Healing with Life Force, Volume 3—Magnetism: Teachings and Techniques of Paramhansa Yogananda

INTRODUCTION

The book you have in hand is the third volume in the Life Force trilogy— Prana, Mind, Magnetism —three guidebooks for your journey to better health. Together they represent an overarching view of Paramhansa Yogananda’s teachings and techniques for self-healing and Self-realization.

Volume One, Prana, takes us back to the very beginning, when Life Force becomes the power that fashions creation. Yogananda shows us how to harness that power and use it to infuse our bodies with vitality. That force also gives rise to the eternal struggle between the soul and the ego, the root cause of all disease. Through the pages and practices of this book, you will learn how to reconcile these two protagonists through techniques of meditation; how to regenerate the cells and organs of your body with Yogananda’s Energization Exercises; and how to nourish yourself and keep your body free from impurities with his dietary and detox recipes. A fascinating section in this volume presents Yogananda’s techniques for utilizing the sun’s power for self-healing.

Volume Two, Mind, highlights the superpowers of the conscious, subconscious, and superconscious dimensions of the mind. It offers extensive advice for breaking the stranglehold of negative habits, for using affirmations to carve new thought habits in the brain, and for learning to cooperate with the highest source of healing—Divine Love.

Volume Three, Magnetism, reveals how the Law of Attraction affects our lives and influences our health: how it draws us into contact with friends from past lives; and how we can use it to attract the economic and human resources for a successful career.

The final Part of the trilogy demonstrates how we can attune ourselves to the subtle, vibratory healing frequencies of mantra and music; of nature, holy places, and inspiring people. Important techniques are given to reinforce the magnetic aura which protects us from negative influences that threaten our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being.

We are not alone in this quest. Some of those who have come before us, in ages past and in our times, those who have reached the summit of what it means to be a fully Self-realized being, have left for us guidelines for our own achievements.

One such recent guide is Paramhansa Yogananda.

Paramhansa Yogananda

Author of the enduring spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi,[1] Yogananda is universally regarded as an enlightened spiritual master of modern times. He had the remarkable gift of distilling the essential wisdom of India’s great scriptures and presenting them in what he called how-to-live teachings, useful and accessible to us today.

Yogananda was born in India in 1893, near the beginning of Dwapara Yuga, the Age of Energy. The start of this era made possible the discoveries of Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla about the nature of energy, and the numerous inventions that have freed humanity from the confines of matter.

In the first decade of the twentieth century alone, the landmark inventions included radio, radar, and the electrocardiogram, to name a few. Energy now powers all our systems of transportation, communication, and the countless gadgets that simplify and enhance our daily lives.

When Yogananda arrived on the shores of the New World in 1920, around the time the Wright brothers had taken flight and Henry Ford had produced the Model T, the timing was right and people were eager to learn techniques of self-improvement that were based on principles of energy.

Although Yogananda is not remembered primarily as a miracle healer, in his early lecture tours across America he gave many public demonstrations of the power of self-healing. On October 21, 1924, he held a first public divine healing meeting in Portland, Oregon. During a healing program at his headquarters at Mt. Washington in Los Angeles on November 1, 1925, he healed a woman of crippling neuritis, after which she was able to walk without crutches.

In Washington, D.C. in 1927, a reported 5,000 people attended his healing program. It was at this time that he was invited to the White House where he met with President Calvin Coolidge.

Titles of his public talks reflect the scientific spirit of the new age:

Practicing Religion Scientifically

«Scientific Spiritual Healing»

Law of Attracting Abundance and Health Consciously

The Mind: Repository of Infinite Power

Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Methods of Healing

When divinely guided, Yogananda would occasionally perform a healing, but his intention as a spiritual guide was to teach others the methods by which they could draw upon the inexhaustible Life Force to heal themselves. The gift that Yogananda gives us in these pages is the key to unlock the mysteries of life.

