Consider no one a stranger. Learn to feel that everybody is akin to you.
Interpretation
Recognize the interconnectedness of all people and treat everyone with kindness and compassion.
This quote by Paramahansa Yogananda encourages individuals to embrace a sense of unity and compassion towards all of humanity. By understanding that everyone shares a common experience and is related in some way, we can cultivate empathy, reduce feelings of isolation, and foster more harmonious relationships with others.
In practice
In a speech about community and togetherness, this quote can be used to highlight the importance of compassion.
Man is important in one sense only. He was made in the image of God: That is his importance. He is not important for his body, ego, or personality. His constant affirmation of ego-consciousness is the source of all his problems.
When, by meditation, we withdraw restless thoughts from the lake of the mind, we behold our soul, a perfect reflection of Spirit.
It is wisest to be impartial. If you have health, but are attached to it, you will always be afraid of losing it. And if you fear that loss, but become ill, you will suffer. Why not remain forever joyful in the Self?
From joy people are born; for joy they live; in joy they melt at death. Death is an ecstasy, for it removes the burden of the body and frees the soul of all pain springing from body identification. It is the cessation of pain and sorrow.
It is better to meditate a little bit with depth than to mediate long with the mind running here and there. If you do not make an effort to control the mind it will go on doing as it pleases, no matter how long you sit to meditate.
Millions of people never analyze themselves. Mentally they are mechanical products of the factory of their environment, preoccupied with breakfast, lunch, and dinner, working and sleeping, and going here and there to be entertained. They don't know what or why they are seeking, nor why they never realize complete happiness and lasting satisfaction. By evading self-analysis, people go on being robots, conditioned by their environment. True self-analysis is the greatest art of progress.
But a few choosing to venture deeper into the painful corridors of their affliction, found after a while that they could now grind and polish ever more exotic surfaces, hyperboloidial and even stranger, eventually including what we must term ‘imaginary’ shapes (which some preferred to term invisible).
At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.
If our condition were truly happy, we would not seek diversion from it in order to make ourselves happy.
Man only plays when in the full meaning of the word he is a man, and he is only completely a man when he plays.
It's almost as if a demon might have passed from one host to another.
It is hard not to see into the future, faced with today's blind architecture - a thousand times more stupid and more revolting than that of other ages. How bored we shall be inside!
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