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Religion & Spirituality17 min read
Autobiography of a Yogi
by Paramahansa Yogananda
The Life and Teachings of One of the Great Spiritual Figures
Published: January 15, 2023
3.4 (119 ratings)
Table of Contents
1
what’s in it for me? dive into the fascinating world of the man who brought kriya yoga to the west.2
early life, mystical appearances, and the amulet of destiny3
the discipleship of swami sri yukteswar4
yogananda is sworn into the swami order5
the yogi’s missionary work6
western saints and the union between east and west7
final summaryBook Summary
This is a comprehensive summary of “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda. The book explores the life and teachings of one of the great spiritual figures.
what’s in it for me? dive into the fascinating world of the man who brought kriya yoga to the west.#
Introduction
paramahansa yogananda – autobiography of a yogi for the uninitiated, yoga can seem like a distant eastern religion.
for others, it's just another form of meditation they employ to fix mind and body.
these views couldn't be further from the intentions of kriya yoga's earliest gurus and prophets.
they regarded their ultimate mission as the spiritual and material union between world religions.
this chapter-2 autobiography of a yogi provides a brief introduction to the key concepts of kriya yoga.
the book itself means a great deal to many people, including steve jobs, who read it first as a teenager.
he liked it so much that he read it every year after that.
he had it on his ipad and ordered 500 copies for guests at his funeral.
let's go back to the early days of the 20th century for a moment and meet paramahansa yogananda, whose parents named him mukunda lalgosh.
he's a kid from gorakhpur, india, with an unrestrained passion for the divine and a deep yearning for a pilgrimage to the himalayas.
he has no clue yet, but he's been chosen to take kriya yoga to america.
to accomplish that goal, he must be immersed into the deepest spiritual realms by the greatest prophets of times past and present.
early life, mystical appearances, and the amulet of destiny when the little mukunda saw a boil on his sister's arm, he asked if he could apply the ointment she was using to treat hers because he was going to have one the next day.
early life, mystical appearances, and the amulet of destiny#
incredulously, his sister refused.
the boy shot back, predicting his sister uma's boil would grow to twice the size if his prophecy came true.
the next day, mukunda did get a boil, the scar of which he then carried for the rest of his life.
and, just as he had predicted, uma's boil doubled in size.
over time, the boy came to understand that he was destined to follow a long line of famous yogis to accomplish a foretold mission.
that mission had started with the prophecy of lahiri mashaya, a bengali guru who prophesied the birth of mukunda.
mukunda paid intense devotion to the saint's picture in his room.
he received healing from asiatic cholera just by staring at the picture.
he often saw visions of the saint.
to uma's astonishment, mukunda willed a stranger's kite toward them and, when he was challenged, willed a second kite.
before lahiri mashaya passed on to another realm, he told mukunda's mother she would receive an amulet for her boy.
the object would appear in her hand at the right time and would be handed to mukunda after her death.
the amulet would go on to disappear when the boy had found his guru.
hindu society in 1893, when yogananda was born, was profoundly attached to the idea of an intimate believer-guru discipleship.
mukunda embraced this ideal with relentless passion, often running away from home to find his guru or seek the enlightenment and union with god that resided in the sacred expanses of the himalayas.
somehow, he never made it.
the invisible forces knew it wasn't time.
his father, an indian railway administrator who slept with his wife once a year for the purpose of procreation, wondered and worried about his boy.
yet, keenly aware of the mukunda's devotion, indulged him.
before mukunda's mother died, she gave the amulet to her older son ananta, who passed it on to mukunda.
the boy had come into possession of the amulet that would lead him to his guru and his yogic destiny.
the discipleship of swami sri yukteswar mukunda guarded his amulet jealously in a safe box.
the discipleship of swami sri yukteswar#
he'd open the box, admire the talisman, and then re-lock the box.
one day, he went into his room at the ashram where he was staying and discovered that his prized possession had vanished.
sad and disillusioned, he searched around the ashram in disbelief.
still searching, he was summoned and sent on an errand.