In addition to the five million copies of his Autobiography in circulation, his other books are widely read. Included in these volumes are important writings about health and healing which are not easily available. Of special note are his early correspondence lessons, written by his own hand between 1923 and 1935; the articles he wrote for his organization’s magazines (East-West and Inner Culture), including his Health, Intellectual and Spiritual Recipes, and his parallel commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita and the Christian Bible.

I draw on these sources abundantly in these books. It is Yogananda’s wisdom, in his voice and his words that I strived to convey as compiler, organizer, and annotator. All of his quotations are indicated in the text with a symbol of the spiritual eye.

Swami Kriyananda

J. Donald Walters, later to become Swami Kriyananda, was accepted by Yogananda as a monastic disciple in 1948. On the master’s request, Kriyananda carefully studied his writings, especially his commentaries on the Bhagavad Gita and the Christian Bible. He took copious notes of the master’s public talks and their private conversations, which he later incorporated in his books The New Path and Conversations with Yogananda. Yogananda designated him as head of the monks, authorized him as a minister and teacher, and gave him the authority to initiate people into the science of Kriya Yoga. His life work, Yogananda told him, would involve teaching and writing.

During his sixty-five years as a disciple (1948-2013), Kriyananda gave lectures around the world, including daily talks on major Indian television channels. He published approximately 140 books in which he showed how his guru’s teachings can be applied to improve and elevate our daily life activities—in business and leadership, relationships, education, music and the arts, and for achieving dynamic health and well-being.[2] Excerpts from these and unpublished articles and letters are included in the text, the Endnotes, and the Appendices.

I was trained by Kriyananda from 1969 until his passing, and have been practicing and sharing these teachings for the past fifty years. In addition to those of Yogananda, I have drawn profusely from Kriyananda’s writings. Each of his quotations in the text is indicated with this Joy Symbol.

Interactive

Throughout the three volumes you will find exercises to help you practice what you are learning. Your own experience of the techniques will give you an immediate awareness of their benefits.

Each exercise is aligned with a self-improvement goal, such as identifying our positive and negative, helpful and harmful habits. Doing the exercises at the points indicated will help you bring their benefits into your daily life.

Most of the exercises can be done, at your choosing, as you move through the book. Some of them are writing exercises that you will find in the online Appendices to download and complete electronically, or print and complete on paper.

Appendixes: A treasure trove of more inspiration!

Available exclusively for readers of this volume is access to an online site: www.healinglifeforces.com/volume-3/ (or scan this QR code below) where you will find:

•Paramhansa Yogananda’s original lessons from the 1920s and 1930s

•Articles by Yogananda and Kriyananda on material and spiritual success, death, rebirth, and life after death

•Guidelines for helping those who are gravely ill, and preparing for our own transition

•Twenty musical compositions by Swami Kriyananda. An mp3 downloadable playlist with twenty musical compositions by Swami Kriyananda to be used for vibratory healing

•And much more!

You’re also invited to join the Online Healing Community for regular healing tips, interactive sessions, and seminars with the author. Come visit us at www.healinglifeforces.com.

Stories

Especially engaging, inspiring, and instructive are the stories that I have included throughout the books from people who have used these techniques for their own healing. Most of the stories are of real-life experiences, although some are allegorical or drawn from mythology.

Terminology

Because this is a handbook of spiritually based practices for improving health and finding healing, the central importance of Spirit cannot be overstated. Regardless of how we personally conceptualize and relate to the Supreme Reality, it must occupy a central position if we hope to understand and make effective use of these principles and practices.

Can an atheist find value in these teachings? Yes, because they are thoroughly grounded in the way human beings are made. Even if we reject the concept of God, we may recognize the presence of a higher source of wisdom and inspiration. Many scientists, including physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, and science-fiction writers like Isaac Asimov, have denied the existence of God while endorsing and popularizing cosmological principles that touch on the spiritual.

