Extend all the boundaries of the glowing kingdom of your love, gradually including within them your family, your neighbors, your community, your country, all countries; in short, all living sentient creatures.

Paramahansa Yogananda

The Glowing Kingdom of Your Love

Topic: Love, Compassion, & Kindness

True friendship is broad and inclusive. Selfish attachment to a single individual, excluding all others, inhibits the development of Divine Friendship. Extend all the boundaries of the glowing kingdom of your love, gradually including within them your family, your neighbors, your community, your country, all countries; in short, all living sentient creatures.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh on January 5, 1893, in Gorakhpur, India, is considered one of the most influential spiritual teachers of the 20th century. From a young age, he showed a deep interest in spirituality, seeking guidance from saints and sages in India. In 1915, after completing his education, he became a monk of the Swami order, taking the name Yogananda, meaning "bliss through divine union." His early work focused on teaching and promoting Kriya Yoga, an ancient meditation practice aimed at self-realization.

In 1920, Yogananda traveled to the United States and established the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in Los Angeles. Through SRF, he shared the philosophy and practices of Kriya Yoga, bridging Eastern spirituality with Western culture. His Autobiography of a Yogi, published in 1946, remains one of the most widely read spiritual texts, offering a personal account of his spiritual journey and inspiring readers across the globe.

Yogananda passed away on March 7, 1952, in Los Angeles, after a lifetime devoted to promoting unity among all religions and the transformative power of meditation. The organizations he founded, including SRF and the Yogoda Satsanga Society in India, continue to share his teachings today. His legacy endures through these institutions, and his message of spiritual unity and inner peace continues to inspire millions worldwide.

(1893-1952) Hinduism
The Art of Gaining Friends

Yogananda, Paramahansa. The Art of Gaining Friends, Including: Why Love Your Enemies? Inner Culture, 1936.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Theme: Love

About This Paramahansa Yogananda Quotation [Commentary]

Paramahansa Yogananda calls us to “extend all the boundaries of the glowing kingdom of your love,” beginning close to home—with “your family, your neighbors, your community”—and expanding outward. This is not sentimental affection but a deliberate expansion of the heart’s reach. Love, in Yogananda’s words, is something that can and must grow. He describes it as a “glowing kingdom,” suggesting it is luminous and alive within us, capable of enlargement through conscious practice.

He draws a clear line between such love and emotional exclusivity. “Selfish attachment to a single individual, excluding all others, inhibits the development of Divine Friendship.” Yogananda does not diminish the value of close relationships, but he warns against isolating them from a larger context. “True friendship is broad and inclusive.” By clinging too tightly to one person, we risk blocking the deeper currents of love that are meant to move through us and connect us with many.

The arc of Yogananda’s message leads to universality. After beginning with family and community, he widens the circle to include “your country, all countries; in short, all living sentient creatures.” There is no hierarchy or limit in this vision. Each step outward—from individual to global to all beings—reflects a love that is both active and expansive. What begins in small circles must not remain there. Love, in its fullest form, includes all.

Paramahansa Yogananda, Friendship [Excerpt]

“The relationship that exists between friends is the grandest of human loves. Friendly love is pure, because it is without compulsion. One freely chooses to love his friends; he is not bound by instinct. The love that manifests in friendship can exist between man and woman, woman and woman, man and man… Such pure friendship has existed between saints and between others who truly love God. If you once know divine love, you will never part with it, for there is nothing else like it in the whole universe.”

—Yogananda, Paramahansa. Friendship—Grandest Relationship of Human Loves. Self-Realization Fellowship, www.yogananda.org/blog/friendship-grandest-relationship-of-human-loves. Accessed 8 Oct. 2024.

Additional Yogananda Quotes

“The saviors of the world do not come to foster inimical doctrinal divisions; their teachings should not be used toward that end. It is something of a misnomer even to refer to the New Testament as the “Christian” Bible, for it does not belong exclusively to any one sect. Truth is meant for the blessing and upliftment of the entire human race. As the Christ Consciousness is universal, so does Jesus Christ belong to all…

It is an erroneous assumption of limited minds that great ones such as Jesus, Krishna, and other divine incarnations are gone from the earth when they are no longer visible to human sight. This is not so… Jesus Christ is very much alive and active today. In Spirit and occasionally taking on a flesh-and-blood form, he is working unseen by the masses for the regeneration of the world. With his all-embracing love, Jesus is not content merely to enjoy his blissful consciousness in Heaven. He is deeply concerned for mankind and wishes to give his followers the means to attain the divine freedom of entry into God’s Infinite Kingdom…”

—Yogananda [The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004)].

“These teachings have been sent to explain the truth as Jesus intended it to be known in the world—not to give a new Christianity, but to give the real Christ-teaching: how to become like Christ, how to resurrect the Eternal Christ within one’s Self…”

—Yogananda [The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You, (2004)].

The Glowing Kingdom of Your Love

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