Swami Prabhavananda

Religion is experience; it is not a belief. It is not an acceptance of any creed or dharma, it is not an acceptance of the authority of any scriptures, whether it be of the Vedas or of the Bible, but it is a matter of experience. A Hindu, a man who is a spiritual aspirant in India, does not ask you, “What is your belief?”. He would ask you, “What is your experience?”.

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Think of God as often as you can, and then you will see you will fall in love with God, and that’s what is important: you have to fall in love—then you don’t have to be told to think of God. You will love to think of God. And all the time, at the back of your head, you have the presence of God. And when you reach that state, what we call dhruba smriti, “constant recollectedness”, then from that arises prajna, “illumined knowledge of God”.

More on Swami Prabhavananda can be found at The Vedanta Society of Southern California.