Yogananda urged us to be spiritual scientists. He said that wheras the scientist approaches the Infinite from the outside, the spiritual scientist approaches it from the inside.[3]

Psychologist and researcher David DeSteno writes about the science behind the benefits of religion.

I’ve come to see a nuanced relationship between science and religion. I now view them as two approaches to improving people’s lives that frequently complement each other…If we ignore that body of knowledge, if we refuse to take these spiritual technologies seriously as a source of ideas and inspiration to study, we slow the progress of science itself and limit its potential to benefit humanity.[4]

Whether we think of ourselves as scientists, technologists, or believers, we can all experience the practical results of these scientific healing practices.

Energy

Yogananda uses a variety of phrases to refer to energy in its varied forms. His term Cosmic Energy refers to the universal energy by which all creation is manifested, and that is the source of all life. He describes this source also as the Cosmic Electric Force, and the Cosmic Intelligent Energy.[5]

As cosmic energy descends through the three universes and the three bodies that the soul inhabits (see Part I), it becomes what Yogananda termed Life Force or Life Energy. When it enters the physical body, it becomes the Lifetronic Force, synonymous with the Sanskrit term prana.

When quoting Yogananda directly, I have always used his exact words. In my commentaries and explanations, I generally refer to the healing force in the body as Life Force; interchangeably as prana.

Energization Exercises

The primary Life Force healing technique described in these books is a practice that Yogananda developed in the 1920s that he originally called Yogoda Exercises. He later referred to them as Energization Exercises. Citations from Yogananda in the 1920s and 1930s use the term Yogoda, but I refer to them as Life Force Energization Exercises, and often simply as energization exercises. Instruction in the practice of these exercises, in easy-to-follow videos, is included in the Appendices.

Sanskrit words appear sparingly throughout the text, usually when they capture a concept that is difficult to render in other languages. A glossary of Sanskrit terms is included at the back of each volume.

Now it’s time to start your journey of self-healing. May you make steady progress as you strive to become what Yogananda describes as the master of your destiny.

The Rabbi’s Advice

PART XCHAPTER ONE

The Relationships Challenge

You must love everyone. You love those who are dear to you so that you may give that love to the whole world. On the soil of your heart the seeds of love are grown, and you must cultivate those seeds with the water of universal love and universal sympathy. As soon as you love all people with the intensity of the love that you have for your family, then you express Divine love.[1] –Yogananda

From the moment we are born, we are surrounded by people – during our first years, primarily parents, siblings, and close relatives. But as we grow, we acquire friends, classmates, colleagues, and others with whom we share common interests.

The social exchange of ideas and energy is important for our health and happiness. Dr. Emma Seppala of the Yale School of Management, summarizes the results of studies on the links between health and social connectedness:

Social connection improves physical health and mental and emotional well-being…. One landmark study showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. On the other hand, strong social connection:

•leads to a 50% increased chance of longevity,

•strengthens your immune system, and

•helps you recover from disease faster.

People who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression. Moreover, studies show they also have higher self-esteem, greater empathy for others, are more trusting and cooperative and, as a consequence, others are more open to trusting and cooperating with them. In other words, social connectedness generates a positive feedback loop of social, emotional and physical well-being.[2]

Wide-ranging research suggests that strong social ties are linked to a longer life. In stark contrast, loneliness and social isolation are linked to poorer health, depression, and increased risk of early death. Researchers have found that having a variety of social relationships may help reduce stress and heart-related health risks. These connections may improve our ability to fight off infection and give us a more positive outlook on life.

Dr. Sheldon Cohen, a psychologist at Carnegie Mellon University, has explored the links between relationships and health for more than three decades. It’s generally healthy for people to try to belong to different groups, to volunteer in different ways, and be involved with a church or involved in their neighborhood, Cohen says. Involvement with other people across diverse situations clearly can have a very potent, very positive effect on health.

