The Science of Religion

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The ideal of love for God and service to humanity found full expression in the life of Paramahansa Yogananda Though the major part of his life was spent outside India, still he takes his place among our great saints. His work continues to grow and shine ever more brightly, drawing people everywhere on the path of the pilgrimage of the Spirit."

In these words, the Government of India paid tribute to the founder of Yogoda Satsanga Society of India/Self-Realization Fellowship, upon issuing a commemorative stamp in his honour on March 7, 1977, the twenty fifth anniversary of his passing.

A world teacher whose presence among us illumined the path for countless souls, Paramahansa Yogananda lived and taught the highest truths of life. Born in Gorakhpur, India, in 1893, Paramahansa Yogananda was sent by his guru to the United States in 1920 as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals. Subsequent lectures in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were enthusiastically received, and in 1924 he embarked on a cross-continental speaking tour.

For the next decade Paramahansaji travelled extensively, giving lectures and classes in which he instructed thousands of men and women in the yoga science of meditation and balanced spiritual living.

Today, the spiritual and humanitarian work begun by Paramahansa Yogananda continues under the direction of Swami Chidananda Giri, president of Yogoda Satsanga Society of India/Self-Realization Fellowship. In addition to publishing Paramahansa Yogananda's writings, lectures, and informal talks (including a comprehensive series of lessons for home study),* his society oversees ashrams, kendras, and meditation centres around the world; monastic training programs; and the Worldwide Prayer Circle, which serves as a channel to help bring healing to those in need and greater peace and harmony among all nations. Seekers in India and surrounding territories are served by Yogoda Satsanga Society of India.

This small book offers the clue to the universe.

Its value is beyond estimation in words, since between these narrow covers is to be found the flower of the Vedas and Upanishads, the essence of Patanjali, foremost exponent of the Yoga philosophy and method, and the thought of Shankara, greatest mind that ever dwelt in mortal body, placed for the first time within reach of the multitude.

This is the deliberate statement of one who has at last found in the East, after many wanderings, the solution to the riddles of the world. The Hindus have revealed to the whole world the Truth. And this is only natural, when we consider that more than five thousand years ago, while the forefathers of Briton and Gaul, Greek and Latin, were roaming the vast forests of Europe in search of food, true barbarians, the Hindu was already engaged in pondering the mystery of life and death, which now we know to be one.

Decades before the current interest in Eastern psychology and religion, Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) began his life's work of bringing India's timeless spiritual science to the Western world. In 1920 he was invited to the United States as India's representative to an international conference of world religious leaders in Boston. The lecture he delivered on that occasion, his maiden speech in America, was published soon after as The Science of Religion. Since then it has been published in seven additional languages, and is used as a reference work in colleges and universities.

The Science of Religion is a profoundly simple and concise exposition of the common goal of all true religions, and the four main paths that lead to its attainment. It is a universal message, based not on dogmatic beliefs, but on direct insight into Reality, gained through the practice of ancient scientific techniques of meditation.

The purpose of this book is to outline what should be understood by religion, in order to know it as universally and pragmatically necessary. It also seeks to present that aspect of the idea of the Godhead which has a direct bearing on the motives and actions of every minute of our lives.

It is true that God is infinite in His nature and aspects; and it is also true that to prepare a chart detailing, so far as is consistent with reason, what God is like, is only an evidence of the limitations of the human mind in its attempt to fathom God. Still, it is equally true that the human mind, in spite of all its drawbacks, cannot rest perfectly satisfied with what is finite. It has a natural urge to interpret what is human and finite in the light of what is superhuman and infinite what it feels but cannot express, what within it lies implicit but under circumstances refuses to be explicit.

Our ordinary conception of God is that He is super- human, infinite, omnipresent, omniscient, and the like. In this general conception there are many variations. Some call God personal, some see Him as impersonal. The point emphasized in this book is that whatever conception we have of God, if it does not influence our daily conduct, if everyday life does not find an inspiration from it, and if it is not found universally necessary, then that and universally necessary, then that conception is useless.

If God is not conceived in such a way that we cannot do without Him in the satisfaction of a want, in our dealings with people, in earning money, in reading a book, in passing an examination, in the doing of the most trifling or the highest duties, then it is plain that we have not felt any connection between God and life.