If death were the end, then there is no God, and there are no realised masters - it is all a pack of lies. The great ones wouldn't urge you to became better, for what would be the use if, good or bad, we are all junked at the end of life? What would be the value of the scriptures? There would be no justice whatsoever if this present existence is all there is to each individual life. What of those souls who lived only a few years, or lived in blind or crippled bodies?
Paramahansa YoganandaTruths are not truths to you unless you realize them within yourself. Without realization, they are just ideas. For spiritual perception, spiritual consciousness, lies not in vague theological ideas, but in the acquisition of Self-realization.
Paramahansa YoganandaGod made us angels of energy, encased in solids - currents of life dazzling through a material bulb of flesh.
Paramahansa YoganandaWhen you exercise your will power you release the power of life energy - not when you merely wish passively to be able to obtain an objective.
Paramahansa YoganandaAs water by cooling and condensation becomes ice, so thought by condensation assumes physical form. Everything in the universe is thought in material form.
Paramahansa YoganandaThe reflection, the verisimilitude, of life that shines in the fleshly cells from the soul source is the only cause of man's attachment to his body; obviously he would not pay solicitous homage to a clod of clay. A human being falsely identifies himself with his physical form because the life currents from the soul are breath-conveyed into the flesh with such intense power that man mistakes the effect for a cause, and idolatrously imagines the body to have life of its own.
Paramahansa Yogananda