out on the streets, he felt a magnetic force draw him toward an angelic presence, the sublime aura of his guru, sri yukteswar giri.
they'd never met, but they instantly connected.
gurudeva!
luminous guru, the overjoyed mukunda said in reverence.
the overjoyed pilgrim felt an instant attraction toward his guru, and his guru promised him everlasting devotion, bequeathing his service and his possessions to the boy he'd just met but had always known in the realms of astral interactions.
that meeting started over a decade of discipleship and mentoring for mukunda, under swami sri yukteswar.
he taught the young yogananda not only the value of personal union with god through the practice of kriya yoga, but also the practical usefulness of what the great teacher qualified as the human drama.
sri yukteswar healed sick men, but let doctors carry on with their work.
he was an embodiment of the hindu scriptures, but insisted on finding true meaning from within through meditation.
sri yukteswar defied tradition by organizing and feeding people at his mother's funeral, an act not permitted for priests or brahmins like him.
for such a venerated figure, the saint would watch in resignation as his own mother scolded him.
the human drama must go on.
sitting still, luminescent, and finely balanced in his lotus posture, the teacher would often lament about man's futile search for absolute truth in a world of boundless relativity.
he discouraged personal attachment, even while enjoying the teasing and taunting that went around in his ashram.
maya, or worldly distractions, he said, lured man to sin and banishment from god.
the practice of kriya yoga for hindus, christians, muslims, and anyone who acknowledged the supreme power of the one and omnipresent god was the best way to re-establish that fellowship.
so the responsibility of the yogi is to help man in this world or other worlds start the journey toward repentance and the forgiveness of sins or karma, either through personal renunciation or intercession by a guru.
it's incumbent upon the seeker to achieve self-mastery, overcome the ego, and lose themselves so that they might fuse into union with infinite divinity.
progress comes through fervent devotion until the physical, mental, and emotional consciousness of the believer is ready to be transformed into a samadhi, a super-conscious baptism of all perspective vision and all-encompassing experience.
samadhi happens in stages until you experience pure, unadulterated bliss.
to put it simply, samadhi will make you see in every direction, experience everything, drop in and out of this world, feel the divine presence of god, be here and everywhere.
followers need to be led into this state, but a true master can summon samadhi at will.
yogananda is sworn into the swami order#
yogananda is sworn into the swami order born with an unrelenting desire to make contact with god, yogananda grew impatient many times during his education at the ashram of sri yukteswar.
after several attempts to reach the holy mountains of the himalayas were thwarted by his discerning guru, he finally made the pilgrimage.
there, he saw a vision of the future headquarters of the self-realization fellowship on mount washington in los angeles.
the monk who emerged after years of meditative and contemplative discipleship could easily receive and transmit telepathic messages with his peers among the living and other worlds beyond.
he'd also understood man's oneness with nature, animate or inanimate, as consisting of the same life particles.
hence the ability of a self-realized master to penetrate walls, understand plants, communicate with animals, commission two bodies to work in different places at the same time, and materialize living cells to restore failing organs.
the yogi could also look into the future and prophesy.
but above all these things was samadhi, bliss through union with god.
sri yukteswar performed the final rites of initiation and gave mukunda the rare honor of choosing his own yogi name.
he chose yogananda, meaning bliss through union with the divine spirit.
distracted by his passion for all things spiritual, yogananda had been a passive student who only made the grades through inexplicable interventions.
his teachers were always scratching their heads asking how he'd done it.
during his final year at calcutta university, the yogi simply flung his books and they opened to passages that appeared in the finals.
in another fascinating account, the base mark was lowered when he floundered.
in one of his papers, he was asked to write about someone he admired, and he aced it with the narrative of his beloved guru.
his spiritual and intellectual mind sufficiently stimulated, the young yogi paramahansa yogananda was ripe for his mission to bridge east and west.
the yogi’s missionary work#
the yogi's missionary work during one of their illuminating chats, sri yukteswar asked yogananda how he'd cope in old age without the companionship of a family.
you see, yogananda had an aversion to organizational work, focusing his energy on self-realization and god-contact.
