CONTENTS 1. Awaken from the Slumber of Non-Awareness 2. Being Reborn in the Spirit 3. How to Be Kind to Yourself 4. Being Like God 5. You Cannot Get to the Kingdom of Heaven by Hop, Skip & Jump! 6. Dyeing the Personality the Colour of Divinity through Meditation 7. The Liberating Wisdom at Our Doorsteps 8. We Better Get Back Home: The Practice of Authentic Yoga 9. The Ultimate Success 10. The Necessity for a Guru 11. Swami Sivananda: That Wonderful, Noble-Souled Man 12. Glorious Self-Sacrifice 13. If You Want to Be a True Lover of God 14. Starting the Return Journey 15. Mind Your Own Business! 16. The Richest Treasure on Earth 17. Yoga & Topsy-Turvy Yoga 18. The Ayurvedic System of Health, & The Laws of Prosperity 19. The Basis of Success in all Human Endeavours 20. As a Man Thinketh, So He Becometh 21. The Science of Living Life 22. Standing Like a Rock, No Matter What Comes 23. A Towering Tree Present within a Small Seed 24. Dedicating Yourself Heart & Soul to the Lord 25. Cleansing the Temple: The Inner Transformation 26. The Relationship with the Mind 27. My Beloved Children, You Live in Eternity 28. The Incredidle Gift of Our Spiritual Heritage 29. Love & Adoration: The Yoga of Devetion 30. Liberation Even in this Life: The Path of Knowledge 31. The Yoga of Meditation 32. Let Us Serve Three in All Names & Forms: Karma Yoga 33. Right Thought, Right Activity 34. Light into the Darkness 35. The Four Greatest Friends 36. How to Find Peace INTRODCTION:– How precious a gift it is to be able to come into contact with a great sage, even if that contact not be person to person. A book alone might not always match the experience of being in the direct, physical presence of a saint who is merged in God-consciousness, but yet, the written words of such a great soul still have the capacity to guide, inspire, encourage & illumine. A sincere seeker can often recognize the power inherent in the power inherent in the written teaching, & he may feel that sage is in fact present in the worlds that are being read. At the same time, what might the presence of a great saint be like, & what might be the effect of his company? Some years ago a Christmas retreat was being held in the Sivananda Asharm in Rishikesh, India, & Swami Chidananda had been asked to come & speak to the participants. A Catholic nun from Ireland who was visiting India for the time was in the retreat & in attendance at this talk. She had acknowledged beforehand that she had a fair amount of skepticism about & Hinduism, & she thought it might to difficult to completely open herself to something so foreign to her own tradition. Nevertheless, she was eager to meet this man that she had heard so much about. Swami Chidananda entered the hall with the usual graceful bearing, the keen awareness of others & the worshipfulness that characterize his life. Swamiji did nothing other then take his seat arrange some things with his assistants & smile at some of the people in the audience. this unu was watching all this & seemed to be very present & alert to all that was happening, but after only a few moments she began to cry. Swamiji had till that point still not addressed the audience, so her response was only due to his physical presence. Someone leaned over to her & asked if she was okay. She looked up with a face filled with immense emotion & said, “I feel like I have just seen Jesus.” AWAKEN FROM THE SLUMBER OF NON-AWARENESS:- Occasionally you must atke time to systematically ponder the question “Who am I?” in depth & in earnest. you are endowed with the faculty of reason, & greatest function of this faculty is to enquire into your ultimate nature. Out of an unmanifest condition where you exist without form, height, weight or colour, you manifest for a little while on this planet as a personality with a particular name & form endowed with many distinctive physical & mental attributes. Your manifestation begins at a certain point called birth & soon after at a certain point in time called death. Between these two points you talk, laugh, love, hate, smile, sing, study, work & play. You go to school, & you learn all about trees & plants, animals, manufacturing, mathematics & whatever else it may be. Everything under the sun you learn about your external environment, but you know next to nothing about yourself. What little you do assimilate in self-knowledge is paltry, disconnected facts—but nothing real or whole. If you are ever really in a difficult spot, you go & lie down on a couch & ask someone else to tell you about yourself! Being Reborn in the Spirit:- Much as it is desirable & necessary that we should understand the laws governing the body, even more indispensable is the need to understand our inner being. The psychological self within us is the link between our hight spiritual nature & this body instrument. To this end, it is very important that each individual has an understanding of the nature of the mind, which is the source of behavior & activity. Whatever a person does is ultimately the direct result of thoughts & feelings that were harvested in the hidden area of his own mind. The seeds of all of life’s experiences spring from the mind. Thought is the origin, but bodily states are also the direct result of the state of our mind. Negative thoughts give rise to an impure condition of the body & can influence the entire state of bodily health. Continuous wrong thinking can produce such a situation in the body that various illnesses will arise. How to Be King to Yourself:- Blessed & worshipful Swami Sivanandaji wrote a couple of books that had tantalizing titles. One had the initial name, Sure Ways for Success in Life, but then he also added two more words to the title: and God-realisation. He wrote another little booklet entitled How to Become Rich. He began the booklet in a tongue-in-cheek manner by saying, “Marry a rich heiress!” Then he went on to give some hints on becoming rich like checking laziness, being industrious, punctual & hardworking. A little game was being played with the reader, but this game was ultimately beneficial, as the reader was “caught” by the time he got to the middle of the book. As ne reads on he slowly realizes that earthly riches are nothing when compared to the inner wealth of dispassion. This inner wealth is the real treasure of treasures. It makes you an emperor of emperors & the richest man on earth. Being Like God:- May you live all your life in peace & joy, so that out of your life may come much peace & joy for other. What you have, you can give. If you have peace, that you can give. If you have joy, you can give joy. That is the importance of having peace & joy—so that they can be given! To try to keep something only for oneself is but a small approach, but trying to realize something in other to share it is being like God. You are expected to be like God, because you are His representatives upon earth. God’s divinity, perfection & beauty become through His children. To be like God is the serious business of life. To be like God is the natural ability of every individual saol. The ability to shine as God—sublime & radiant—is the natural heritage of one & all. Life would be hell on earth but for this one fact: you have inherited the ability to be like God. To claim your birthright & to manifest it is the serious business of life. This one fact itself compensates for all that might be negative or wrong, & it makes your life worthwhile. It is sufficient to give you full satisfaction in making your life a process of becoming godly