In a study, Cohen’s team exposed more than 200 healthy volunteers to the common cold virus and observed them for a week in a controlled setting. We found that the more diverse people’s social networks – the more types of connections they had – the less likely they were to develop a cold after exposure to the virus, Cohen said. His team has since found evidence that people with a greater diversity of connections also tend to have better health behaviors (such as not smoking or drinking) and more positive emotions.[3]

Social interaction, especially with people of varied ages, combined with physical movement such as dancing, is effective in warding off the onset of dementia.[4]

Our health is also strongly affected by the atmosphere in the home. Home life can nourish all family members, giving them strength to weather life’s storms; but when the home becomes a battlefield, physical and mental health will suffer.

Workplace environments that are dominated by ambition and competition can be severely detrimental to health and unfavorable to creativity. Mutual respect, support, and collaboration create a workplace dynamic that encourages initiative and stimulates productivity.

In addition to improving our physical and mental health, meaningful contact with others contributes to our spiritual well-being. For it is God’s love that calls to us through our human friendships.

God … Himself took the form of parents in order to protect the baby …. Not satisfied with only protecting man through the compelling instincts of parents, God also took the form of unlimited friends in order to extend unlimited love to [them].Thus God’s Love is playing hide-and-seek in human hearts.[5]

In our human relationships, we have an opportunity to discover God’s unconditional love, and to develop our ability to love Him in others.

In his ground-breaking research into what he dubbed the near-death experience, Dr. Raymond Moody interviewed 150 patients who were able to recall the events they experienced while in a state of clinical death. Although each person’s experiences were unique, there were nine common themes. They included a life review during which the dying saw everything they had done, and every one of their interactions with others. The purpose of the review, they were led to understand intuitively, was to examine what they had learned in their most recent life, and to observe how much or how little they had loved.[6]

In Part X we consider how our interactions with other people can provide either a healing balm for our human distress, or contribute to mental and physical illness. When our relationships are loving and supportive, we are far better equipped to survive life’s storms, but when our relationships are a battleground, there are bound to be casualties.

My current relationships

Before we continue, it may help to list the names of these five people:

Someone with whom you have an intimate relationship

A family member

A friend

A colleague

Someone with whom you have a conflict

Keep these people in mind as you read on. Recalling your personal experiences will help make the concepts clearer. In Chapter Five, we will consider an exercise that can help us improve these relationships.

PART XCHAPTER TWO

Friendship

Friendship is God’s trumpet call, bidding the soul to destroy the partitions which separate it from all other souls and from Him…. Friendship is God’s love shining through the eyes of your loved ones, calling you home to drink His nectar of all differences-and selfishness-dissolving unity…. When Divine Friendship reigns supreme in the temple of your heart, your Soul will merge with the vast Cosmic Soul, leaving far behind the confining bonds which separated it from all of God’s animate and inanimate Creation.[1] –Yogananda

Friendship is the purest of all love. In the love of parents for their children there is compulsion; in filial love there is compulsion; in the love of lovers there is compulsion; but in true friendship there is no compulsion.[2] –Yogananda

In this chapter we will discover God’s healing love hidden in all of our relationships. We will explore ways to develop qualities of friendship that can make our home life and our work more nourishing, and we will look at the ego’s evolutionary progress through many lives as it relates to our human relationships. It takes many lifetimes for the ego to evolve to a point where we can enjoy mature, loving friendships.

Karmic relationships

You can’t take it with you, as the old saying admonishes us. We cannot bring our material possessions and accomplishments with us as we transition from this life to the hereafter. Our human relationships, however, extend over many lives — we return to them again and again until we have perfected our love.

We have been many things to many people. In our circle of human relationships, we have been a parent, a child, a spouse, a grandparent, a business partner, and a competitor. We have loved faithfully, and we’ve strayed. We have trusted, and we have been betrayed. Strong feelings have bound our souls to certain others, and we’ve found ourselves connected in some fashion to those people again and again, in life after life.

