How Feelings Mask the Soul - Paramahansa Yogananda

A Sunday afternoon class on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Self-Realization Fellowship International Headquarters, Los Angeles, California, March 22, 1942.

"Then the beholder (the soul) is established in its own state." (Yoga Sutras I:3)

Part II

Calmness is the Parent of Right Action

When you attain freedom from slavery to feeling, you become spiritually sensitive; but you are no longer oversensitive to matter. You feel pain, but are untouched by it. You see this world, but know it isn’t the ultimate reality. You are above every limitation of body and mind, centered in the calm nature of your soul.

But what poor training the world gives us you can well understand. Either the father is mad and takes it out on the children or the mother scolds without cause. What an example for the young! What a picture to place before them! It is better not to produce children unless you are willing to give them proper training. By withholding the right kind of discipline you make them miserable all their lives. They acquire habits that prevent them from being themselves, their true Selves. Of course, good habits are friends that help us, but wrong habits influence us to become demons. In the same house you may find one person tolerating everything with calmness and another who is all the time boiling with anger, jealousy, and other disturbing emotions. If you can always remain calm, isn’t that much better? If God got impatient, think what would happen to this world! Fortunately for us, He remains calm. He has perfect control of feeling. One part of Him, His absolute nature, is never restless, even though as Creator He knows what is going on here, because He exists in all. So should we be, ever calm in our soul nature in spite of any turmoil around us.

© "The Divine Romance" by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda, published by Self-Realization Fellowship, 3880 San Rafael Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90065-3298, USA. Website: www.yogananda-srf.org. Reprinted with permission. Part I of this article appeared in Splendour, June, 2005 issue.

<< Back