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Autobiography of a Yogi (October 2020)
In his highly-acclaimed book, The Life of Yogananda (2018), the author, Philip Goldberg, has this to say; "Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi was a seminal text for me. I had already discovered Eastern philosophy and yogic practices such as meditation, but the iconic memoir expanded my knowledge, strengthened my commitment, and inspired me to dive deeper into my own spirituality. I continued to learn from Yogananda’s writings, and when I researched his life for my 2010 book, American Veda, I came to admire him as a giant of modern spirituality whose contribution to the transmission of India’s ancient wisdom to the West was second to none. I also came to see that his life story was more moving, complex, and compelling than even his ardent followers realize. He was a world-class spiritual master with a unique and important mission ..... He danced to the beat of a cosmic drum that no one else could hear." |
"His crowning achievement, and the most enduring monument to his earthly expedition, was Autobiography of a Yogi ..... It has sold at least 4 million English-language copies and has been translated into nearly 50 languages. ..... Regardless of which edition readers acquired over the years, the ad slogan used today would have applied: “The book that changed the lives of millions.” That was especially true as the staid ’50s gave way to the tumultuous ’60s, when a large segment of baby boomers embraced Eastern spirituality as passionately as they opposed the Vietnam War. In counterculture circles, the autobiography, with the now-familiar ochre-colored background to the deep-eyed visage of Yogananda in the Standard Pose, was by far the most beloved, borrowed, gifted, and ripped-off spiritual text. If you were lucky enough to know George Harrison, you might have received one from the stack he kept on hand to give away. ..... Now, more than seven decades after its publication, it can be found everywhere from small-town school libraries to hipster health food stores and, of course, amid the fancy outfits and accessories in the shops of yoga studios that owe their existence, at least in part, to the book and its author."
“You would be hard-pressed to find anyone on the spiritual path whose life has not been influenced by this profound work of literature.” ~ Jack Canfield, co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series
“Autobiography of a Yogi is regarded as an Upanishad of the new age .... the immortal nectar of India’s Sanatana Dharma, the eternal laws of truth, has been stored in the golden chalice of Autobiography of a Yogi.” ~ Dr. Ashutosh Das, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., Professor, Calcutta University
And finally, from the Goodreads website;
"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 narrates the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounters 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.
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. 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 thus becomes the background for a penetrating and unforgettable look at the ultimate mysteries of human existence."
Named one of the best spiritual books of the twentieth century, Paramahansa Yogananda’s remarkable life story takes you on an unforgettable journey that illuminates the deepest secrets of life and the universe — opening our hearts and minds to the joy, beauty, and unlimited spiritual potentials that exist in the lives of every human being.
Below are brief excerpts from this extraordinary book. Some of the excerpts are quotations from others as recorded by Yogananda; these are duly noted - most of these are from Sri Yukteswar, the guru of Yogananda, as well as Lahari Mahasaya, the guru of Sri Yukteswar. The excerpts are grouped by topic into the following sections;
“You would be hard-pressed to find anyone on the spiritual path whose life has not been influenced by this profound work of literature.” ~ Jack Canfield, co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series
“Autobiography of a Yogi is regarded as an Upanishad of the new age .... the immortal nectar of India’s Sanatana Dharma, the eternal laws of truth, has been stored in the golden chalice of Autobiography of a Yogi.” ~ Dr. Ashutosh Das, M.A., Ph.D., D.Litt., Professor, Calcutta University
And finally, from the Goodreads website;
"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 narrates the inspiring chronicle of his life: the experiences of his remarkable childhood, encounters 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.
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. 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 thus becomes the background for a penetrating and unforgettable look at the ultimate mysteries of human existence."
Named one of the best spiritual books of the twentieth century, Paramahansa Yogananda’s remarkable life story takes you on an unforgettable journey that illuminates the deepest secrets of life and the universe — opening our hearts and minds to the joy, beauty, and unlimited spiritual potentials that exist in the lives of every human being.
Below are brief excerpts from this extraordinary book. Some of the excerpts are quotations from others as recorded by Yogananda; these are duly noted - most of these are from Sri Yukteswar, the guru of Yogananda, as well as Lahari Mahasaya, the guru of Sri Yukteswar. The excerpts are grouped by topic into the following sections;
The sections are self-contained and can be read in any order (although it may help to read Section 1 before Section 2 and Section 3 before Sections 4 & 5.)
Clicking on a name will take your directly to that section. A return link back to the start of this posting is provided after each section.
Clicking on a name will take your directly to that section. A return link back to the start of this posting is provided after each section.
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Meditation 
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Meditation is fundamental to the spiritual teachings of the East. As such, meditation is the cornerstone of Yogananda's teachings. The following are some of the key thoughts expressed in the book on this topic. Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevents all men, of all lands, from glimpsing their true nature of Spirit. Like the healing light of the sun, yoga is beneficial equally to men of the East and to men of the West. The thoughts of most persons are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control. In deep meditation, the first experience of Spirit is on the altar of the spine, and then in the brain. The torrential bliss is overwhelming, but the yogi learns to control its outward manifestations. The universal appeal of yoga is thus its approach to God through a daily usable scientific method, rather than through a devotional fervor that, for the average man, is beyond his emotional scope. “Outward longings drive us from the Eden within; they offer false pleasures that only impersonate soul happiness. The lost paradise is quickly regained through divine meditation." ~ Sri Yukteswar "Even he with the worst of karma who ceaselessly meditates on Me quickly loses the effects of his past bad actions" ~ Bhagavad Gita "Meditation furnishes a twofold proof of God. Ever-new joy is evidence of His existence, convincing to our very atoms. Also, in meditation one finds His instant guidance, His adequate response to every difficulty." ~ Sri Yukteswar "It [yoga] promises undreamed-of possibilities ..... the perfect and appropriate method of fusing body and mind together so that they form a unity ..... This unity creates a psychological disposition which makes possible intuitions that transcend consciousness.” ~ Carl Jung “Ever-new Joy is God. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the years, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness." ~ Sri Yukteswar |
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Kriya Yoga 
Babaji
(guru of Lahiri Mahasaya) 
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The specific yoga technique that was taught by Yogananda (and the other spiritual masters mentioned in his book) was Kriya Yoga. This is an advanced form of Raja Yoga, the Royal Path to God. Known for millennia, the technique was lost during earth's Dark Ages. It has now been revived and is available to all seeking souls. The following excerpts include comments about Kriya as well as mention about higher states of consciousness attained by advanced practitioners. “The Kriya Yoga that I am giving to the world through you in this nineteenth century,” Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, “is a revival of the same science that Krishna gave millenniums ago to Arjuna; and that was later known to Patanjali and Christ, and to St. John, St. Paul, and other disciples.” "The cries of many bewildered worldly men and women have not fallen unheard on the ears of the Great Ones. You have been chosen to bring spiritual solace through Kriya Yoga to numerous earnest seekers." ~ Babaji, speaking to Lahiri Mahasaya The Kriya technique, which is simple, embodies the art of quickening man’s spiritual evolution. Hindu scriptures teach that the incarnating ego requires a million years to obtain liberation from maya. This natural period is greatly shortened through Kriya Yoga.***
Kriya Yoga is thus “union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite (kriya).” A yogi who faithfully practices the technique is gradually freed from karma or the lawful chain of cause-effect equilibriums.
