The Way to Freedom
Paramahansa Yogananda Best Quotes
The Way to Freedom & Liberation
True freedom consists in performing all actions - eating, reading, working, and so forth - in accordance with right judgment and choice of will, not in being compelled by habits. Eat what you should eat and not necessarily what you are used to. Do what you ought to do, not what your bad habits dictate. It's only when you discard bad habits that you are really a free man.
'The state of nonreturn' is referred to in the Bible:
"Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out (shall reincarnate no more)." [Revelation 3:12]
Devotees who use their power of discrimination to free themselves from identification with the drama of creation and behold in it only the play of the cosmic light and the shadows of delusion; who concentrate on the cosmic beam and not on the shadows; who perceive their souls as rays of the Cosmic Sun; who are continuously absorbed in It; who have destroyed delusion by wisdom—those sages attain liberation.
So long as a person has obsessive desires for the excitement of viewing motion pictures, so long he will seek no higher pastime. Similarly, so long as a man is interested in and attached to the drama of his present incarnation, at death he will depart with unfinished desires and be compelled to return to earth to experience other motion picture sequences, until all his fascinations have been fulfilled.
By nonattachment, by beholding the scenes of life as a divine panorama, and by meditation and ecstasy, man gradually realizes that God is the sole Director of the cosmic cinema. The wisdom so acquired brings about the reunion of the individualized soul with Spirit, thus ending—at last and forever—the long separation. (bg)
To be able to do whatever one pleases is not the real meaning of freedom of actions. You should understand to what degree you are free, and how much you are influenced by bad habits.
The way to freedom is through service to others.
The saints have found that happiness lies in a constant mental state of unruffled peace during all the experiences of earthly dualities. A changeable mind perceives a changeable creation, and is easily disturbed; the unchangeable soul and the unruffled mind, on the other hand, behold, behind the masks of change, the Eternal Spirit. (bg)