Swami Brahmananda’s Spiritual Teachings

1. Spiritual life should begin early

1. Those who are not spiritually-minded while they live in the world can never be spiritually-minded when they retire from the world.
2. Unless we have sown the seed of spiritual life in our soul, there is no possibility of creating the spiritual instinct in later life.
3. One has to begin as early as possible with one’s spiritual life, whatever the worldly-minded may say. The cleverness of all such worldly people is just like that of the crow. It thinks itself terribly clever and worldly-wise, but eats filth and dirt all the same. Worldly people always tell you that there is plenty of time for you to take up spiritual life. First enjoy your youth, and then, in old age, there will be time enough to do your practice and lead a spiritual life. And then, when you grow old, you find that the old impressions have become so deep that there is no possibility of effacing them, that you have become slaves of your impulses and instincts and old impressions and can no longer act in the way you would like to, cannot take up a higher and purer life, neither mentally nor physically.