Paramahansa Yogananda was born in as Mukunda Lal Ghosh. He was an Indian yogi and guru. Some of the books written by him are Karma and Reincarnation, How To Have Courage, Calmness, And Confidence: The Wisdom Of Yogananda 1st Edition, The Bhagavad Gita 1st Edition, and Whispers From Eternity 1st Edition. At the age of 17, in the year 1910, he found his guru Swami Yukteswar Giri. Yogananda graduated with a B.A. from the Serampore College, and in 1915 took vows to join the Swami Order. Here, he was given the name Swami Yogananda Giri. The Yogi established the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in Ranchi. In 1920, he was sent to Boston to attend the International Congress of Religious Liberals. He lived in America for the next thirty years (1920-1952), and taught the soul-awakening techniques of Kriya Yoga to many people. Yogananda visited India in 1935, where he was given the monastic title of Paramahansa, which represents the highest spiritual attainment. The Yogi passed away in 1952, and his funeral service was attended by with hundreds of people in Los Angeles. On his twenty?fifth death anniversary, the Indian government issued a special commemorative stamp in his honour.

1. Spiritual Power of Man’s Word

Man’s word is Spirit in man. Words are sounds occasioned by the vibrations of thoughts. Thoughts are vibrations sent forth by the Ego or Soul. Every word that leaves your mouth ought to be potent with your genuine soul vibration. Words in most people are lifeless because they are automatically put forth into the ether, without being impregnated with soul force. Too much talking, exaggeration or falsehood used in connection with words is just like shooting bullets out of a toy gun, without the gun-powder. That is why the prayers or words of such people do not produce any desired definite change in the order of things. Every word you utter you must mean it, i.e., every word you put forth must represent not only Truth, but some of your realized soul force. Words without soul force are husks without the corn.

Words that are saturated with sincerity, conviction, faith and intuition are just like highly explosive vibration bombs, which when let out, are sure to explode the rocks of difficulties and create the change desired. Avoid speaking unpleasant words, even though they are true. Words must be intoned according to the convictions within. Sincere words or affirmations repeated understandingly, feelingly and willingly are sure to move the Omnipresent Cosmic Vibratory Force and render you aid in your difficulty. Only appeal to that Force with infinite confidence, casting out all doubt and the spirit of looking for the desired result. If you don’t do this, your appealing attention is deflected and side-tracked from its objective mark. Besides you cannot sow the vibratory prayer seed in the soil of Cosmic Consciousness and then pick it out every minute to see if it has germinated into the desired result or not.

2. The God-Given Power of Man

It should be remembered that there is nothing greater in power than the Cosmic Consciousness or God. The Power of Cosmic Consciousness is greater than the power of your mind or the mind of others. Thus you should seek Its aid alone. But this does not mean that you should make yourself passive, inert or credulous, or that you should minimize the power of your mind. Remember God helps those that help themselves. He gave you will power, concentration, faith, reason and common sense to help yourself in your bodily or mental afflictions. You must use them all as you seek the Divine help. But remember in using your own will power or common sense to get rid of a difficulty or disease, you must not rely wholly on, or harness yourself solely to, your Ego and thus disconnect yourself from the Divine Force. Always during affirmations or prayer vibrations feel that you are using your own but God-given power to heal yourself or others. Always believe that it is not God only but yourself also who, as His beloved child, tries to employ His given will, reason, etc., to react on the difficult problems of life. A balance must be struck between the old idea of wholly depending on God, and the modern way of sole dependence on the ego.

During the different affirmations, the attitude of the mind should be different, e.g., will affirmations should be accompanied by strong will; feeling affirmations by devotion; reason affirmations by intelligence and devotion; imagination affirmations by firm fancy and faith. In healing others select that affirmation which is suitable to the co native, imaginative, emotional or thoughtful temperament of your patient. In all affirmations the intensity of attention comes first, but continuity and repetition count a great deal, too. Impregnate your affirmations with your devotion, will and faith, intensely and repeatedly, unmindful of the results, which will naturally come as the fruit of your labors.

During the physical curing process, the attention must not be on the disease, which always damps the faith, but on the mind. During mental cures of fear, anger, any bad habit, consciousness of failure, un-success, nervousness, etc., the concentration should be on the opposite mental quality, e.g., the cure for fear is culturing the consciousness of bravery; of anger-peace; of weakness-strength; of sickness-health.

3. Mental Responsibility for Chronic Diseases

In trying to get rid of a physical or mental sickness by mental or physical method one often concentrates more on the gripping power of the disease than on the possibility of cure, and thus permits the disease to be a mental as well as a physical habit. This is especially true of most cases of nervousness in which the disease is felt long after it is physically cured. Each physical activity or bodily sensation of disease or health, etc., cuts grooves on the brain-cells, which further automatically awaken certain habits of disease or health. The sub-conscious habit of disease or health consciousness exerts a strong influence on the continuity of chronic diseases. Chronic mental or physical diseases have always a deep root in the sub-conscious mind. In a mental or physical disturbance, one ought to be able to pull out its roots in the sub-conscious mind. That is why all affirmations practised by the conscious mind ought to be impressive enough to stay as mental habits in the subconscious mind, which would in turn again automatically influence the conscious mind. Strong conscious affirmation thus being reinforced reacts on the mind and body through the medium of the subconscious.

Still stronger conscious will or devotion affirmations not only reach the sub-conscious but the Super-conscious, the magic storehouse or factory of all miraculous mental powers.