Untying the cord of breath that binds the soul to the body, Kriya serves to prolong life and to enlarge the consciousness to infinity. “The ancient yogis discovered that the secret of cosmic consciousness is intimately linked with breath mastery. This is India’s unique and deathless contribution to the world’s treasury of knowledge." ~ Sri Yukteswar The body of the average man is like a fifty-watt lamp, which cannot accommodate the billion watts of power roused by an excessive practice of Kriya. Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and foolproof methods of Kriya, man’s body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy. The advanced yogi transmutes his cells into energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir, and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to materialize and dematerialize at will. Samadhi is a blissful superconscious state in which a yogi perceives the identity of the individualized soul and Cosmic Spirit. In the first state of samadhi (sabikalpa), the devotee shuts off all sensory testimony of the outer world. He is rewarded then by sounds and scenes of inner realms fairer than the pristine Eden. An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. ….. The divine dispersion of rays poured from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. ….. I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. ….. Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost. Once more I was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative to the Spirit. As often as I quieted the two natural tumults [the breath and the restless mind], I beheld the multitudinous waves of creation melt into one lucent sea; even as the waves of the ocean, when a tempest subsides, serenely dissolve into unity. A master bestows the divine experience of cosmic consciousness when his disciple, by meditation, has strengthened his mind to a degree where the vast vistas would not overwhelm him. Mere intellectual willingness or open-mindedness is not enough. Only adequate enlargement of consciousness by yoga practice and devotional bhakti can prepare one to absorb the liberating shock of omnipresence. The divine experience comes with a natural inevitability to the sincere devotee. His intense craving begins to pull at God with an irresistible force. Sri Yukteswar taught me how to summon the blessed experience at will, and also how to transmit it to others when their intuitive channels are developed. I have transmitted the Cosmic Vision to a number of Kriya Yogis in East and West. In the initial states of God-communion (sabikalpa samadhi) the devotee’s consciousness merges in the Cosmic Spirit; his life force is withdrawn from the body, which appears “dead,” or motionless and rigid. The yogi is fully aware of his bodily condition of suspended animation. As he progresses to higher spiritual states (nirbikalpa samadhi), however, he communes with God without bodily fixation; and in his ordinary waking consciousness, even in the midst of exacting worldly duties. Most men are utterly incapable of summoning those irresistible powers of devotion that are effortlessly possessed only by a few ekantins, “singlehearted” saints found in all religious paths, whether of East or West. Yet the ordinary man is not therefore shut out from the possibility of divine communion. He needs, for soul recollection, no more than the Kriya Yoga technique, a daily observance of the moral precepts, and an ability to cry sincerely: “Lord, I yearn to know Thee!” “Divine union is possible through self-effort, and is not dependent on theological beliefs or on the arbitrary will of a Cosmic Dictator.” ~ Lahiri Mahasaya “Kriya Yoga, the scientific technique of God-realization will ultimately spread in all lands, and aid in harmonizing the nations through man’s personal, transcendental perception of the Infinite Father.” ~ Babaji The blessed role of Kriya Yoga in East and West has hardly more than just begun. May all men come to know that there exists a definite, scientific technique of Self-realization for the overcoming of all human misery! Had India no other gift for the world, Kriya Yoga alone would suffice as a kingly offering. |
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Law of Miracles 
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Autobiography of a Yogi abounds in stories involving "miracles." As Yogananda and other masters explain in the excerpts below, these are not really miracles but are events that are based on an understanding and use of higher laws that are known to those who have tuned into their God-minds; A “miracle” is commonly considered to be an effect or event without law, or beyond law. But all events in our precisely adjusted universe are lawfully wrought and lawfully explicable. The so-called miraculous powers of a great master are a natural accompaniment to his exact understanding of subtle laws that operate in the inner cosmos of consciousness. The motion-picture art can portray any miracle. From the impressive visual standpoint, no marvel is barred to trick photography. A man may be seen as a transparent astral body that is rising from his gross physical form, he can walk on the water, resurrect the dead, reverse the natural sequence of developments, and play havoc with time and space. The expert may assemble the photographic images as he pleases, achieving optical wonders similar to those that a true master produces with actual light rays. At night man enters the state of dream-consciousness and escapes from the false egoistic limitations that daily hem him round. In sleep he has an ever recurrent demonstration of the omnipotence of his mind. Lo! in the dream appear his long-dead friends, the remotest continents, the resurrected scenes of his childhood. That free and unconditioned consciousness, which all men briefly experience in certain of their dreams, is the permanent state of mind of a God-tuned master. Innocent of all personal motives, and employing the creative will bestowed on him by the Creator, a yogi rearranges the light atoms of the universe to satisfy any sincere prayer of a devotee. The law of miracles is operable by any man who has realized that the essence of creation is light. A master is able to employ his divine knowledge of light phenomena to project instantly into perceptible manifestation the ubiquitous light atoms. The actual form of the projection (whatever it be: a tree, a medicine, a human body) is determined by the yogi’s wish and by his power of will and of visualization. Great saints who have awakened from the cosmic mayic dream and have realized this world as an idea in the Divine Mind, can do as they wish with the body, knowing it to be only a manipulatable form of condensed or frozen energy. Though physical scientists now understand that matter is nothing but congealed energy, illumined masters have passed victoriously from theory to practice in the field of matter control. All scriptures proclaim that the Lord created man in His omnipotent image. Control over the universe appears to be supernatural, but in truth such power is inherent and natural in everyone who attains “right remembrance” of his divine origin. "Thought is a force, even as electricity or gravitation. The human mind is a spark of the almighty consciousness of God. I could show you that whatever your powerful mind believes very intensely would instantly come to pass." ~ Lahiri Mahasaya “[Lahiri Mahasaya] knew this world to be nothing but an objectivized dream of the Creator. Because he was completely aware of his unity with the Divine Dreamer, Lahiri Mahasaya could materialize or dematerialize or make any other change he wished in the dream atoms of the phenomenal world." ~ Sri Yukteswar "All creation is governed by law. The principles that operate in the outer universe, discoverable by scientists, are called natural laws. But there are subtler laws that rule the hidden spiritual planes and the inner realm of consciousness; these principles are knowable through the science of yoga. It is not the physicist but the Self-realized master who comprehends the true nature of matter. By such knowledge Christ was able to restore the servant’s ear after it had been severed by one of the disciples.” ~ Sri Yukteswar Autobiography of a Yogi recounts many, many stories of "miracles" of various types. These are typically described in a casual, matter of fact style that reflects the author's understanding of the science behind them. They were not miracles to him. In the next two sections are excerpts from the book that provide examples of healings and physical materializations. |
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Healings |
Autobiography of a Yogi contains many stories of healings that were carried out by Sri Yukteswar, Lahari Mahasaya and other spiritual masters. Below are three of these stories: |
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"Sir, you seem sad. What is the trouble?” Lahiri Mahasaya made this sympathetic inquiry one morning to his employer.
“My wife in England is critically ill. I am torn by anxiety.” “I shall get you some word about her.” Lahiri Mahasaya left the room and sat for a short time in a secluded spot. On his return he smiled consolingly. “Your wife is improving; she is now writing you a letter.” The omniscient yogi quoted some parts of the missive. “Ecstatic Babu, I already know that you are no ordinary man. Yet I am unable to believe that, at will, you can banish time and space!” The promised letter finally arrived. The astounded superintendent found that it contained not only the good news of his wife’s recovery but also the same phrases that, weeks earlier, the great master had uttered. The wife came to India some months later. Meeting Lahiri Mahasaya, she gazed at him reverently. “Sir,” she said, “it was your form, haloed in glorious light, that I beheld months ago by my sickbed in London. At that moment I was completely healed! Soon after, I was able to undertake the long ocean voyage to India.” |
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One of my friends, Sasi, spent a number of happy weekends in Serampore. Master became immensely fond of the boy, and lamented that his private life was wild and disorderly. “Sasi, unless you reform, one year hence you will be dangerously ill.” Sri Yukteswar gazed at my friend with affectionate exasperation. “Mukunda is the witness; don’t say later that I didn’t warn you.” Sasi laughed. “Master, I will leave it to you to interest a sweet charity of cosmos in my own sad case! My spirit is willing but my will is weak. You are my only savior on earth; I believe in nothing else.” “At least you should wear a two-carat blue sapphire. It will help you.” “I can’t afford one. Anyhow, dear Guruji, if trouble comes, I fully believe you will protect me.” “In a year you will bring three sapphires,” Sri Yukteswar replied. “They will be of no use then.” ..... A year passed ..... One day I was visiting my guru at the Calcutta home of his disciple, Naren Babu. About ten o’clock in the morning, as Sri Yukteswar and I were sitting in the second-floor parlor, I heard the front door open ..... I raced down the stairway. Sasi was ascending. ..... He threw himself at Sri Yukteswar’s feet, placing there three beautiful sapphires. “Omniscient Guru, the doctors say I have pulmonary tuberculosis. They give me only three months to live! I humbly implore your aid; I know you can heal me!” “Isn’t it a bit late now to be worrying over your life? Depart with your jewels; their time of usefulness is past.” Master then sat sphinxlike in an unrelenting silence, punctuated by the boy’s sobs for mercy. An intuitive conviction came to me that Sri Yukteswar was merely testing the depth of Sasi’s faith in the divine healing power. I was not surprised a tense hour later when Master turned a sympathetic gaze on my prostrate friend. “Get up, Sasi; what a commotion you make in another person’s house! Return the sapphires to the jeweler’s; they are an unnecessary expense now. But get an astrological bangle** and wear it. Fear not; in a few weeks you shall be well. ..... It is as impossible for you to die of tuberculosis as it would be for the sun and moon to interchange their positions.” Sri Yukteswar added abruptly, “Go now, before I change my mind!” |
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** Though jewels and metal bangles have remedial values for the body, Sri Yukteswar had another reason for recommending them. Masters never wish to appear as great healers: God alone is the Healer. Saints, therefore, often cloak with various disguises the powers they have humbly received from the Lord. Man usually puts his trust in tangibles; when persons came for healing to my guru, he advised them to wear a bangle or a jewel in order to arouse their faith and also to divert attention from himself. The bangles and jewels possessed, in addition to their intrinsic electromagnetic healing potencies, Master’s hidden spiritual blessing.
