In an article named "Increasing Awareness" from 1935, Yogananda teaches you to benefit from life as much as you can. It is by vital parts of healthy living, enjoying sunlight and fresh air, and by learning lessons from your own experiences and those of others. They can be hard-won, so it helps to pay attention and know dear study methods too.
One significant way of improving your learning capacity and hopefully much of your living conditions too in time, lies in "magnetising" your brain and spine by kriya yoga and other kinds of contemplation, including focusing methods like TM (◦Transcendental Meditation). It helps focus and awareness generally. There is much research to document beneficial results of TM, and also some kriya research findings. [Link].
Biomagnetism is another facet of ourselves, and can be used to explain some of the simple, pleasant brain changes brought on by contemplation techniques. It can be difficult to grasp what Yogananda means by "magnetism of the spine and brain" and so on, but he refers to very common experiences of meditation. Even beginners can get great favours from it.
In TM (◦Transcendental Meditation) the ideal is largely similar. First "sharpen the axe" (brain and nerves and mind) well through daily sessions of meditation, then use it on the daily challenges to your ability, building a fit life through it. It can be done. Use your surplus to increase the quality of your life, laying up stores or funds to gain by. They can be health reserves - gather them as you go on developing though life. That is it.
Below are some nodules of thought that are inspired by an article by Yogananda from 1935. Many of the ideas could be familiar to SRF devotees.
Things to Gain By
Seek guidance within and find your vocation
Calm focus and condensation of experiences and lessons helps one on —
Enjoy God's sunshine and breathe His air.
How is it possible for the average human being to find time to read of poets?
Some yearn for knowledge.
Keep the mind engaged.
You want to produce something, do not depend [only] upon the outside source. Go deep and seek the [best] source — Whenever you want to know something, don't start with data — When the mind is receptive, then bring the data.
Start everything from within . . . Seek guidance within.
Benefit the brain so as to know a lot of what is going on in the world . . . There is a chance for human beings [to grow] also.
Man can quicken his evolution in . . . his own inner life — Evolution has been quickened by the adoption of better methods. Machinery can do that.
Your first concern: you must find your vocation — And develop a taste for better things.
Cultivate the habit of picking up in this life more worth-while things. Schedule your life, read the best books in the world. Self-help books can be OK - pick up the best books. Read of medicine, astronomy, science, and the good scriptures. ◊
Increase the grasp of your intuition
CONSCIOUSLY condense all your experiences. Gather your attention, focusing it - see the tree bearing walnuts! (3)
You should start with increasing the receptivity of your intuition.
Jerome Bruner holds that "In virtually any field of intellectual endeavor one may distinguish two approaches usually asserted to be different. One is intuitive, the other analytic . . . The solutions and discoveries of scientists and scholars are often at least partly intuitive [Roe 82-83]."
Bruner in another book of his: "Intuitive thinking, the training of hunches, is a much-neglected and essential feature of productive thinking not only in formal academic disciplines but also in everyday life. The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion - these are the most valuable coin of the thinker at work, whatever his line of work. Can school children be led to master this gift?" [Proe 12-13]
Bruner also affirms that what starts by intuitive hunches and the like, fairly often needs to be confirmed - in part by analyses, which can be hard work.
The intelligent guys scrutinize their lives
Too many cooks spoil the brew. (Proverb).
Scrutinize your life—the ten years you may live. 
Yogananda talks of quality time, after subtracting time for sleep and routine work. Consider it his rough estimate.
- Seek guidance within and find your vocation.
- Increase the grasp of your intuition.
- The intelligent guys scrutinize their lives.
Get fit guidance to improve the accuracy of your intuition; a lot of lives had better be scrutinised.
Talking of kriya
Yogananda holds a sort of atomistic view of brain cells in his article, in that he says each brain cell becomes a brain through the method he spreads. Novel brain research holds a quite integrative view mostly, in that electro-chemical discharges of left and half brain get better synchronised by some forms of meditation, and also the discharges of various brain areas, from frontal parts and backward. There are measurements to show it.
Further, Paramahansa Yogananda does tell antiquated things like "get all-knowing by the awakened 27.000 million new brains [!] in your skull", for example.
Many saints get their spiritual knowledge quickly.
SOURCE: Swami Yogananda. "Increasing Awareness." Inner Culture, October, 1935.
[www.yoganandarediscovered.org/jaitruth/Mia.html]
