Ananda Sangha of Portland--Questions and Answers: True Friendship by Paramhansa Yogananda

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Questions and Answers: True Friendship
by Paramhansa Yogananda
from Inner Culture Magazine, March 1940

Question: What is True Friendship?–T.J.

Answer: Friendship is the universal spiritual attraction which unites souls in the bond of divine love, manifesting itself in two or more individuals. If you open the door to the magnetic power of friendship, a soul or souls of like vibrations will be attracted to you. Friendship is a manifestation of God’s love for you, expressed through your friends, who constitute the richest possessions a human being can have.

You attract those who are like you. That is the law of vibration. Friendship is eternal. If you can form a friendship through which God is awakened in you, that is the greatest of all friendships.

True friendship lies in seeking soul progress together. Friendship must never have a material end in view, or an object to be gained. Friendship is an ever-increasing consciousness of equality and the blending of souls without any physical relation.

The building of wisdom and spiritual and intuitive understanding by mutual effort alone can bind two souls by the laws of everlasting, universal divine love, which has its foundation in service on the spiritual and intuitional planes and is unconditional and everlasting.

Friendship is the purest of all love. In the love of parents for their children there is compulsion; in filial love there is compulsion; in the love of lovers there is compulsion; but in true friendship there is no compulsion. Usefulness is love. If you want the love of friends or the world, you must be useful to them. Why do we all love Jesus? Because He was useful to us as no one else ever was.

Be Friend to Enemies

You must be a friend even to your enemy, because if you become an enemy to your enemy you will increase his wrath and make him an even greater enemy. Hatred travels through the ether. Every person who tries to injure others, first injures himself. You cannot hate others without first poisoning yourself. To hate anyone is against your own interest.

Remember, God is in your enemy just as much as in your friend. When you recognize God in those who love you and in those who hate you, when you see the all-pervading love of God, then you will realize His omnipresence.

If someone is broadcasting hatred, if you are tuned to that hatred, you will get it; but if you are tuned to love, no matter how many hateful vibrations are sent, you will not get them. You must cultivate love in your heart, for it is the magnetism that draws souls to you and it is the dagger that kills hatred.

In pure friendship you will find God. If you would be a true friend, you must recognize the soul. When you consider yourself as a soul, then you can be a perfect friend. If you fail to be friendly, you disregard the divine law of self-expansion by which alone your soul can grow into Spirit. By being true to yourself and a true friend to others, you gain the friendship of God.

Through perfected divine friendship, mutually seeking spiritual perfection, you will find the one Great Friend. Friendship is God’s trumpet call, bidding the soul destroy the walls which separate it from all other souls and from Him.