Individual affirmations should be practised willingly, feelingly, intelligently and devotionally, once in a while loudly (when nobody is listening), but mostly mentally (not even in a whisper), with ever-increasing intensity of attention and continuity. The attention from the very beginning of affirmation must steadily increase and should never be allowed to flag. Flagging attention should be again and again brought back like a truant child and repeatedly and patiently trained to perform its given task. Attentive, intelligent repetition and patience are the creators of habits, and as such, these ought to be employed during all affirmations. Such deep and long-continued affirmations for curing chronic mental or bodily afflictions should be practised mentally until they become almost a part of one’s intuitional convictions, by utterly ignoring unchanged or contrary results (if any). It is better to die (if death has to come) with the conviction of being cured than with the consciousness of a mental or bodily ailment being incurable.

Another fact should always be remembered – though death may be the necessary end of the body according to present human knowledge, still it has no fixed time, rather, even if it has, it can be modified or changed by the super-conscious power of the Soul. As such, all affirmations, it order to reach the Super-conscious, must be free from all uncertainties, doubts and inattention. Attention and Devotion are lights that can lead ever blindly uttered affirmations to the subconscious and the Super-conscious. The greater their power, the farther they can usher the vibrations of different affirmations to their subconscious or Super-conscious destinations.

4. What Cures? The Life Energy

Drugs, medicine, massage, spinal adjustment or electrical treatment all help to bring back the lost harmonious condition of the cells by chemicalizing the blood or stimulation of certain tissues. These are external methods that sometimes assist the life-energy to effect a cure. But they have not the power to act on a dead body, whence the life energy has vanished, for there is nothing in a dead man that can utilize the properties of medicine or electrical currents. Without the life energy, medicines, etc., cannot have any healing effect on the human body. Hence it can be seen that it is the life energy alone that can effect a cure; all external methods of stimulation can only co-operate with the life energy, and are powerless without it.

5. Cure According to Temperament

Imagination, convincing reason, faith, emotion or feeling, or will or conation can be employed according to the different specific imaginative or intellectual or emotional or co native nature of the individual. Few people know this. Coue wants to cure all persons by auto-suggestion only. But the diseased person of an intellectual type is not susceptible to suggestion, and can only be influenced by a metaphysical discussion of the power of consciousness over body. He needs to understand mentally the power of the mind over the body. If he can realize, for instance, that blisters can be produced by hypnosis, as Professor James points out in his “Principles of Psychology,” similarly he can understand the power of the mind to cure disease. If the mind can produce ill health it can also produce good health.

Auto-suggestion is also powerless to act on the type of man characterized by strong will power.

He needs stimulation of his will power instead of his imagination if he wants to be cured of his ailment.

A case is recorded of an emotional person who had lost his power of speech, and received it back when running out of a burning house. The sudden shock produced by the sight of fire stimulated his feeling so much that he shouted out “Fire! Fire!” not remembering that hitherto he had been unable to speak. A strong emotion overcomes the power of the subconscious mental disease habit. This story illustrates the power of intense attention, which should be used in connection with affirmations for curing bodily sickness.

During my first steamer trip from India to Colombo, I was taken unawares suddenly by a spell of sea-sickness and lost the valuable contents of my stomach. I resented the experience very much because it was sprung on me without my willing permission to accept it and at a time when I was enjoying my first experience of a floating room (the cabin) and a swimming village. I determined never to be tricked again like that. I advanced my foot and planted it firmly on the floor of the cabin and commanded my will to never accept again the sea-sick experience. Later, though I was on the water for fifty days coming from Calcutta to Boston, and for a month going to Japan, and twenty-six days from Seattle to Alaska and back, I was never sea-sick again, in spite of a very rough sea which caused almost everyone else on board to be sick.

Will, or imagination, or reason, or feeling, cannot of themselves effect a physical cure.

They only act as different agents which, according to the different temperaments of different individuals, can stimulate the life energy to awaken and cure a certain ailment. In a case of paralysis of the arm, if the will or imagination is continuously stimulated, then the life energy will suddenly rush to the diseased nervous channels, curing the tissues and the paralyzed arm. The repetition of affirmations ought to be firm and continuous so that the strength of the will and imagination might be sufficient to stimulate the uncontrolled or inactive life energy.

Yogoda teaches by its art of concentration and meditation, and control of will, how to use this Life Current directly for healing one’s self and others. No one should ever minimize the importance of repeated, ever deeper efforts of will or imagination affirmations as given in this book to effect the cure of bad habits, or mental or bodily troubles.

6. Two Factors in Healing

In planting a tree two things are to be considered-the proper seed, and good ground. So also in healing diseases, two factors are to be taken into account the power of the healer and the receptivity of the patient, who must respond to the healer’s vibrations.

“Virtue (i.e., healing power) has gone out of me,” and “Thy faith has made the whole” such sayings of Jesus show that in healing both the power of the healer and the faith of the person to be healed are required.

7. Faith More Important than Time

Instantaneous healing of bodily, mental and spiritual diseases might occur at any moment. The accumulated darkness of ages is dispelled at once by bringing the light in, not by trying to chase the darkness out. One never can tell when he is going to be healed, so do not expect a cure at once or at some distant day. Faith, not time, will determine when the cure will be effected. Results depend on the right awakening of life energy and the mental and subconscious state of the individual. Disbelief fails to awaken the Life Energy, and this Body Doctor, Body Builder and Master Mason therefore cannot work.

Effort and attention are absolutely necessary to arouse faith or will or imagination, which, when stimulated, automatically impels the Life Energy to effect a cure. Desire or expectation for results weakens the force of attention. Without will or faith, Life Energy remains asleep, and cure cannot take place.

It takes time to reawaken a weakened will, faith or imagination in a patient suffering from chronic disease, because his brain cells are grooved with the consciousness of disease habits... As it takes a long time to form a bad habit of disease consciousness, similarly some time is required to form a good habit of health consciousness.