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Thought for the Day for September
by Swami Krishnananda

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Months

  1. The nature of one's aspiration for the ultimate realisation through yoga is perhaps the most important conditioning factor in the practice.
  2. If you know the meaning of what the Self is, then you will automatically know how to go there.
  3. Most people fail in their attempt at concentration of the mind because they think their mind is theirs and that so-called mind of theirs has no connection with other things in the world.
  4. Yoga is nothing but conscious evolution wherein you do not contradict the evolutionary process but become aware of what is happening and are conscious of every bit of this process.
  5. Meditation is not one of the activities of your day. It is the thing which you are. Meditation is yourself; it is not what you are doing. Your doing becomes one with your being in meditation.
  6. The way to ultimate spiritual freedom in the Absolute is to maintain a perpetual consciousness of it. No false sense of renunciation or austerity is of any use in this endeavour.
  7. For all times to come, provisions have been made by the Creator in such a dexterous manner that they shall come to the people who are really in need of them at the appropriate hour.
  8. Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj was one of the greatest spiritual personalities of our times, a stalwart of the spirit whose main teaching was the lesson that he imparted concerning the goal of life.
  9. The object of meditation is the final choice that you make in this world. You have selected it as the ultimate meaning for your life.
  10. Your feelings, longings, and the operation of your emotions should be harmonised with what you have concluded by your reasoning and understanding. Intuition is nothing but the blend of understanding and emotion.
  11. It is said that when the devotee takes one step towards the Lord, he is greeted by the Lord with a hundred steps.
  12. The process of yoga is the process of diving deep into one's own self, which is also a simultaneous diving into the depths of anything else in the world.
  13. Mutual cooperation is the essence of duty; and in mutual cooperation, no expectation of fruits is possible because the very fact of mutual cooperation brings all the fruits that are required.
  14. Our status in the cosmos is our true history, and no study of a person can be complete or be free from doubt unless it is studied from the cosmical standpoint.
  15. Study under a teacher, a competent master who has trodden the path, who knows the pitfalls, who knows the difficulties, who treats you as a physician treats his patients.
  16. Knowledge is not merely the cause of freedom; it is itself freedom. The universe has no reality independent of its Universal Knower.
  17. The distance between you and God is the same as the extent of your desire for the world.
  18. Space and time are not dead things. They are basic vibrations of the Cosmos.
  19. It is not for nothing that it is said that we require divine guidance and a supernatural assistance, which we have to summon and invoke, because yoga is a supernatural effort on the part of that which is supernatural in man.
  20. Spirituality is impersonality. It is not anything that is personal. It is neither yours nor mine; therefore, to live a spiritual life is not to live a personal life.
  21. The study of the Atman is not the study of something somewhere, it is the study of everything.
  22. The vexations of life are due to entanglement in externalised forms, while freedom at once manifests itself when the universal nature of these forms is beheld.
  23. The whole point about the religions is that they are like many roads leading to one peak of a mountaintop, where they will all merge into one single spot.
  24. Meditation is an integration of consciousness. It is not a routine or a ritual. It is an opening of yourself to the final realities of life.
  25. One is born alone, and one dies alone. Hence one should live also alone. This art of living alone is yoga. Life is the process of the flight of the alone to the Alone.
  26. A jivanmukta is a sage who is liberated from bondage even while living with a body. The perception of the material universe as such vanishes and he beholds the One Brahman appearing as the universe.
  27. Success in meditation is to be measured by the peace we derive from it, and what difference it has made in our lives.
  28. If the agent of action is unlimited, there is unlimited action; and unlimited action is no action.
  29. We are nationals of a psychic world, more properly than the way in which we belong to the physical world of social beings.
  30. When man's meditation on God ends, and God begins meditation on all Creation, the consummation is reached. It is here that all questions are answered and all problems solved.