Make every effort to rediscover your friends of past incarnations, whom you may recognize through familiar physical, mental and spiritual qualities. Rising above considerations of material or even spiritual gain, perfect your friendship, begun in a preceding incarnation, into Divine Friendship.[3]

We have formed bonds of love with many souls, not all of whom we could possibly be destined to marry in this life. Love can grow between fast friends, business partners, and the members of close-knit groups who share a common interest, such as happens in service organizations, on sports teams, with training partners, and in spiritual groups.

The challenge in each lifetime is to understand the kinds of relationships that will offer us the best opportunities to expand our hearts from a narrow, exclusively personal kind of love, to serve as a channel for a divine universal love that embraces everyone in its healing rays.[4]

There are (those) who give you the instantaneous feeling that you have known them always. This indicates that they are your friends of previous incarnations. Do not neglect them, but strengthen the friendship existing between you. Be on the lookout for them always, as your restless mind may fail to recognize them. Often they are very near you, drawn by the friendship born in the dim, distant past. They constitute your shining collection of soul jewels; add to it constantly. In these bright soul galaxies you will behold the one Great Friend smiling at you radiantly and clearly. It is God who comes to you in the guise of a noble, true Friend, to serve, inspire, and guide you.[5]

Evolving relationships

In Part II of Volume One we explored the cycles of human evolution and how the ego expands its sense of self-identity over many lives. While evaluating our relationships with a desire to make them more reciprocally nourishing, it’s helpful to be aware of our own and others’ current stage of spiritual awareness.

Growth is a gradual process, and we should not expect ourselves or others to make great strides quickly, or even in a single life. Each of the four stages of evolution can take hundreds or even thousands of lives during which we are propelled by the overarching, universal desire of all created beings to avoid pain and suffering and to experience increasing happiness and well-being.

Let’s look at the qualities of our human relationships as our awareness expands through each stage of evolution.

Shudra relationships. At the stage when the soul first inhabits a physical body, the shudra phase, the individual relates to others in terms of how they can help him satisfy his physical need for food, shelter, and sex. There is no attempt, or even a possibility, for the shudra to relate meaningfully to others. As evolution slowly proceeds throughout this stage, and the shudra’s awareness begins to expand, he realizes that he can gain more of what he desires by putting out energy. Thus the individual will evolve from being passive and indolent to becoming unpleasantly and even violently demanding.

Shudras are a burden to their families and leeches on society. A relationship of give-and-take is nearly impossible at this stage of spiritual awareness, and there is little we can do but accept them as they are, with compassion for the spark of divinity in them. At a practical level, we can help them engage their energy productively by employing them for manual labor.

We can see traces of the selfish shudra mentality even in those who have become successful and powerful. The tell-tale attitude of the shudras is that they seek to fulfill their own desires without the slightest consideration for others. Their evolution depends on the law of karma. As they experience the consequences of their selfish attitudes and actions, they become tired of the loneliness and isolation that these attitudes bring, and they begin to desire meaningful relationships.

Vaishya relationships. These are associations characterized by an attitude of reciprocity: I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. Vaishyas value their relationships with others for what they can get from them in the form of money, prestige, and power.

At work, the vaishya’s attitude is competitive – it can be cutthroat, when the stakes are high. At this stage, pure, selfless friendship is rare. In their pursuit of wealth and position, vaishyas are prone to betray their friends, colleagues, and even their relatives. Nothing personal – it’s just business, we hear the vaishya smugly proclaim. The voice of the soul that quietly whispers, "It is personal: people matter," is drowned out by the vaishya’s self-seeking ego.

Whereas shudras rarely create their own family, and often make terrible decisions when they do, the vaishya ego broadens its self-identity to include a life partner and children. The desire to provide for a family is a very real step forward in the soul’s long journey of self-expansion. With the passing incarnations, the vaishya is drawn to enlarge its definition of family beyond its original narrow identification with us four and no more, as Yogananda put it.

