• What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness
  • The yogi's interest is inner peace and self-realization and social harmony
  • Perfection means being in tune with reality
What's really needed is to recognize the need for spiritual as well as material happiness
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Who am I

Success in life begins with knowing, "Who am I? What is the purpose of my life?" Knowledge of the self exists; but sincere seekers are rare. More rare are the great teachers of such wisdom. Since time immemorial, wise men have described our wonderful nature: spiritual, primeval, ever-existing, undying, unchangeable, imperishable. This selection of the writings of Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa (Chris Butler) shares that timeless wisdom — inspiring, challenging , practical.

Controlling the Mind

Gaze intently at some nearby image in your immediate environment. Now close your eyes and look at the picture of that image in your mind. Try to hold the image in your mind and look at it for quite some time. If it begins to move around, try to steady it; if it begins to fade away, bring it back. This exercise should make it quite clear how hard it is to control the mind—to keep something in your mind that you want to keep in your mind. If you can think thoughts you do not want to think, this further illustrates that you are different from your mind.

~ Jagad Guru

If you wrongly identify yourself with your body—your senses—you will erroneously conclude that you can achieve happiness through material sense gratification.

~ Jagad Guru

Racism and Solving Crime

Racism is the identification of a person/self according to the race of the body that self is in. This is like identifying people with their shirts. If you walk along the street, you will see many different-colored shirts. If one of those shirts is purple, you don’t see the person wearing that shirt as a purple person; you see him as someone who merely is wearing a purple shirt. Racism is based on the inability to see that different-colored bodies are just like different-colored shirts.

~ Jagad Guru

The fact is that the crime rate will continue to remain high as long as people are ignorant of their true identity and are bombarded with the message that more sense gratification will equal more satisfaction and happiness. As long as success in life is gauged by the amount of material goods amassed, the crime problem cannot be solved.

~ Jagad Guru

The foundation of racism and racial conflict is the false identification of the body (“clothing”) with the person.

~ Jagad Guru