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Thought for the Day for February
by Swami Krishnananda

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Months

  1. Yoga does not mean only practice. It is the energy of the whole cosmos wanting to befriend you, come to you, take care of you, possess you, unite itself with you, inundate you and 'be' you. That is the Great Yoga.
  2. The whole world is in a state of meditation. The whole universe is a body of meditation because the universe is the will of God which is the thought, the original sankalpa of the Supreme Being.
  3. The delight of the Self is the delight of Being. It is the Bliss of Consciousness-Absolute. The Being of Consciousness is the Being of Bliss, Eternal. It does not lie in achievement but realisation and experience, not invention but discovery.
  4. The practice of yoga is the art of contacting the Absolute. This union is a metaphorical one, not a physical contact, in the sense that in yoga there is the union of our consciousness in the present context with the supreme essence that we are.
  5. God first; the world next; yourself last; follow this sequence in the development of the thought-process so that God's power and existence may be affirmed in everything.
  6. Goodness is not sentiment. It is not merely sympathy that you show by emotional outburst. It is an intelligent appreciation of values. You love because you understand. You do not love because you are emotional.
  7. Sadhana is nothing but an attempt to withdraw from the particulars and sink into the Universal.
  8. The world is good if you really cooperate with it as a friend with a friend, and do not treat it as an object of your senses.
  9. What you have enjoyed yourself and what you have given over to others in charity or as gift is really yours. Everything else is of doubtful nature and you are merely a protector thereof.
  10. The body and the environment should be kept in such a condition that one feels spirited within oneself, uplifted in feelings, and light in one's personality. What is to be done to achieve this is an individual choice, each for oneself.
  11. The Om that is referred to in the Mandukya Upanishad is not merely a linguistic chant. It is not a sound that we make through the vocal cords. It is a vibration that is set up.
  12. We are not trying to cut ourselves off from objects of the world, but we are trying to free ourselves from the false notions that there is what is called objectness in the object.
  13. The more you grow spiritually, the more also do you become impersonal. You overcome the limitations of your body and anything connected with the body.
  14. Gurus have spirituality in them; the soul works through them. It is not the mind and the intellect that work through the Gurus. When the soul speaks, the soul alone has to respond. The Guru is a soul and not a body.
  15. Swami Sivananda's dream was the integration of the human personality for the purpose of social integration, and finally, what we may regard as cosmic integration—which is virtually the realisation of God Almighty.
  16. If all the potentialities in the mind which are causes of future births can be compressed into a process of intense concentration, many births can be passed through in one birth.
  17. Objects are neither friends nor foes. They are units of creation, impersonally existing and ready to unravel their mysteries for us.
  18. Religion is not what you do with your hands and feet, or speak with your tongue; religion is what you are when you are absolutely alone in your own internal chamber.
  19. Philosophy is the great art of the perfect life, a life where the common notion of it is transcended, and the Supreme Being, which is identical with existence itself, is realised.
  20. When it is said that the last thought of a person should be God's thought, we are impliedly admonished to remember God every day and every moment.
  21. The fact that we are able to know one another implies that we can psychologically come together. There would be no such thing as the concept of two unless there is the concept of the one already behind them.
  22. Truth is the capacity to visualise things as they are in themselves, and untruth is that which obstructs this vision.
  23. Nonconformists did build this art of life,
    Not moral masons who the stones well count.
  24. All the things in the world appear as a congealed form of universal power. There are no persons, no things, no objects, ultimately. They are concentrated pressure-points of universal force.
  25. A sin is a peculiar dislocated, maladjusted situation that an individual occupies in this cosmos; this maladjustment itself is the sin. The sin itself punishes us, and there is nobody else from outside to strike a rod on our heads.
  26. Spirituality is above ethics and morals. It is not limited to the dos and don'ts of religion. The more we get united in spirit, the lesser is the need for these dos and don'ts. We become our own law, and nobody else need inject law into our veins.
  27. You should have a liberal heart and a charitable nature, and the capacity to feel in an expanded manner and be good in your heart, and be essentially a good person.
  28. “Even this will pass away.” This is a good maxim to remember that our joys and sorrows are not permanent, and that we should always be therefore unattached and hopeful of a better future.
  29. Knowing Brahman is being Brahman. Knowing Reality is being Reality. Thought and Reality coalesce and become Absolute Being.