“Electrical and magnetic radiations are ceaselessly circulating in the universe; they affect man’s body for good and ill. Ages ago our rishis pondered the problem of combating the adverse effects of subtle cosmic influences. The sages discovered that pure metals emit an astral light which is powerfully counteractive to negative pulls of the planets." ~ Sri Yukteswar Pearls and other jewels as well as metals and plants, applied directly to the human skin, exercise an electromagnetic influence over the physical cells. Man’s body contains carbon and various metallic elements that are present also in plants, metals, jewels. The discoveries of the rishis in these fields will doubtless receive confirmation someday from physiologists. Man’s sensitive body, with its electrical life currents, is a center of many mysteries as yet unexplored. |
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Sri Yukteswar
Lahiri Mahasaya
Jesus calls Lazarus
from the tomb |
“Rama was suddenly put to a severe test,” Sri Yukteswar continued. “He contracted the disease of Asiatic cholera. As our master [Lahiri Mahasaya] never objected to the services of physicians at times of serious illness, two specialists were summoned. Amidst the frantic rush of ministering to the stricken man, I was deeply praying to Lahiri Mahasaya for help. I hurried to his home and sobbed out the story. “‘The doctors are seeing Rama. He will be well.’ My guru smiled jovially. “I returned with a light heart to my friend’s bedside, only to find him in a dying state. “‘He cannot last more than one or two hours,’ one of the physicians told me with a gesture of despair. Once more I hastened to Lahiri Mahasaya. “‘The doctors are conscientious men. I am sure Rama will be well.’ The master dismissed me blithely. “At Rama’s place I found both doctors gone. One had left me a note: ‘We have done our best, but his case is hopeless.’ “My friend was indeed the picture of a dying man. I did not understand how Lahiri Mahasaya’s words could fail to come true, yet the sight of Rama’s rapidly ebbing life kept suggesting to my mind: ‘All is over now.’ Tossing thus on alternating waves of faith and doubt, I ministered to my friend as best I could. He roused himself to cry out: “‘Yukteswar, run to Master and tell him I am gone. Ask him to bless my body before its last rites.’ With these words Rama sighed heavily and gave up the ghost. “I wept for an hour by his bedside. Always a lover of quiet, now he had attained the utter stillness of death. Another disciple came in; I asked him to remain in the house until I returned. Half dazed, I trudged back to my guru. “‘How is Rama now?’ Lahiri Mahasaya’s face was wreathed in smiles. “‘Sir, you will soon see how he is,’ I blurted out emotionally. ‘In a few hours you will see his body, before it is carried to the crematory grounds.’ I broke down and moaned openly. “‘Yukteswar, control yourself. Sit calmly and meditate.’ My guru retired into samadhi. The afternoon and night passed in unbroken silence; I struggled unsuccessfully to regain an inner composure. “At dawn Lahiri Mahasaya glanced at me consolingly. ‘I see you are still disturbed. Why didn’t you explain yesterday that you expected me to give Rama tangible aid in the form of some medicine?’ The master pointed to a cup-shaped lamp containing crude castor oil. ‘Fill a little bottle with oil from the lamp; put seven drops in Rama’s mouth.’ “‘Sir,’ I remonstrated, ‘he has been dead since yesterday noon. Of what use is the oil now?’ “‘Never mind, just do as I ask.’ My guru’s cheerful mood was incomprehensible to me; I was still in an unassuaged agony of bereavement. Pouring out a small amount of oil, I departed for Rama’s house. “I found my friend’s body rigid in the death-clasp. Paying no attention to his ghastly condition, I opened his lips with my right index finger; and managed, with my left hand and the help of the cork, to put the oil drop by drop over his clenched teeth. As the seventh drop touched his cold lips, Rama shivered violently. His muscles from head to foot vibrated as he sat up wonderingly. “‘I saw Lahiri Mahasaya in a blaze of light!’ he cried. ‘He shone like the sun. “Arise, forsake your sleep,” he commanded me. “Come with Yukteswar to see me.”’ “I could scarcely believe my eyes when Rama dressed himself and was strong enough after that fatal sickness to walk to the home of our guru. There he prostrated himself before Lahiri Mahasaya with tears of gratitude. “The master was beside himself with mirth. His eyes twinkled at me mischievously. “‘Yukteswar,’ he said, ‘surely henceforth you will not fail to carry with you a bottle of castor oil. Whenever you see a corpse, just administer the oil. Why, seven drops of lamp oil must surely foil the power of Yama!’ “‘Guruji, you are ridiculing me. I don’t understand; please point out the nature of my error.’ “‘I told you twice that Rama would be well; yet you could not fully believe me,’ Lahiri Mahasaya explained. ‘I did not mean the doctors would be able to cure him; I remarked only that they were in attendance. I didn’t want to interfere with the physicians; they have to live, too.’ In a voice resounding with joy, my guru added, ‘Always know that the omnipotent Paramatman [literally, Supreme Soul] can heal anyone, doctor or no doctor.’ “‘I see my mistake,’ I acknowledged remorsefully. ‘I know now that your simple word is binding on the whole cosmos.’” As Sri Yukteswar finished the awesome story, one of the Ranchi lads ventured a question that, from a child, was doubly understandable. “Sir,” he said, “why did your guru send castor oil?” “Child, giving the oil had no special meaning. Because I had expected something material, Lahiri Mahasaya chose the nearby oil as an objective symbol to awaken my greater faith. The master allowed Rama to die, because I had partially doubted. But the divine guru knew that inasmuch as he had said the disciple would be well, the healing must take place, even though he had to cure Rama of death, a disease usually final!” |
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The spiritual law does not require a master to become ill whenever he heals another person. Healings ordinarily take place through the saint’s knowledge of various methods of instantaneous cure in which no hurt to the spiritual healer is involved.***
*** However, taking on the karma of disciples may result in a master choosing to experience physical ailments, as mentioned in the Free Will and Karma section. |
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Physical Materializations 
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Autobiography of a Yogi contains several stories of spiritual masters materializing objects, including their body-forms, in various locations for specific purposes. Below are brief excerpts on this topic;
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Seeing the Future 
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In the web posting entitled The Enigma of Time (July 2018) on the What's New page of this website, a model of time is presented that is based on the teachings of both mystics and modern scientists. A brief excerpt follows; "There is an Eternal Now that encompasses all time; the Present Moment, the "most probable" future and a past that is consistent with the Present Moment (see The Probabilistic Universe posting for an outline of the "most probable" future concept). The Eternal Now stretches across all events of time and provides a vast panoramic view from the beginning to the end of the universe. The Eternal Now can be visualized as a movie film strip made up of countless static, standalone movie frames in which the entire movie from start to finish can be seen all at once. For the vast majority, who currently only have access to their lower ego-minds, only a very small portion of the Eternal Now movie can be seen. The ego-consciousness plays the static frames, or snapshots, of this limited portion of the movie in succession to create the illusion of continuous motion in our lives and the universe ..... For those with access to the higher consciousness of their god-minds, the full movie, the complete panoramic view of the Eternal Now can be experienced all at once." And so it is that the spiritual masters mentioned in Autobiography of a Yogi had the ability to see the full movie film strip of individuals who crossed their paths. The film strip of the future represents the most probable future based on the most likely decisions and actions to be taken by individuals. Should an individual make a decision or take an action in the future that is not his most probable one, then the movie changes and presents a different future. We see how this unfolds in the story of the healing of Sasi above. By viewing the movie film strip of Sasi's life, Sri Yukteswar foresaw the upcoming health problem for the boy. Sri Yukteswar also saw that the film strip could be changed if Sasi made better life decisions going forward and he so advised Sasi. By ignoring Sri Yukteswar's advice, Sasi's health problem ensued. Autobiography of a Yogi has other similar stories. As well, some general seeing the future stories are also described in the book. Below are two examples; “Sir, what a sour fruit! I could never like strawberries!” My guru laughed. “Oh, you will like them — in America. At a dinner there, your hostess will serve them with sugar and cream. After she has mashed the berries with a fork, you will taste them and say: ‘What delicious strawberries!’ Then you will remember this day in Simla.” ..... [many years later] ..... When a dessert of strawberries was put on the table, my hostess picked up a fork and mashed my berries, adding cream and sugar. “The fruit is rather tart; I think you will like it fixed this way,” she remarked. I took a mouthful. “What delicious strawberries!” I exclaimed. At once my guru’s prediction in Simla emerged from the fathomless cave of memory. I was awestruck to realize that long ago his God-tuned mind had detected the program of karmic events wandering in the ether of futurity. |
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Mr. E. E. Dickinson
Swami Vivekananda
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The following story was told to Yogananda by a disciple of his, Mr E. E. Dickinson. "It is a long story, one I have kept hidden within me.” Mr. Dickinson looked at me shyly. “The beginning was dramatic: I was drowning. My older brother had playfully pushed me into a fifteen foot pool in a small town in Nebraska. I was only five years old then. As I was about to sink for the second time under the water, a dazzling multicolored light appeared, filling all space. In the midst was the figure of a man with tranquil eyes and a reassuring smile ..... “Twelve years later, a youth of seventeen, I visited Chicago with my mother. It was September 1893; the great World Parliament of Religions was in session. “‘Mother,’ I cried, ‘that was the man who appeared at the time I was drowning!’ “She and I hastened into the building; the man was seated on a lecture platform. We soon learned that he was Swami Vivekananda of India. After he had given a soul-stirring talk, I went forward to meet him. He smiled on me graciously, as though we were old friends. I was so young that I did not know how to give expression to my feelings, but in my heart I was hoping that he would offer to be my teacher. He read my thought. “‘No, my son, I am not your guru.’ Vivekananda gazed with his beautiful, piercing eyes deep into my own. ‘Your teacher will come later. He will give you a silver cup.’ After a little pause, he added, smiling, ‘He will pour out to you more blessings than you are now able to hold.’ "..... Years passed; no teacher appeared. One night in 1925 I prayed deeply that the Lord would send me my guru. A few hours later, I was awakened from sleep by soft strains of melody. A band of celestial beings, carrying flutes and other instruments, came before my view. After filling the air with glorious music, the angels slowly vanished. “The next evening I attended, for the first time, one of your lectures here in Los Angeles, and knew then that my prayer had been granted. "For eleven years now I have been your Kriya Yoga disciple,” Mr. Dickinson continued. “Sometimes I wondered about the silver cup; I had almost persuaded myself that the words of Vivekananda were only metaphorical. “But on Christmas night, as you handed me the little box by the tree, I saw, for the third time in my life, the same dazzling flash of light. In another minute I was gazing on my guru’s gift that Vivekananda had foreseen for me forty-three years earlier — a silver cup!” Publisher's Note: Mr. Dickinson met Swami Vivekananda in September of 1893 — the year in which Paramahansa Yogananda was born (January 5). Vivekananda was apparently aware that Yogananda was again in incarnation, and that he would go to America to teach the philosophy of India. An interesting detail that Mr. DIckinson did not mention to Yogananda but later recounted is that as he went up to the lecture platform in Chicago, Swami Vivekananda greeted him by saying, "Young man, I want you to stay out of the water!" |
