Autobiography of a Yogi (Complete edition) [Paperback]

Paramahansa Yogananda (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 5, 1998

Autobiography of a Yogi is at once a beautifully written account of an exceptional life and a profound introduction to the ancient science of Yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation. This acclaimed autobiography presents a fascinating portrait of one of the great spiritual figures of our time. With engaging candor, eloquence, and wit, Paramahansa Yogananda tells the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounter with many saints and sages during his youthful search throughout India for an illumined teacher, ten years of training in the hermitage of a revered yoga master, and the thirty years that he lived and taught in America. Also recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West. The author clearly explains the subtle but definite laws behind both the ordinary events of everyday life and the extraordinary events commonly termed miracles. His absorbing life story becomes the background for a penetrating and unforgettable look at the ultimate mysteries of human existence. Selected as "One of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century," Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into 20 languages, and is regarded worldwide as a classic of religious literature. Several million copies have been sold, and it continues to appear on best-seller lists after more than sixty consecutive years in print. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining, warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages. Self-Realization Fellowship's editions, and none others, include extensive material added by the author after the first edition was published, including a final chapter on the closing years of his life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

This book is a must-read for the budding yogi, the spiritual veteran looking for a deeper understanding, and everyone in between... --Yogi Times

One book in particular stayed with Steve Jobs his entire life, Autobiography of a Yogi...'the guide to meditation and spirituality that he had first read as a teenager, then re-read in India and had read once a year ever since.' -- Huffington Post, review of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs

Fabulous stories from his life keep the reader inspired, informed, and thoroughly entertained from beginning to end. -- Yoga Journal --Yoga Journal

Fabulous stories from his life keep the reader inspired, informed, and thoroughly entertained from beginning to end. --Yoga Journal

About the Author

Born in India on January 5, 1893, Paramahansa Yogananda devoted his life to helping people of all races and creeds to realize and express more fully in their lives the true beauty, nobility, and divinity of the human spirit. After graduating from Calcutta University in 1915, Sri Yogananda took formal vows as a monk of India's venerable monastic Swami Order. Two years later, he began his life's work with the founding of a how-to-live school since grown to twenty-one educational institutions throughout India where traditional academic subjects were offered together with yoga training and instruction in spiritual ideals. In 1920, he was invited to serve as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston. His address to the Congress and subsequent lectures on the East Coast were enthusiastically received, and in 1924 he embarked on a cross-continental speaking tour. Over the next three decades, Paramahansa Yogananda contributed in far-reaching ways to a greater awareness and appreciation in the West of the spiritual wisdom of the East. In Los Angeles, he established an international headquarters for Self-Realization Fellowship, the nonsectarian religious society he had founded in 1920. Through his writings, extensive lecture tours, and the creation of Self-Realization Fellowship temples and meditation centers, he introduced hundreds of thousands of truth-seekers to the ancient science and philosophy of Yoga and its universally applicable methods of meditation. Today, the spiritual and humanitarian work begun by Paramahansa Yogananda continues under the direction of Sri Mrinalini Mata, one of his closest disciples and president of Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India since 2011. In addition to publishing his writings, lectures and informal talks (including a comprehensive series of Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons for home study), the society also oversees temples, retreats, and centers around the world.

Product Details

• Paperback: 604 pages
• Publisher: Self-Realization Fellowship; Edition Unstated edition (January 5, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0876120796
• ISBN-13: 978-0876120798
• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 1 x 7.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (141 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,315 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Other Eastern Religions & Sacred Texts
  • #7 in Books > Religion & Spirituality > Hinduism
  • #75 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Leaders & Notable People > Religious

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

175 of 184 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Candid biography, inspired prose, unparalled insights November 8, 2002

By richardpinneau.com VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Like Gandhi, Yogananda writes humbly and includes his foibles and the pratfalls he takes as he journeys through life's lessons. In fact, unless you read elsewhere about his life you won't realize how much he understates his own accomplishments while he honors other spiritual seekers and teachers he encounters.

His stories of encounters with amazing saints of all regions and religions are spell-binding, and you may find yourself (like me) devouring the whole book on your first read -- just reveling in the wonders of these true spiritual seekers. On successive readings I delved deeper into the equally fascinating footnotes, learning about the exotic realms of Indian spirituality and its unexpected parallels with the original Christian teachings of Christ, St. John, and St. Paul.

In fact, the countless strata of insights and implications that surface with repeated readings of Autobiography of a Yogi argue for spending a few more dollars on the trade paperback rather than the mass market paperback edition, since you'll want to return numerous times over the years. The Self-Realization Fellowship editions are to be preferred over others. Yogananda himself started that organization (SRF), and the award-winning quality of SRF editing and printing shines through them - in contrast to bootlegged editions printed up by renegade outfits.

In all my reading in spirituality, yoga, and comparative religion, I have discovered no work that so completely fulfills Carl Jung's prophecy that yoga science (the whole science, not just the athletic postures) will offer you ''undreamed-of possibilities'' as Yogananda's autobiography.... As the author explains, 'yoga' comes from the root meaning 'union' - and he reveals, ever more deeply, the underlying oneness of Christianity and yoga, of spiritual truth and scientific truth, of the worldly and the spirituality. It will deepen anyone's own faith and sensibility -- of whatever religion (or none), of the science of matter... or mind... or Spirit. Read more ›

52 of 55 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book I Have Ever Read! January 18, 2000

By Professor Meledath Damodaran

Format:Paperback

Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi" is undoubtedly the best book I have ever read. The first time that I read it, I was so mesmerized by it that I had a hard time to put down the book until I had finished reading it. Since then I have reread it a few times. The book, you may say, touched my very soul. After reading the book, I signed up with Self-Realization Fellowship, Yogananda's Los Angeles based spiritual organization, to receive the weekly Lessons that the great saint had left for us before he left his body. What those lessons have done for me, there are no words to express.

