VENUSS66(1)

The Divine Art of Making Friends by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda I have read many articles on friendship and I personally experienced many ups and downs in friendship. Here I would like to publish something that really captured my heart while reading. Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda's writeup on 'The Divine Art of Making Friends' in his book- Man's Eternal Quest After reading his writeup I finally have to agree how true it is about 'Divine friendship' "Friendship is the noblest human expression of God's desire to show His love to man. God showers affection on the baby through the father and mother; their feeling for the infant is inborn, because our Creator has ordained that our parents can't help but love us. But friendship comes to us as a free, impartial expression of His love. Two strangers meet, and by an instantaneous choice of their hearts they wish to help each other. Have you ever analyzed how this happens? The spontaneous mutual desire to be friends comes directly from God's divine law of attraction; cumulative mutual acts of friendship between two souls in past lives gradually create a karmic bond that irresistibly attracts them to each other in this life. So long as it is uncontaminated by selfishness or attraction to the opposite sex, this impulse is pure. But often it is tainted. Friendship grows on the tree of our innermost feelings; it is desecrated by unwholesome desires and selfish actions. If you put the wrong kind of fertilizer on the roots of a tree, the fruit that develops will be poor; and when you feed the tree of human feeling with the emotion of selfishness, your unworthy motives will blemish the fruit of friendship. To feel interested in someone just because he is rich or influential and can do something for you is not friendship. And to be attracted to someone primarily because that person has a beautiful face is not friendship. When that face loses its youthful attractiveness, the 'friendship' will evaporate. It is true that you cannot find friendship everywhere. Some persons you see every day and never know, and others you feel you have known alwyas. You should learn to recognize that inner cue. Wherever you are, always keep your eyes open, and if you feel divinely attracted to someone, you should develop the friendship with that person because he has been your friend in some life before. There are many friends whom we have known in past lives, but those friendships have not yet been perfected. It is better to start building on a foundation on the sands of temporary acquaintances. It is easy for one to think he has many friends, until they do something hurtful to him, and then he feels deeply disillusioned. Many people make mistakes in choosing friends because they are deluded by outer appearances. The only way to recognize real friends is to meditate more. You should try to find friends the divine way, and that is to purge your consciousness' of all thought of facial or other appearances as factors in determining your feelings about others. If you do this, one day you will be able to discover true friends all around you. You will feel God's friendship through those humble human channels that do not resist Him. Through the pure of heart the divine light of friendship will flow to you." - Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda ( I posted this elsewhere in October 2007 )