Success, Health, Wisdom Are Natural Attributes of the Soul

Success, health, and wisdom are the natural attributes of the soul. Identification with weak thoughts and habits, and lack of concentration, perseverance, and courage are responsible for the misery that people suffer due to poverty, ill health, and so forth.

You are paralyzing your faculty for success by thoughts of fear. Success and perfection of mind and body are man’s inherent qualities, because he is made in God’s image. In order to be able to claim his birthright, however, he must first rid himself of the delusion of his own limitations.

God owns everything. Therefore, know at all times that as God’s child you own everything that belongs to the Father. You must feel fully satisfied and contented, knowing that you have access to all your Father’s possessions.

Your native endowment is perfection and prosperity, but you choose to be imperfect and poor. The sense of possessing everything must be a mental habit with each individual.

You Are Above Bodily Changes—Formless, Omnipresent, Omniscient

Every individual has a soul and a body. Through delusion, he finds his soul identified with the body and thus all the conditions of the body. The body can be injured, changed, and destroyed; it is limited and short lasting. So the individual identified with the body thinks himself vulnerable.

But the soul cannot in any way be injured, changed, or destroyed. The soul, made in the image of the Spirit, is ever calm, eternal, and undisturbed.

By worldly desires, an individual becomes more and more identified with the weakness of the body, always fearing death and limitations. If the soul directs its attention away from the misery-making bodily limitations, and meditates until his delusion vanishes, he finds himself as the everlasting soul, living in the fortress of omnipresence impregnable, invulnerable to any effects of delusive vibratory change.

Every individual must remember that he is immortal, not open to any invasion of change or death, even when his body appears to be affected by disease, accident, or death.

By concentrating on the soul, the individual can do away with mortal desires, and find everlasting freedom.

No matter how long you have been meditating, if you still fear bodily diseases or death, and have not realized the immortality of the soul, you have advanced little and have realized little.

You must meditate more and more deeply until you have ecstatic communion with God and forget the limitations of the body. During meditation you must realize that you are far above all bodily changes—formless, omnipresent, omniscient.

Excerpted from How to Have Courage, Calmness, and Confidence by Paramhansa Yogananda

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