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Science 
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Many of the remarkable scientific discoveries of the early twentieth century occurred prior to the writing of Autobiography of a Yogi in the 1940s. Yogananda explained the underlying spiritual nature of some of these scientific findings, as evidenced by the excerpts below. The physical world operates under one fundamental law of maya, the principle of relativity and duality. God, the Sole Life, is Absolute Unity; to appear as the separate and diverse manifestations of a creation He wears a false or unreal veil. That illusory dualistic veil is maya. Many great scientific discoveries of modern times have confirmed this simple pronouncement of the ancient rishis. Fundamental natural activities all betray their mayic origin. Electricity, for example, is a phenomenon of repulsion and attraction; its electrons and protons are electrical opposites. Another example: the atom or final particle of matter is, like the earth itself, a magnet with positive and negative poles. The entire phenomenal world is under the inexorable sway of polarity; no law of physics, chemistry, or any other science is ever found free from inherent opposite or contrasted principles. Physical science, then, cannot formulate laws outside of maya: the very fabric and structure of creation. Nature herself is maya; natural science must perforce deal with her ineluctable quiddity. In her own domain, she is eternal and inexhaustible; future scientists can do no more than probe one aspect after another of her varied infinitude. Science thus remains in a perpetual flux, unable to reach finality; fit indeed to discover the laws of an already existing and functioning cosmos but powerless to detect the Law Framer and Sole Operator. In the creation of the universe, God’s first command brought into being the structural essential: light. On the beams of this immaterial medium occur all divine manifestations. |
Albert Einstein
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Among the trillion mysteries of the cosmos, the most phenomenal is light. Unlike sound waves, whose transmission requires air or other material media, light waves pass freely through the vacuum of interstellar space. Even the hypothetical ether, held as the interplanetary medium of light in the undulatory theory, may be discarded on the Einsteinian grounds that the geometrical properties of space render unnecessary a theory of ether. Under either hypothesis, light remains the most subtle, the freest from material dependence, of any natural manifestation.
With a few equational strokes of his pen, Einstein banished from the universe every fixed reality except that of light. From science, then, if it must be so, let man learn the philosophic truth that there is no material universe; its warp and woof is maya, illusion. Under analysis all its mirages of reality dissolve. As steps in man’s awakening, the Lord inspires scientists to discover, at the right time and place, the secrets of His creation. Many modern discoveries help man to apprehend the cosmos as a varied expression of one power — light, guided by divine intelligence. The wonders of the motion picture, of radio, of television, of radar, of the photoelectric cell — the amazing “electric eye,” of atomic energies, are all based on the electromagnetic phenomenon of light. Motion pictures, with their lifelike images, illustrate many truths concerning creation. The Cosmic Director has written His own plays and has summoned the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of eternity He sends His beams of light through the films of successive ages, and pictures are thrown on the backdrop of space. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. Temporarily true to man’s five sense perceptions, the transitory scenes are cast on the screen of human consciousness by the infinite creative beam. A cinema audience may look up and see that all screen images are appearing through the instrumentality of one imageless beam of light. The colorful universal drama is similarly issuing from the single white light of a Cosmic Source. With inconceivable ingenuity God is staging “super-colossal” entertainment for His children, making them actors as well as audience in His planetary theater. After I had finished writing this chapter [Chapter 30, The Law of Miracles], I sat on my bed in the lotus posture. My room was dimly lit by two shaded lamps. Lifting my gaze, I noticed that the ceiling was dotted with small mustard-colored lights, scintillating and quivering with a radiumlike luster. Myriads of penciled rays, like sheets of rain, gathered into a transparent shaft and poured silently upon me. At once my physical body lost its grossness and became metamorphosed into astral texture. I felt a floating sensation as, barely touching the bed, the weightless body shifted slightly and alternately to left and right. I looked around the room; the furniture and walls were as usual, but the little mass of light had so multiplied that the ceiling was invisible. I was wonder-struck. “This is the cosmic motion-picture mechanism.” A Voice spoke as though from within the light. “Shedding its beam on the white screen of your bed sheets, it is producing the picture of your body. Behold, your form is nothing but light!” I gazed at my arms and moved them back and forth, yet could not feel their weight. Ecstatic joy overwhelmed me. The cosmic stem of light, blossoming as my body, seemed a divine reproduction of the light beams that stream out of the projection booth in a cinema house and make manifest the pictures on the screen. For a long time I experienced this motion picture of my body in the faintly lit theater of my own bedroom. A.D. 1700. That year ushered in Dwapara Yuga, a 2400-year period of electrical and atomic-energy developments: the age of telegraphy, radio, airplanes, and other space-annihilators. The 3600-year period of Treta Yuga will start in A.D. 4100; the age will be marked by common knowledge of telepathic communications and other time-annihilators. Dire pronouncements are occasionally published regarding an imminent “end of the world.” Planetary cycles, however, proceed according to an orderly divine plan. No earthly dissolution is in sight; many ascending and descending equinoctial cycles are yet in store for our planet in its present form. |
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WWI Visions 
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As a young man, Yogananda experienced two visions regarding World War I, as described in Autobiography of a Yogi. The stories of these visions have been covered previously in other parts of this website. They are repeated here, since they provide so much insight into this dream world that we occupy; One day I entered a cinema house to view a newsreel of the European battlefields. The First World War was still being waged in the West; the newsreel presented the carnage with such realism that I left the theater with a troubled heart. “Lord,” I prayed, “why dost Thou permit such suffering?” To my intense surprise, an instant answer came in the form of a vision of the actual European battlefields. The scenes, filled with the dead and dying, far surpassed in ferocity any representation of the newsreel. “Look intently!” A gentle Voice spoke to my inner consciousness. “You will see that these scenes now being enacted in France are nothing but a play of chiaroscuro. They are the cosmic motion picture, as real and as unreal as the theater newsreel you have just seen." |
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In 1915, shortly after I had entered the Swami Order, I witnessed a strange vision. Through it I came to understand the relativity of human consciousness, and clearly perceived the unity of the Eternal Light behind the painful dualities of maya. The vision descended on me as I sat one morning in my little attic room in Father’s Garpar Road home. For months the First World War had been raging in Europe; I had been reflecting sadly on the vast toll of death. As I closed my eyes in meditation, my consciousness was suddenly transferred to the body of a captain in command of a battleship. The thunder of guns split the air as shots were exchanged between shore batteries and the ship’s cannons. A huge shell hit the powder magazine and tore my ship asunder. I jumped into the water, together with the few sailors who had survived the explosion. Heart pounding, I reached the shore safely. But alas! a stray bullet ended its swift flight in my chest. I fell groaning to the ground. My whole body was paralyzed, yet I was aware of possessing it as one is conscious of a leg gone to sleep. “At last the mysterious footstep of Death has caught up with me,” I thought. With a final sigh, I was about to sink into unconsciousness when lo! I found myself seated in the lotus posture in my Garpar Road room. Hysterical tears poured forth as I joyfully stroked and pinched my regained possession: a body free from a bullet hole in the breast. I rocked to and fro, inhaling and exhaling to assure myself that I was alive. Amidst these self- congratulations, again I found my consciousness transferred to the captain’s dead body by the gory shore. Utter confusion of mind came upon me. "Well, I can stop my heart… why am I crying … why am I thinking that I am dead. I have practiced death, so I know what it is to stop the heart and go beyond. I am in that Eternal Joy." But still, the body dream was so real – I said this is death that has happened to me at last – the death that I thought never would happen to me ... Then I saw that Light and I said, "Cosmic Father, tell me, am I dead on the battlefield or am I sitting meditating in Calcutta?" He said, "Neither – you have been dreaming that you are sitting and meditating and you have been dreaming that you are dead. You are neither of these two dreams. You are this Light that created those dream delusions”…. and my delusion fled and I became that Great Light. ***
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In an audio recording of a talk he gave in 1949, entitled Beholding the One in All, Yogananda describes another conversation that he had with God on seeing this world as a cosmic motion picture show. Although not part of Autobiography of a Yogi, excerpts from this talk are provided below with the hope that they lead to a better understanding of the above; |
Vertical Divider
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I remember one day I was in the movies; movies have one fascination, because I see the whole world as movies. I was in the booth and I saw the operator was reading a novel and I saw this automatic machine was going on and the beam was causing on the screen a terrible horror picture.
