Paramhansa Yogananda
Poems

Freedom

Brave cords bind me hand and foot

Yet lo, I am free, ever free.

Disease, try your tortures,

Yet, I am free, ever free.

Health, try your lures,

Yet, I am free, ever free.

Death, destroy my body-prison if you will,

Yet, I am free, ever free.

Long chains of desires

Forged in the furnace of incarnations

Have tried to bind me,

But I escaped from life to life

And I am at last free, ever free.

I enter through the rainbow

Into the free skies

I am free, ever free.

None can bind me

Unless I bind myself.

None can free me

Unless I know I am free —

When I know naught exists

To ever bind me,

Then I know I am free, ever free

— From Inner Culture Magazine, August 1937

Paramhansa Yogananda
Poems

The Awakening

Make me transparent with purity, that Thou mayest shine through me.

Make me luminous with wisdom, that I may behold Thee in me.

Still the moving mirror of my mind, that I may behold Thy

Mooned Face, undistorted by my restlessness, ever reflected there.

Open all the windows of Faith, that I may behold Thee in the

Mansion of Peace.

Fling open the Doors of Silence, that I may enter Thy Temple

of Bliss.

Awaken the memory of past Incarnations,(no cap on I?) wherein I sought

Thee and loved Thee.

Remember when I met Thee in the bower of the Milky Way

and worshipped Thee in the ever-changing, living Temple of Nature(?)

Beloved Divine, make me know at once and forever that Thou

hast always been mine, ever mine.

My error dreams are past and buried beneath the sepulcher

of oblivion, and I am awake basking in the sunlight of Thy

Awakening.

While I slept this sleep of earthly life,

I dreamt this Nature dream.

I awoke, and now I dream of Thee alone.

I was the small bee seeking the honey of Thy Happiness,

So I drank from the many blossoms of human life and Nature,

But it was when I drank the fragrant sweetness from Thy Lotus Feet,

That I hummed with desires no more.

— From East-West Magazine, March 1934