his guru gave him a nudge.
the newly initiated monk wouldn't be the self-realized being he was if generations of generous masters hadn't shared their knowledge.
the seeds of yogananda's missionary work started with the planting of a liberal boys' school in ranchi, near calcutta.
students were taught the art of living in spiritual and physical domains.
they were also schooled in subjects like agriculture, commerce, industry, and other academic disciplines.
studies were conducted outdoors, and students were also taught meditation.
this, the yogi said, would help the kids seek for answers from within.
the idea spread to other places, and more schools were opened.
when he received an invitation to represent india as a delegate at the international congress of religious liberals in boston in 1920, the prophecy of his mission to the west had come full circle.
but there was a small problem.
the yogi didn't speak english.
he stuttered when he tried to give his first talk on board the ship that carried him to america.
the audience laughed.
the audience laughed.
he gave it another go, letting his wits engage with the dynamic spirit that had guided his path over the years.
he tapped into the endless wisdom of the saints who'd equipped him.
among them were illustrious teachers like the deathless guru-babaji lahiri mashaya, who'd been sri yukteswar's guru, and other christlike mystics.
his talk in boston was successful.
he stayed on for another 15 years, giving lectures, publishing books, and initiating thousands into kriya yoga.
after years of hard work, the yogi finally built the temple he'd seen in his vision in kashmir.
the self-realization fellowship headquarters in los angeles, established in 1925, is the flagship of an organization with over 500 centers, temples, ashrams, and schools around the world.
western saints and the union between east and west in 1492, christopher columbus embarked on his fateful mission to find india, and, as you might have heard, landed in america.
western saints and the union between east and west#
what does this have to do with the autobiography of a yogi born several centuries later?
it turns out, according to paramahamsa yogananda, columbus was a pawn in that ancient karmic transaction between east and west.
when yogananda set foot in america, he set up a union of the mystics by meeting and exchanging ideas with people in religious and public life.
he founded a magazine called east-west to publish articles on the subject.
yogananda became a friend of the great american botanist luther burbank, who grafted his way into history by developing countless varieties of plants and vegetables.
luther burbank was a massive fan of the yogi's teachings and method of educating youth.
in europe, yogananda visited therese neumann in bavaria.
the catholic stigmatist spoke greek, aramaic, and hebrew with no prior instruction and experienced the passion of christ every friday.
blood would ooze from the same points on her body where jesus christ was wounded.
people came to her for healing.
she could heal a patient's disease in her own body.
she ate nothing but a sacramental wafer every morning.
the yogi went into a trance to immerse himself in her experience of jesus' suffering.
now a keen observer of the human drama, the yogananda visited palestine to trace jesus' earthly path.
back in india, yogananda was mahatma gandhi's guest at his hermitage in wardha.
he initiated gandhi into kriya yoga and had long conversations with a civil rights activist.
reflecting on india's caste system, yogananda argued that the system was introduced to make a perfect society, with each person working to their natural ability as a laborer, tradesperson, administrator, warrior, or spiritual leader.
this system became rigged when these advantages were passed on at birth and inheritance.
when yogananda returned to america in 1938, he was pleasantly surprised to see his followers had secretly built another beautiful pacific ashram at encinitas, a coastline that looks out to the east.
in this chapter, you've traced the life story of paramahansa yogananda, one of india's most prominent yogis who carried the healing message of kriya yoga to the west.
final summary#
Conclusion
here's the gist.
paramahansa yogananda displayed a deep spiritual yearning from childhood, often running from home to go on pilgrimages or find his guru.
the search ended when he met swami sri yukteswar, who taught and guided him toward fulfilling a long-held prophecy.
he had to take the message of kriya yoga to the west.
you've also learned about the western and eastern yogis paramahansa met along his journey toward divine contact, and the legacy that reaches millions of people to this day through a self-realization fellowship.
kriya yoga, an ancient form of scientific meditation, would connect man to god, and in the process, connect man to his neighbor.
on the grand scale, it would bring together peoples of different faiths under one fellowship.
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see you in the next chapter.
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