Metaphysical Meditations

By Paramhansa Yogananda

Metaphysical Meditations The reprint of the original 1952 edition

By Paramhansa Yogananda 

Most people want to meditate but do not know how to do so. The purpose of meditation is to connect the little joy of the soul with the vast joy of the Spirit with focused practice.

Meditation is not the same as concentration which consists in freeing the attention from objects of distraction and focusing on one thing at a time. Meditation is that special form of concentration in which the attention has been liberated from restlessness, and is focused on the Infinite, to be focused only on God or sacred thoughts and ideas.

Meditation consists in certain physical, psychological, and metaphysical processes—by which the static of restlessness can be removed from the body, mind, and soul radios, which can then be tuned in with the Infinite. By calm, continuous, one pointed attention the ego must be kept connected to the Spirit until they both become merged into everlasting bliss.

In Metaphysical Meditations Paramhansa Yogananda, author of the best-selling spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, gives some concrete metaphysical methods of meditation, for the student who has already struggled through the mobs of rowdy thoughts and crossed the portals of silence. The instructions will be found in the various sections of the book preceding each type of meditation: prayers or demands addressed to the Divine, affirmations about God, and those spoken to the individual consciousness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Crystal Clarity Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781565891791

Paramhansa Yogananda

Born in 1893, Paramhansa Yogananda was the first yoga master of India to take up permanent residence in the West. He arrived in America in 1920 and traveled throughout the country on what he called his “spiritual campaigns.” Hundreds of thousands filled the largest halls in major cities to see the yoga master from India. Yogananda continued to lecture and write up to his passing in 1952. Yogananda’s initial impact on Western culture was truly impressive. His lasting spiritual legacy has been even greater. His Autobiography of a Yogi, first published in 1946, helped launch a spiritual revolution in the West. Translated into more than fifty languages, it remains a best-selling spiritual classic to this day. Before embarking on his mission, Yogananda received this admonition from his teacher, Swami Sri Yukteswar: “The West is high in material attainments but lacking in spiritual understanding. It is God’s will that you play a role in teaching mankind the value of balancing the material with an inner, spiritual life.” In addition to Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda’s spiritual legacy includes music, poetry, and extensive commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and the Christian Bible, showing the principles of Self-realization as the unifying truth underlying all true religions. Through his teachings and his Kriya Yoga path millions of people around the world have found a new way to connect personally with God. His mission, however, was far broader than all this. It was to help usher the whole world into Dwapara Yuga, the new Age of Energy in which we live. “Someday,” Swami Kriyananda wrote, “I believe he will be seen as the avatar of Dwapara Yuga: the way shower for a new age.”

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Devotion & Worship

To Begin a Meditation

Lock the eyelid doors and shut out the wild dance of tempting scenes. Drop your mind into the bottomless well of your heart. Hold the mind on your heart, bubbling with your life-giving blood. Keep your attention tied to the heart, until you feel its rhythmic beat. With every heartbeat feel the knock of almighty Life. Picture the same all-pervading Life knocking at the heart-door of fifteen hundred million human bodies and of billions of living creatures. The heart-throb constantly, meekly announces the infinite power standing behind the doors of your awareness. The gentle beat of all-pervading Life says to you silently, Do not receive only a little flow of My life, but expand the opening of thy feeling powers. Let Me flood thy blood, body, mind, feelings, and soul with My throbs of universal life.

To Awaken Devotion

Sit still with a straight spine. Cover up your fidgety eyeballs with the sheet of your eyelids. Hold them still. Then loosen your mind from the consciousness of the bundle of your body-weight. Relax the nerve-strings that are pulling at the heavy muscles and bones of your body. For a while, forget the consciousness of carrying a heavy bundle of bones tied in the thick cloth of flesh. Rest. Free your mind from the consciousness of a beast of burden. Do not think of your body-load, but feel your soul untied from the constant material quality of heaviness. Mentally race in your fancy’s airplane above, beneath, left, right — in infinity, or wherever you want to go. Feel and meditate on this, your mental freedom from your body. Dream, dwell, and feel this body-aboveness when sitting still; the territory of your freedom will constantly increases.

Meditations on Devotion

May Thy love shine forever on the sanctuary of my devotion, and may I be able to awaken Thy love in all hearts.

O Father, receive Thou the fervor of our souls, the devotion of incarnations, the love of ages, which we have kept locked in the vaults of our hearts.

Divine Father, in my temple of silence I have made a garden for Thee, decorated with the blossoms of my devotion.

With aspiring heart, with flaming soul, with burning mind, I lay at Thy feet of omnipresence all the flowers of my devotion.

O God, I will worship Thee as beauty and intelligence in the temple of Nature. I will worship Thee as power in the temple of activity, and as peace in the temple of silence.

I Will Wait for Thee

In the corner of my heart I have a mystic throne for Thee. The candles of my joys are dimly lighted in the hope of Thy coming. They will burn brighter when Thou appearest. Whether Thou comest or not, I will wait for Thee until my tears melt away all material grossness.

To please Thee, my love-perfumed tears will wash Thy feet of silence. The altar of my soul will be kept empty until Thou comest.

I will talk not; I will ask naught of Thee. I will wait, realizing that Thou knowest the pangs of my heart while I wait for Thee.

Will that day dawn for me, O Divine Mother, when the utterance of Thy name will cause a flood of tears that will inundate the drought of my heart and burst open the dark gates of my ignorance?

I Was Made for Thee

I was made for Thee alone; I was made for dropping flowers of devotion gently at Thy feet on the altar of the morning.

My hands were made to serve Thee willingly; to remain folded in adoration, waiting for Thy coming; and when Thou comest, to bathe Thy feet with my tears.

My voice was made to sing Thy glory.

My feet were made to seek Thy temples everywhere.

My eyes were made a chalice to hold Thy burning love and the wisdom, falling from Thy Nature’s hands.

My ears were made to catch the music of Thy footsteps echoing through the halls of space, and to hear Thy divine melodies flowing through all heart-tracts of devotion.

My lips were made to breathe forth Thy praises and Thine intoxicating inspirations.

My love was made to throw incandescent searchlight flames to find Thee hidden in the forest of my desires.

My heart was made to respond to Thy call alone.

My soul was made to be the channel through which Thy love might flow uninterruptedly into all thirsty souls.

The Temple of Night

O Father, with closed eyes I sit in the temple of night and worship Thee. The light of the sun with a