While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates.... For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists.
I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights. I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'. I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw some things back.
Yoga is a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one's ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness.
The meaning of our self is not to be found in its separateness from God and others, but in the ceaseless realization of yoga, of union; not on the side of the canvas where it is blank, but on the side where the picture is being painted.
Who cares for your bhakti and mukti? Who cares what your scriptures say? I will go into a thousand hells cheerfully if I can rouse my countrymen, immersed in tamas, to stand on their own feet and be men inspired with the spirit of karma-yoga. I am a follower only of he or she who serves and helps others without caring for his own bhakti and mukti!
Yoga exercises are excellent; the speaker does them every day, for an hour or more; but that is merely physical exercise, to keep the body healthy, and so on.
Great compassion penetrates into the marrow of the bone. It is the support of all living beings. Like the love of a parent for an only child, the tenderness of the Compassionate One is all-pervasive.
Meditation brings wisdom; lack of meditation leaves ignorance. Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back, and choose the path that leads to wisdom.
The chief helps in this liberation are Abhyasa and Vairagya. Vairagya is non - attachment to life, because it is the will to enjoy that brings all this bondage in its train; and Abhyasa is constant practice of any one of the Yogas.
Thus to act under the guidance coming from above, this is one side of the sadhana, the dynamic side. The other one is the discrimination between the Purusha and the Prakriti. The Purusha will calmly observe, give sanction, choose, but will realise that all this does not belong to him - all these are outside him. This is the static side of the sadhana. These two aspects constitute the basis of Yoga.