And I said, “Lord, how is it. I have the whole show of the universe in front of me. You are this operator who is thinking of new plays and Your Nature is throwing this beam in the sky. And I see the hero and the villain are nothing but pictures. Nobody is killed.”
Many were being killed and shot in this picture but I saw from the booth it was the light that had created the villain and the light had created the hero.
And the Voice said, “….. and now you see that there is no villain, no hero, they are both pictures of my beam."
Realize that all this world which you see, of terrible wars and troubles is nothing but a picture show, cosmic motion picture show in the sky ..... Until you find that out, this world is a terrible show.
I said to God, as He was talking to me, “But Lord, look at the audience. They are howling and screeching downstairs at this horror show. I see it is nothing but pictures and light because I see the invisible beam. There are no murders in the beam, no heroes, no villains in the beam. But Lord, what about the audience – they don’t know it.”
Then the Voice said, “Tell them all to look at my beam within and they will realize that this show is given to entertain them, not to get mixed up with it.”
..... Do not get mixed up with this movie, these terrible movies of God. There is one purpose – to get to the beam…..then you will realize it was only a show.
..... everything is happening in your own thought.
..... Come into the beam of light and you will realize that all this world, which you see as terrible wars and trouble, is nothing but a picture show, a cosmic motion picture show in the sky.
You cannot be violated or harmed by stones, nor bombs, nor machine guns, nor atomic bombs. Remember the best shelter is in the silence of your soul. If you can develop that silence, nothing in the world can touch you – nothing in the world. And you can say, having which, no other gain becomes greater. Then you can stand unshaken amidst the crash of breaking worlds. Then you are not in any way touched by cold and heat, pleasure and pain. As soon as you are touched by these you are in the movie.
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Astral & Causal Worlds 
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Vedic cosmology identifies three worlds of existence: Bhuloka or the physical plane; Antarloka or the subtle or astral plane; and Sivaloka or Karanaloka or Brahmaloka, the causal plane, the world of the gods and highly evolved souls.
And so, within the game of creation, the metamorphosis of Spirit produces a triune production;
So as not to be too repetitive with the web posting mentioned above, only a sampling of Sri Yukteswar's quotes are provided below. “You have read in the scriptures that God encased the human soul successively in three bodies — the idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of man’s mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. On earth a man is equipped with his physical senses. An astral being works with his consciousness and feelings and a body made of lifetrons. A causal-bodied being remains in the blissful realm of ideas.” “As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet as a savior,” Sri Yukteswar explained. “It is called Hiranyaloka or ‘Illumined Astral Planet.’ There I am aiding advanced beings to rid themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from astral rebirths." “The ordinary astral universe — not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka — is peopled with millions of astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones can travel freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones." “The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial blemishes — weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes — are absent. Unlike the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-colored lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers." “The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God. Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed, more or less according to the development of new qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral being employs his unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear to him in other planes of existence." "Visitors to the astral world dwell there for a longer or shorter period in accordance with the weight of their physical karma, which draws them back to earth within a specified time." "The nearly-free beings who are encased only in the causal body see the whole universe as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they can materialize anything and everything in sheer thought." "Those who find themselves covered only by the delicate veil of the causal body can bring universes into manifestation even as the Creator. Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture, the soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of power." “The undeveloped man must undergo countless earthly and astral and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his three bodies. A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to earth as a prophet to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he may choose to reside in the astral cosmos. There a savior assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants’ karma and thus helps them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in the astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or a freed soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten their span in the causal body and thus attain the Absolute Freedom.” |
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Suffering |
This topic is addressed in more detail on the webpage Why is There Suffering? on this website. Below are a few excerpts from Autobiography of a Yogi on this subject.
"The creature finally turns to his Creator, if for no other reason than to ask in anguish: ‘Why, Lord, why?’ By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into the Infinite Presence, whose beauty alone should lure him." ~ unidentified sage If joy were ceaseless here in this world, would man ever desire another? Without suffering, he scarcely cares to recall that he has forsaken his eternal home. Pain is a prod to remembrance. Wherever the soul is encased in the physical body or in the astral body or in the causal body, there the eagles of desires — which prey on human sense weaknesses, or on astral and causal attachments — will also gather to keep the soul a prisoner. Man’s forgetfulness of his divine resources (the result of his misuse of free will) is the root cause of all other forms of suffering. |
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Free Will & Karma 
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Free will and karma are considered in more detail on the webpages Karma and Reincarnation and Destiny and Free Will on this website. Below are some excerpts from Autobiography of a Yogi on these topics. The equilibrating law of karma, as expounded in the Hindu scriptures, is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, each man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the molder of his destiny. An understanding of karma as the law of justice underlying life’s inequalities serves to free the human mind from resentment against God and man. “All human ills arise from some transgression of universal law.” ~ Sri Yukteswar "By a number of means — by prayer, by will power, by yoga meditation, by consultation with saints, by use of astrological bangles — the adverse effects of past wrongs can be minimized or nullified.” ~ Sri Yukteswar “A child is born on that day and at that hour when the celestial rays are in mathematical harmony with his individual karma. His horoscope is a challenging portrait, revealing his unalterable past and its probable future results. But the natal chart can be rightly interpreted only by men of intuitive wisdom: these are few. The message boldly blazoned across the heavens at the moment of birth is not meant to emphasize fate — the result of past good and evil — but to arouse man’s will to escape from his universal thralldom. What he has done, he can undo. None other than himself was the instigator of the causes of whatever effects are now prevalent in his life. He can overcome any limitation, because he created it by his own actions in the first place, and because he possesses spiritual resources that are not subject to planetary pressure.” ~ Sri Yukteswar “The deeper the Self-realization of a man, the more he influences the whole universe by his subtle spiritual vibrations, and the less he himself is affected by the phenomenal flux.” ~ Sri Yukteswar "As soon as knowledge of the Reality has sprung up, there can be no fruits of past actions to be experienced, owing to the unreality of the body, just as there can be no dream after waking.” ~ Shankara Right use of man’s God-given will [is a] force more formidable than are influences flowing from the heavens. In nirbikalpa samadhi the yogi dissolves the last vestiges of his material or earthly karma. Nevertheless, he may still have certain astral and causal karma to work out, and therefore takes astral and then causal reembodiments on high-vibrational spheres. [Man's] freedom is final and immediate, if he so wills; it depends not on outer but inner victories. The metaphysical method of physical transfer of disease is known to highly advanced yogis. A strong man may assist a weak one by helping the latter to carry a heavy load; a spiritual superman is able to minimize the physical and mental troubles of his disciples by assuming a part of their karmic burdens. ….. Though he may allow it [his body] to become diseased in order to relieve other persons, his mind, unpollutable, is not affected. He considers himself fortunate in being able to render such aid. To achieve final salvation in the Lord is indeed to find that the human body has completely fulfilled its purpose; a master then uses it in any way he deems fit. A guru’s work in the world is to alleviate the sorrows of mankind, whether through spiritual means or intellectual counsel or will power or physical transfer of disease. Escaping to the superconsciousness whenever he so desires, a master can become oblivious of physical illness; sometimes, to set an example for disciples, he chooses to bear bodily pain stoically. By putting on the ailments of others, a yogi can satisfy, for them, the karmic law of cause and effect. This law is mechanically or mathematically operative; its workings may be scientifically manipulated by men of divine wisdom. He [Jesus] thus took on himself the consequences of others’ karma, especially that of his disciples. In this manner they were highly purified and made fit to receive the omnipresent consciousness or Holy Ghost that later descended upon them. Sri Yukteswar was signifying that, even as in his earthly incarnation he had occasionally assumed the weight of disease to lighten his disciples’ karma, so in the astral world his mission as a savior enabled him to take on certain astral karma of dwellers on Hiranyaloka, and thus hasten their evolution into the higher causal world. The burden of the years has no ill effect on a great yogi’s full possession of supreme spiritual powers. He is able to renew his body at will; yet sometimes he does not care to retard the aging process, but allows his karma to expend itself on the physical plane, using his present body as a time-saving device to preclude the necessity of working out remaining fragments of karma in a new incarnation. |
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The Poem Samadhi
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Yogananda wrote many poems. Most of these are found in other books, e.g. Songs of the Soul and Whispers from Eternity. However, one poem appears in Autobiography of a Yogi.