If we attempt to motivate people of vaishya mentality with altruistic lures, we will find that they rarely work. Without pandering to the typical vaishya’s mindset of What’s in it for me? an effective strategy might be to highlight the more intangible rewards. In personal relationships, especially where there’s a deep karmic bond, if the vaishya ego is at least minimally mature, it may be possible to introduce the idea of mutual benefit, with a win-win model replacing I-win-you-lose.

For example, more evolved vaishyas may be persuaded that creating a scheme of benefits and services for their employees will increase their own bottom line by improving productivity, employee retention, and profits. As in the story of The Typewriter King,¹ when the vaishya begins to look beyond his own egoic boundaries, the intangible returns of inner satisfaction, recognition, and the esteem and affection of others begin to impel him to grow toward the next stage of spiritual evolution: the kshatriya.

Kshaytriya relationships are where selfless friendship and divine, unconditional love are able to blossom fully. Kshatriyas are aware of and sensitive to realities beyond themselves and their own family and work. Swami Kriyananda’s definition of maturity aptly describes the level of consciousness that the kshatriya has reached: "Maturity is the ability to relate appropriately to other realities than one’s own."[6]

No longer focused on material gain or obsessed with outwitting competitors, the kshatriya ego has progressed to a point where it is capable of finding satisfaction in helping others, and is motivated by the pure joy of giving and the internal rewards of sacrificing his own comfort for their well-being.

Kshatriya parents will willingly make sacrifices for their children. In the earlier stages of their kshatriya evolution, they may complain, but in the latter stages they will not count the cost, or even mention it. This same selfless attitude characterizes the kshatriya doctor, business manager, politician, public service worker, sports coach, teacher, counsellor, military leader, and so on.

The kshatriya mentality is respectful and compassionate when interacting with the vaishya or shudra. It will make no attempt to convert them to a broader perspective. The kshatriya influences others by the example of his own actions and his expression of unconditional love. Relationships between kshatriyas afford a blessed opportunity for mutual growth.

Brahmin relationships. As kshatriya friendships evolve to the stage of the brahmin, they become less personal and more oriented toward a loving relationship with God, and with the God who dwells in all beings. For the person of brahmin consciousness, all human relationships are divine. The brahmin sees and relates to God in everyone and consciously tries to channel His divine love impersonally to them.

Those who live in ego-consciousness think of impersonal love as cold and abstract. But divine love is all-absorbing, and infinitely comforting. It is impersonal only in the sense that it is utterly untainted by selfish desire. The unity one finds in divine love is possible only to the soul. It cannot be experienced by the ego.[7]

It is in the brahmin stage that human love reaches its perfection, as divine love.

Once the love of all human beings and all living things shall have entered into your heart, your heart will be the One Heart of God. Feeling all hearts as one, you will feel the One Cosmic Heart beating behind all hearts. Recognizing no individual selfish love, feeling the same love for all, you will feel the One Great Love which is everlasting and forever burns as pure white flame on the universal altar of all hearts.[8]

Ego expansion

The ego prefers to associate with a limited group of people who think and behave according to its own private standards and values. In contrast, the soul wants to extend its love by reaching out to include all of God’s children.

True friendship is broad and inclusive. Selfish attachment to a single individual, excluding all others, inhibits the development of divine friendship. Extend the boundaries of the glowing kingdom of your love, gradually including within them you family, your neighbors, your community, your country, all countries–in short, all living sentient creatures. Be also a cosmic friend, imbued with kindness and affection for all of God’s creation, scattering love everywhere….

Consider no one a stranger; learn to feel that everybody is your kin. Family love is merely one of the first exercises in the divine Teacher’s course in Friendliness, intended to prepare your heart for an all-inclusive love…. his does not mean that you must know and love all human beings and creatures personally and individually. All you need do is to be ready at all times to spread the light of friendly service over all living creatures which you happen to contact. This requires constant mental effort and preparedness; in other words, unselfishness.[9]

The greater the number and variety of interactions