This book is also a great contribution to the cause of world peace and understanding among the people of different faiths and creeds; the abstract concept of world brotherhood becomes more real and immediate a concept after reading this book. I would recommend anyone who has not read this book -- no matter what his or her creed maybe -- to order a copy right away; this may be the best investment in one's life!

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The story of experiments with Truth and Soul August 14, 2005

By Richard Pinneau

Format:Paperback

Twenty-five years after my first discovery of this transformative volume, I would like to supplement my original review with a few additional considerations for prospective readers.

Always averse to things religious (as being arbitrarily authoritarian) and spiritual (as being delusional), I was at an initial loss to explain why this book riveted my attention. Yoga was way too 'airy-fairy' for my hard-headed mind. Somehow I was won over within a few sentences, spellbound by a spiritual author who wrote humbly, declined to adopt the self-righteousness of many a preacher, and yet related astounding spiritual events and principles - dating back to his infancy.

I was impressed to hear deep respect for the paths of all truth-seekers: of Hindus, Buddhists, Moslems, Christians, Jews; of humanists and scientists, transcendentalists and missionaries. His accounts were so personable and reasonable, his interdisciplinary insights so compelling, that I found myself questioning all materialist prejudices and weighing seriously his other-worldly claims.

During the first few chapters, in the background of my mind, I was quietly weighing explanations for this book, this mind, this spirit: was he a liar? a lunatic? or can the world really hold such miracles of life and Spirit as he depicts here? With liars and lunatics I'd had way too much acquaintance and knew: this was written by neither of these. I confronted myself: must I not overthrow my narrow, long-entrenched scientist's view of world and life, origin and death, reality and truth?

Through college and graduate school I'd always craved to meet a real leader - one who embodied Truth, exuded wisdom, lived a Gandhi-like life - that might transform this modern world.... Instead I encountered feet of clay; even worse: minds of clay. So humbly did Yogananda write of himself in this autobiography (paying greatest homage instead to saints and sages of the ages) that it took me years to realize that in him I'd met the equal of any great world-teacher portrayed here (or elsewhere).

In his Autobiography and in the meditation Lessons he penned for SRF, Yogananda left a non-coercive approach to spirituality and self-development. He always asked his readers to take nothing on his word, but to *test* the principles and the methods - as he himself tested what he was given by the great teachers of India.

In both his life and writings Yogananda promoted the value of combining those highest spiritual principles held in common by Judeo-Christianity and by yoga: Devotion (love for the Creative Source of our beings) and Discipline of mind and body ("Be still and know... God").

Through his gentle wisdom, relentless love, and confident patience, Yogananda succeeds in touching every reader. I have known some minds that were closed to his ecumenism, some hearts unready for his divine affection, and many souls too solidly encased in limited ideas of mortality to receive all that he would like to have given them. I have known both materialist readers who were put off by the miraculous events vividly recounted here - and flighty readers who cared only to read about the supernatural events (escaping his incitement to enlightenment). But I've yet to meet anyone with hard enough heart and dry enough intuition that they are unmoved by his portraits of the higher possibilities accessible to human souls.

For the sincere seeker here are stories that empower lessons, insights that deepen self-inquiry, and constant prods to move beyond "spiritual experiences" to the Experience of Spirit. Yogananda always brings the reader back to disciplined (with love) meditation upon the Highest Power (and love) - explaining that through meditative mastery "even those who cannot believe in the divinity of any man may at last experience the divinity of their own souls."

[ If you want to be sure to get Yogananda's FULL story, get one of the gold-colored editions from Self-Realization (cloth 0876120826, quality paperback 0876120834, or mass paper 0876120796), not a (blue-covered) abridged preliminary version. ] Read more ›

88 of 100 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A challenge to our western way of thinking July 1, 2002

By Neal C. Reynolds VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I very much consider this a very important book to read. It may not be the easiest, because you will find promotion of a way of thinking which is significantly different from our own western philosophy. This way of thinking opens the way for the stories of many "miracle workers" who perform feats that defy western logic. And these stories can be stumbling blocks to many readers.

These stories do, however, illustrate various points of the vedic philosophy.

I believe that any person interested in religious thought will find much of value here. Many precepts of the Hindu religion are explored throughout this autobiography, and some of them shed light from a different perception upon the Christian and Judaic faiths. If a person is open to looking at one's own beliefs through another person's eyes, understanding of all beliefs may be increased. A person who does not wish to understand beliefs of another person's religion should, however, stay away from this book.

Along with the personal, spiritual autobiography and the open sharing of belief and faith are stories of many swamis and saints, and also of two of current culture and times. One chapter is devoted to noted horticulturist Luther Burbank, and his friendship with Yogananda, giving a different view of the man and of his accomplishments than that generally learned in our schooling. Another chapter is given to Mahatma Ghandi as Yogonanda briefly knew him.

This isn't the easiest book for the western mind to understand, much less accept. However, it's worth the effort.