Yogoda Satsanga Society of India - Aims and Ideals

Aims and Ideals

Yogananda wrote down his aims and ideals for Yogoda Satsanga Society/Self-Realization Fellowship:

• To disseminate among the nations a knowledge of definite scientific techniques for attaining direct personal experience of God.
• To teach that the purpose of life is the evolution, through self-effort of man's limited mortal consciousness into God Consciousness; and to this end to establish Yogoda Satsanga temples for God-communion throughout the world, and to encourage the establishment of individual temples of God in the homes and in the hearts of men.
• To reveal the complete harmony and basic oneness of original Yoga as taught by Bhagavan Krishna and original Christianity as taught by Jesus Christ; and to show that these principles of truth are the common scientific foundation of all true religions.
• To point out the one divine highway to which all paths of true religious beliefs eventually lead: the highway of daily, scientific, devotional meditation on God.
• To liberate man from his threefold suffering: physical disease, mental inharmonies, and spiritual ignorance.
• To encourage "plain living and high thinking"; and to spread a spirit of brotherhood among all peoples by teaching the eternal basis of their unity: kinship with God.
• To demonstrate the superiority of mind over body, of soul over mind.
• To overcome evil by good, sorrow by joy, cruelty by kindness, ignorance by wisdom.
• To unite science and religion through realization of the unity of their underlying principles.
• To advocate cultural and spiritual understanding between East and West, and the exchange of their finest distinctive features.
• To serve mankind as one's larger Self.