Entitled Samadhi, it offers a glimpse into what is experienced by one in the state of higher consciousness; of god-consciousness; of cosmic consciousness. This state is often referred to, in the mystical language of the East, as samadhi. It is our original native state before we became entrapped in maya's hypnosis. It is the state to which we shall all ultimately return. Mystics say that it is impossible to fully portray the state of cosmic consciousness to those who have not experienced it. As was mentioned in the previous posting on this website, poetry offers the closest way to depict such mystical states. And so, in his later years, Yogananda wrote the poem, Samadhi, "endeavoring to convey a glimpse of its glory." As one of his disciples said, "Yogananda did something no one before him, to my knowledge, has ever done, in describing with extraordinary lucidity the state of cosmic consciousness. People don’t realize what a fantastic feat that was—going into that state and then being able to bring it down to a level where he could verbalize it." The poem is quite long (over 65 lines). Excerpts are provided below; Vanished the veils of light and shade, Lifted every vapor of sorrow, Sailed away all dawns of fleeting joy, Gone the dim sensory mirage. The storm of maya stilled By magic wand of intuition deep. Present, past, future, no more for me, But ever-present, all-flowing I, I, everywhere. Thoughts of all men, past, present, to come, Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by meditation, Blinding my tearful eyes, Burst into immortal flames of bliss, Consumed my tears, my frame, my all. Thou art I, I am Thou, Knowing, Knower, Known, as One! Tranquilled, unbroken thrill, eternally living, ever new peace! Enjoyable beyond imagination of expectancy, samadhi bliss! Not an unconscious state Or mental chloroform without willful return, Samadhi but extends my conscious realm Beyond limits of the mortal frame To farthest boundary of eternity Where I, the Cosmic Sea, Watch the little ego floating in me. The sparrow, each grain of sand, fall not without my sight. All space like an iceberg floats within my mental sea. Colossal Container, I, of all things made. Flowing seas change into vapors of nebulae! Aum blows upon vapors, opening wondrously their veils, Oceans stand revealed, shining electrons, Till, at last sound of the cosmic drum, Vanish the grosser lights into eternal rays Of all-pervading bliss. From joy I came, for joy I live, in sacred joy I melt. Ocean of mind, I drink all Creation’s waves. Four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light, Lift aright. I, in everything, enter the Great Myself. Eternity and I, one united ray. A tiny bubble of laughter, I Am become the Sea of Mirth Itself. |
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Various 
The Holy Land
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The following are some additional excerpts from Autobiography of a Yogi on a variety of subjects. “Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now.” ~ Sri Yukteswar Awakening of the occult cerebrospinal centers (chakras, astral lotuses) is the sacred goal of the yogi. Western exegetes have not understood that the New Testament chapter of Revelation contains the symbolic exposition of a yogic science, taught to John and other close disciples by Lord Jesus. John mentions (Rev. 1:20) the “mystery of the seven stars” and the “seven churches”; these symbols refer to the seven lotuses of light, described in yoga treatises as the seven “trap doors” in the cerebrospinal axis. Through these divinely planned “exits,” the yogi, by scientific meditation, escapes from the bodily prison and resumes his true identity as Spirit. The seventh center, the “thousand-petaled lotus” in the brain, is the throne of the Infinite Consciousness. No man lives who has not seen some of his prayers granted. “The Lord responds to all and works for all. Just as He sent rain at my plea, so He fulfills any sincere desire of the devotee. Seldom do men realize how often God heeds their prayers. He is not partial to a few, but listens to everyone who approaches Him trustfully. His children should ever have implicit faith in the loving-kindness of their Omnipresent Father.” ~ Sri Yukteswar “It is the Spirit of God that actively sustains every form and force in the universe; yet He is transcendental and aloof in the blissful uncreated void beyond the worlds of vibratory phenomena. Those who attain Self-realization on earth live a similar twofold existence. Conscientiously performing their work in the world, they are yet immersed in an inward beatitude." ~ Sri Yukteswar According to the mass karma that guides and regulates the destinies of animals, the deer’s life was over, and it was ready to progress to a higher form. But by my deep attachment, which I later realized was selfish, and by my fervent prayers, I had been able to hold it in the limitations of the animal form from which the soul was struggling for release. The soul of the deer made its plea in a dream because, without my loving permission, it either would not or could not go. As soon as I agreed, it departed. Spiritual sight, X-raylike, penetrates into all matter; the divine eye is center everywhere, circumference nowhere. I realized anew, standing there in the sunny courtyard, that when man ceases to be a prodigal child of God, engrossed in a physical world indeed dream, baseless as a bubble, he reinherits his eternal realms. If escapism be a need of man, cramped in his narrow personality, can any other escape compare with that of omnipresence? One’s values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture; and that not in it, but beyond it, lies his own reality. Great prophets like Christ and Krishna come to earth for a specific and spectacular purpose; they depart as soon as it is accomplished. Other avatars, like Babaji, undertake work that is concerned more with the slow evolutionary progress of man during the centuries than with any one outstanding event of history. Such masters always veil themselves from the gross public gaze and have the power to become invisible at will. For these reasons, and because they generally instruct their disciples to maintain silence about them, a number of towering spiritual figures remain world-unknown. I give in these pages on Babaji merely a hint of his life — only a few facts that he deems fitting and helpful to be publicly imparted. "Imagination is the door through which disease as well as healing enters. Disbelieve in the reality of sickness even when you are ill; an unrecognized visitor will flee!” ~ Sri Yukteswar “By ahimsa Patanjali meant removal of the desire to kill ..... Man may be compelled to exterminate harmful creatures. He is not under a similar compulsion …. to feel anger or animosity.” ~ Sri Yukteswar Because the very nature of God is Bliss, the man in attunement with Him experiences a native boundless joy. The dictum of Descartes: “I think, therefore I am,” is not philosophically valid. The reasoning faculties cannot shed light on man’s ultimate Being. The human mind, like the phenomenal world that it cognizes, is in perpetual flux and can yield no finalities. Intellectual satisfaction is not the highest goal. The seeker of God is the real lover of vidya, unchangeable truth. The plan of the divine lila or “sportive play” by which the phenomenal worlds have come into existence is one of reciprocity between creature and Creator. The sole gift that man can offer to God is love; it suffices to call forth His overwhelming generosity. We took ship over the sunny Mediterranean, disembarking at Palestine. Wandering day after day over the Holy Land, I was more than ever convinced of the value of pilgrimage. To the sensitive heart, the spirit of Christ is all-pervasive in Palestine. I walked reverently by his side at Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the holy Mount of Olives, and by the River Jordan and the Sea of Galilee. |
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Final Thoughts 
Paramahansa Yogananda
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Although the above excerpts represent a small portion of the overall content of Autobiography of a Yogi, it is hoped that readers will be able to attune to the spiritual vibrations that suffuse this extraordinary book.
One of the features of Paramahansa Yogananda's world mission was to leave behind much written material for future generations. This is a rare gift. Three of Yogananda's books can be considered monumental;
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The web posting The Story of Issa (December 2017) on the What's New page of this website looked at the life of Jesus and includes many quotations from Yogananda's The Second Coming of Christ.
