Paramahansa Yogananda Quotes

Ordinarily pleasure and pain are regarded as different from sensations.

I am for fetishisation! All of us have our favourite things, and they speak to us.

Even the biggest flops have been liked by a few select people.

Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea - and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness.

Different minds incline to different objects; one pursues the vast alone, the wonderful, the wild; another sighs for harmony and grace, and gentlest beauty.

"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else.

Love is for the soul and sex is for the body. Both cry out for satisfaction

Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty.

The criterion and rule of the true is to have made it. Accordingly, our clear and distinct idea of the mind cannot be a criterion of the mind itself, still less of other truths. For while the mind perceives itself, it does not make itself.

All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being.

Nobody can pretend to know what people want to read or hear or see. People rarely know it themselves; they only know it after the fact.

This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.

There are lots of things that everyone else likes that I hate. So I feel that audience rights are very important. I just want people to hear it and decide if they like it or don't like it as they would with anything else.

I think my music is like anchovies - some people like it, some people get nauseous.

One's favorite book is as elusive as one's favorite pudding.

The most complete and true happiness comes in moments when you feel right there, completely present, with no ideas about good and bad, right and wrong - just a sense of open heart and open mind.

The job of taste was to thin the insane torrent of human creativity down to manageable levels. But the job of appetite was never to be happy with taste.

All teachers are good for someone. There are some teachers out there who I cannot stand, for whatever reason. I cannot even bear the sound of one teacher's voice. Yet they are wonderful teachers for other people. They just are not for me.

Which came first, the mind or the idea of the mind? Have you never wondered? They arrived together. The mind is an idea.

Life seems to be a process of replacing one anxiety with another and substituting one desire for another--which is not to say that we should never strive to overcome any of our anxieties or fulfil any of our desires, but rather to suggest that we should perhaps build into our strivings an awareness of the way our goals promise us a respite and a resolution that they cannot, by definition, deliver.

Happiness, like air and water, the other two great requisites of life, is composite. One kind of it suits one man, another kind another. The elevated mind takes in and breathes out again that which would be uncongenial to the baser; and the baser draws life and enjoyment from that which would be putridity to the loftier.

My situation gives me certain ideas about beauty or the excitement of life, but that doesn't mean other people can necessarily appreciate it.

That is the trouble with many inventors; they lack patience. They lack the willingness to work a thing out slowly and clearly and sharply in their mind, so that they can actually "feel it work." They want to try their first idea right off; and the result is they use up lots of money and lots of good material, only to find eventually that they are working in the wrong direction. We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.

Films are subjective - what you like, what you don't like. But the thing for me that is absolutely unifying is the idea that every time I go to the cinema and pay my money and sit down and watch a film go up on-screen, I want to feel that the people who made that film think it's the best movie in the world, that they poured everything into it and they really love it. Whether or not I agree with what they've done, I want that effort there - I want that sincerity. And when you don't feel it, that's the only time I feel like I'm wasting my time at the movies.

Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?