experience outwardly, take it within yourself and say 'I'm happy because I'm happy. I'm happy because God is in my heart.'

When I find that I am more conscious, it's because I'm in tune with a higher reality. When I'm less conscious, it's because I've cut off that entunement to some extent. Maybe through drinking, through anger, through whatever. And I realized then that God has to be an infinite consciousness, and that I had to be an expression of that consciousness. And that the goal of life then must be to become more and more in tune with that consciousness. And I decided to give my life to God. And around that time, to make a long story short, I found Autobiography of a Yogi.

You can accept it that it may be true what somebody else says, but until you have experienced it, it is not dynamic to your own awareness.

Your enemy is still yourself. You don't have enemies. They may be self-styled. I have plenty of self-styled enemies. I don't wish them harm.