Perhaps a future posting may provide excerpts from Yogananda's majestic translation and commentary on the Gita.
“As a bright light shining in the midst of darkness, so was Yogananda’s presence in this world.
Such a great soul comes on earth only rarely, when there is a real need among men”
~ C. Saraswati, the Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram
"A rare gem of inestimable value, the like of whom the world is yet to witness”
~ Swami Sivananda, Divine Life Society, 1952
"The divine purpose of creation, so far as man’s reason can grasp it, is expounded in the Vedas. The rishis taught that each human being has been created by God as a soul that will uniquely manifest some special attribute of the Infinite before resuming its Absolute Identity. All men, endowed thus with a facet of Divine Individuality, are equally dear to God." ~ Paramahansa Yogananda, from Autobiography of a Yogi
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Addendum — Autobiography of a Yogi (January 2021)
At the beginning of the last web posting, i.e. Autobiography of a Yogi (October 2020) on the What's New web page, mention is made of the highly-acclaimed book, The Life of Yogananda, by Philip Goldberg. This book was first published in 2018. A paperback edition was released in 2020 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of Yogananda's arrival in America. This addendum takes a brief look at The Life of Yogananda. The following sections are included; 1 - The Author 2 - Reviews of the Book 3 - Excerpts from the Book 4 - Final Thoughts |
The Author 
Philip Goldberg
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The following bio is a shortened version taken from the author's website; Philip Goldberg is the author or co-author of numerous books; a public speaker and workshop leader; a spiritual counselor, meditation teacher and ordained Interfaith Minister. A Los Angeles resident, he cohosts the Spirit Matters podcast, leads American Veda Tours and blogs regularly on Elephant Journal and Spirituality & Health. Like the beloved Dodgers of Philip’s youth, he was born and raised in Brooklyn and moved to Los Angeles. In between, Philip made stops in Manhattan, New England, Pennsylvania, San Francisco and Iowa. As a college student in the 1960’s, he shuttled uncertainly from one major to another. After giving up on academia and taking his first job (creating a halfway house for developmentally disadvantaged youth in Massachusetts), Philip pursued answers to the Big Questions that conventional religion, psychology, politics and philosophy had failed to provide. He was drawn to the pragmatic mysticism of the East, at first through public thinkers like Alan Watts and Aldous Huxley, and then directly from the texts of Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism — especially Vedanta and Yoga. This led inexorably to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. Philip spent much of the 1970’s teaching TM. |
In the meantime, Philip continued earnestly pursuing his lifelong quest for illumination. What he learned about that mysterious undertaking (from his own experience and conversations with fellow travelers) he wrote about in Roadsigns on the Spiritual Path: Living at the Heart of Paradox.
Sometime in the mid-80s, Phil realized that his path — integrating yogic ideas and practices into modern life in the USA — was rather typical of 60s-era seekers. He started researching the phenomenon and soon realized that its impact was bigger than he thought ..... in 2010 American Veda was published. The book earned good reviews, won awards and spawned related ventures.
Phil’s first book after American Veda was a comprehensive biography of the master teacher Paramahansa Yogananda. The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru was published in April, 2018. The paperback was released in 2020.
His latest book, published in August, 2020, is Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Calm, Clarity, and Courage. It arrived in the middle of the global coronavirus crisis. Phil would rather the need for his book had not been so acute, but he is humbled and honored that it has so much to offer in these, the craziest times in memory.
Sometime in the mid-80s, Phil realized that his path — integrating yogic ideas and practices into modern life in the USA — was rather typical of 60s-era seekers. He started researching the phenomenon and soon realized that its impact was bigger than he thought ..... in 2010 American Veda was published. The book earned good reviews, won awards and spawned related ventures.
Phil’s first book after American Veda was a comprehensive biography of the master teacher Paramahansa Yogananda. The Life of Yogananda: The Story of the Yogi Who Became the First Modern Guru was published in April, 2018. The paperback was released in 2020.
His latest book, published in August, 2020, is Spiritual Practice for Crazy Times: Powerful Tools to Cultivate Calm, Clarity, and Courage. It arrived in the middle of the global coronavirus crisis. Phil would rather the need for his book had not been so acute, but he is humbled and honored that it has so much to offer in these, the craziest times in memory.
Reviews of the Book |
Below are some reviews of The Life of Yogananda. There are a few common themes that arise from these reviews;
I have included quite a number of reviews. Together, they tell a wonderful story in their own right. |
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“Philip Goldberg sheds new light on the incredible story and illuminates the forces that made Yogananda a spiritual teacher and role model for the ages.” ~ Deepak Chopra, M.D., author many books including You Are the Universe and The Healing Self |
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"There is a new biography about Paramhansa Yogananda—the first serious biography that I know of for the great master ... Mr. Goldberg is most often generous in understanding what Master was trying to accomplish and the obstacles he had to overcome. He also makes it a point to stay with the facts based on his research ... The author brings to light many interesting facts about Master’s life that I had not known before ... This biography does not carry the shakti-power of Master’s Autobiography, nor do I think he got everything right. However, this biography is an important supplement to understanding the life and teachings of this great God-man."
~Reverend Yogacharya David R. Hickenbottom, author of My Spiritual India and disciple of Yogananda |
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“The Life of Yogananda is a profound and exquisitely written account of the life of one of the most renowned spiritual masters of our time, and is essential reading for anyone on a spiritual path… In a mysterious but unmistakable way, this book pulsates with the very presence, blessing, and transmission of Yogananda’s limitless wisdom and grace. With insight, clarity, and his own depth of consciousness, Philip Goldberg takes you on a virtual pilgrimage that will uplift you, inspire you, and illuminate your own journey of awakening.”
~ Dr. Barbara De Angelis, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Soul Shifts and The Choice for Love |
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"In this intensely researched book, Phil Goldberg describes the deep commitment and tireless effort of Paramahansa Yogananda to bring the spiritual teachings of India to the West. He reveals the many obstacles that Yogananda had to overcome in order to bring a light into the darkness.”
— Krishna Das, American vocalist known for his performances of Hindu devotional music known as kirtan. Author of Chants of a Lifetime |
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“With spiritual elegance and integrity, Goldberg provides an intimate portrait of the life of Yogananda, the trailblazing guru of North American yoga’s influential early years. Through engaging stories and unique perspectives, Paramahansaji shines through this biography as an enlightened master and creator of a great spiritual legacy.”
~ Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center and author of Spiritual Liberation |
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“Paramahansa Yogananda is probably the dominant figure behind the Western Yoga movement and its spiritual roots, the veritable father of Yoga in the Western world, living and teaching in America for more than three decades. Philip Goldberg presents a detailed and informative biography of the great master, reflecting his daunting challenges in bringing the profound Yoga teachings of self-realization to the United States of the early 20th century.”
~ Dr. David Frawley, D. Litt., director of American Institute of Vedic Studies and author of Yoga and Ayurveda |
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“This exceptionally written, wise, profound biography of one of the 20th century’s greatest spiritual pioneers is essential reading for all those who want to understand deeply the growing marriage between Eastern and Western spirituality. I am so moved by and grateful for Phil Goldberg’s humble mastery of tone and truth in this marvelous book.”
~ Andrew Harvey, British writer, religious scholar and teacher of mystic traditions. Author of over 30 books, including The Hope, Way of Passion: A Celebration of Rumi |
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“Philip Goldberg has masterfully assembled a colorful tapestry of stories detailing the intricacies and complexities that comprise the life of Paramahansa Yogananda. Goldberg’s work enables us to understand Yogananda as both mundanely human and extraordinary, while providing a detailed inside understanding of this remarkable human being and spiritual leader who has, and will continue to, inspire generations of spiritual seekers. This is a must-read for all who have read Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi and wish to better understand the story behind one of the world’s most remarkable human beings.”
~ Richard Miller, clinical psychologist, writer, researcher and scholar of yoga. Author of many books including Yoga Nidra and The Search for Oneness |
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“The Life of Yogananda is a tremendous gift: a chance to meet from the ‘outside’ the spiritual genius we met on the ‘inside’ in Autobiography of a Yogi. That book shared what was important to Yogananda; this biography shares why Yogananda is important to you. If you’ve read the Autobiography, you must read the biography. If you haven’t read either, you must read both.”
~ Rabbi Rami Shapiro, writer, teacher, and speaker on the subjects of liberal Judaism and contemporary spirituality. Author of many books including The Prophets and Holy Rascals |
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“Yogananda was more than just a popular guru who brought Indian spirituality to the United States. He was also a spiritual genius in the art of living, and his impact and legacy transcend the traditional divides of race, ethnicity, nationality, politics, and religion. In The Life of Yogananda, Philip Goldberg meticulously peels back the mystical layers in order to reveal the man behind the myth.’’
