Swami Satchidananda

Self-Effort and Grace

You begin the spiritual path with self-effort. You begin with your own force, with your own will. As you begin to practice concentration and meditation, the mind becomes more one-pointed; it comes to a very calm condition. In that calmness, you are able to perceive...

Let the Light Within You Be Revealed

We say that a person is a good person if they have good thoughts and ideas—the kind that will bring benefit to humanity. We say a person is not good if the thoughts in their mind are selfish and are of a bad quality. A person may look very beautiful or handsome and...

Attachment Is Not Going to Help You

The best way to avoid attachments, clinging, and overindulgence is to think of the results of that kind of thinking. Attachment always brings some sort of anxiety, tension, and fear. When you are attached to something, you want to protect whatever it. If you don’t...

The Highest Love, The Highest Realization

What is love? Unfortunately, the word “love” is very much misused. When we see our own Self in others and wish that they would experience the very same happiness, the same joy that we have toward ourselves, then you are experiencing true love. This kind of love is not...

Is There An Enlightenment Drug?

Timothy Leary was more or less the originator of the psychedelic drug movement. When he met me in the late 1960s, he asked if I’d like to try some LSD. So I asked him, “Since you think that your LSD can create yogis, why don’t you create some other drugs that can...