~ Varun Soni, Ph.D., Dean of Religious Life at the University of Southern California. Author of Natural Mystics |
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“When I was 15, Ram Dass gave me a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi and the gates of the universe opened. Yogananda’s account of his spiritual journey emboldened me to commence mine. Now, all these years later, Phil Goldberg has compiled the stories behind the stories! What a treasure.”
~ Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love and Caravan of No Despair |
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“This book is a gift for anyone interested in the yogic journey. Deeply informed by Phil Goldberg’s years of practice and study, it explores the life of one of the great spiritual masters of the 20th century. Yogananda’s work has had enormous influence on the development of yoga and spirituality in the West, and continues to influence us to this day. In this new biography, Phil offers us a full portrait of an extraordinary man.”
~ Sally Kempton, author of many books including Doorways to the Infinite, Meditation for the Love of It and Awakening Shakti |
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“The story of meditative ‘Eastern’ spirituality in the West doesn’t exist without Yogananda; yet the story of Yogananda, in anything like a full telling, hasn’t existed till now. Philip Goldberg, with the clear eyes of the diligent scholar and the open heart of the passionate, lifelong spiritual voyager, is the right person to tell it.”
~ Dean Sluyter, meditation teacher and author of many books including Fear Less, The Zen Commandments and Natural Meditation |
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“In making Awake, we discovered what a monumental task it is to represent a spiritual giant like Yogananda in all the many layers and facets of his life and personality. Philip Goldberg has done a terrific job of capturing the complexities of such a world teacher. His contribution will be a valued source for anyone interested in the life of this extraordinary individual.”
~ Paola di Florio, Lisa Leeman, and Peter Rader, filmmakers of Awake: The Life of Yogananda |
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“With a rare combination of solid research and spiritual inspiration, Phil Goldberg, author of the seminal book American Veda, now brings us The Life of Yogananda, a timely biography of the yoga master whose life has inspired millions. The book is a fresh look into the life of Paramahansa Yogananda as an organizational leader, spiritual master, and modern-day saint. Goldberg shines a light on Yogananda’s humanity and his divinity, making the book a compelling and inspiring read.”
~ Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian, spiritual director of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment. Author of Path of Wonder and Living for the Sake of the Soul |
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“The Life of Yogananda is a thrilling read and a definitive sourcebook for this great master’s life. Anyone interested in Yogananda will find this book a grand discovery for its little-known stories and details about his eventful life. With great care, integrity, devotion, and excellent research, Phil Goldberg has given us a revealing and accurate look into what has made Yogananda so well loved by millions of spiritual seekers.”
~ Joseph Bharat Cornell, author of many books including Deep Nature Play and AUM: The Melody of Love |
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“Phil Goldberg provides a much-needed and utterly fascinating link to the understanding of one of the greatest spiritual leaders of our time. He has done his homework and we are all the beneficiaries! The Life of Yogananda has been exhaustively researched and painstakingly presented by a man uniquely qualified with a deep understanding of east and west cultures, spiritual traditions, psychology, and historical relevance.”
~ Joseph Deitch, American business executive and philanthropist. Author of Elevate |
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"Nearly eight years ago Philip Goldberg’s American Veda made the case for how much America has absorbed from India ... Now Philip Goldberg is back with The Life of Yogananda ... Goldberg takes us day by day, week to month to year, through the details in the life of a saint, as many feel, whose work has transformed millions of lives ...While it’s clear how much Philip Goldberg cares about his subject, this book is no hagiography ... Goldberg’s prose is a marvel, going down as easily as ice cream on a hot day."
~ Paul Chaffee, publisher and editor of The Interfaith Observer |
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"A thoroughly readable biography of perhaps the first, and to date the most influential, integrator of Eastern and Western philosophical traditions, the remarkable Yogananda ... A brilliant account of what history will recognize as one of the most significant lives of the 20th century"
~ Ken Wilber, American philosopher and writer on transpersonal psychology. Author of many books including A Theory of Everything (2000) and The Religion of Tomorrow (2017) |
Excerpts from the Book |
The following are brief excerpts from the book The Life of Yogananda by Philip Goldberg; |
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Final Thoughts 
Note - The difficulties that great spiritual leaders often face reminded me of a quote attributed to the 16th century Spanish mystic, St. Teresa of Avila.
The following excerpt is taken from a translation of the book The Life of Saint Teresa; “Oh, my Lord!” she exclaimed, with her usual loving familiarity, “when wilt Thou cease from scattering obstacles in our path?” “Do not complain, daughter,” the Divine Master answered, “for it is ever thus that I treat My friends.” “Ah, Lord, it is also on that account that Thou hast so few!” |
To the many reviews above of the book The Life of Yogananda, I add my own; Like most new books that I encounter, I tend to do a first perusal by thumbing through the pages and reading random selections. This helps give an initial intuitive feel about the general content. Doing so with this book initially caused me to stop reading any further. The issue had nothing to do with the author but instead was all about me. As one who considers Yogananda to be one of the most illustrious spiritual giants to have graced this planet, I had a hard time reading about the "human" side of this great master and all the difficulties, betrayals and problems that he faced, particularly during his many years in America. Then I recalled the many difficulties encountered by other great spiritual leaders who had been given a world mission, e.g. Jesus and Buddha, and realized that this is all just part of the drama of this crazy dream that we call reality (see the note in the column on the left). I then went back to reading The Life of Yogananda and was deeply impressed. The backdrop of American society during the 1920s through 1940s that Goldberg describes is indispensable to the story of Yogananda's work in America. The impressive research that the author has done reveals much new information about the great master's work, particularly during the years in America. "No book can capture the true essence of a soul like Yogananda, but it can describe the footprints he left on the sands of time and space. My goal was to render an accurate, fact-based description of those exceptional footprints." ~ Philip Goldberg Philip Goldberg fully achieved his goal, and then some. As one of the book reviewers wrote, he "shines a light on Yogananda’s humanity and his divinity." And he has done so with a smooth flowing style so richly described by another reviewer, "Goldberg’s prose is a marvel, going down as easily as ice cream on a hot day." A loving undertaking and an insightful journey. A masterful achievement, Mr. Goldberg. |
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Who Are We? (April 2021)
Most of us are completely caught up in the drama of our daily lives. There always seems to be something to fully occupy our minds - family and other relationships, work, school, meals, household chores, finances, health, etc. We deal with a whole myriad of emotions, happiness, sadness, anxiety, depression, grief, loneliness, anger, fear, desire, hope, amusement and excitement, amongst others. Rarely do we stop, step off the treadmill and ask ourselves some fundamental questions, e.g. Who are we? Is this body-form that I call myself my true identity? If so, what happens when this body-form dies? Luckily for us, there are answers to these questions. Over the ages, a number of individuals have penetrated to the core of reality and have discovered just who we are. |
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This posting consists of the following sections: 1 - Introduction 2 - Quotations from Paramahansa Yogananda 3 - Quotations from Sri Yukteswar 4 - Quotations from Swami Abhayananda 5 - Quotations from Others 6 - How to Re-Discover Who We Are? 7 - Final Thoughts |
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Introduction 
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Each of us is a god. Each of us has a soul. The soul is our true self - immortal, boundless, formless awareness of indescribable bliss. So say those remarkable individuals who over the ages and in all lands have directly experienced the ultimate Truth - the mystics who have pierced the veil of illusion and discovered our true identity. In order for us to play the game in this universal playground, we are under the spell of cosmic hypnosis that makes us believe that these body-forms which we occupy are who we are. But it is not so. It is all an illusion. You may protest and say that it is obvious that your body-form is your true self. Well then, you must accept that you are a vibrating mass of light energy of almost no substance - 99.999999999% empty space. For that is what modern science says the body is. Things are not what they seem. Each of us is a god. Each of us has a soul. The soul is our true self. Each of the quotations below from modern day mystics contains the word "soul." In concert, the quotations tell the story of our true existence. |
Quotations from Paramahansa Yogananda 
Paramahansa Yogananda
20th century spiritual giant 
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On our true essence as gods (souls) Man is not a body confined to a point in space but is essentially the omnipresent soul. God created each man as a soul, dowered with individuality, hence essential to the universal structure. The world’s scriptures declare man to be not a corruptible body but a living soul. For man, truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature, his Self as soul. The rishis taught that each human being has been created by God as a soul that will uniquely manifest some special attribute of the Infinite before resuming its Absolute Identity. God, the Cosmic Dreamer, has separated His consciousness ..... with souls individualized from His own One Being endowed with the egoity to dream their personalized existences within the ..... drama of the Universal Dream. The Gita dialogue concerns itself with the process by which ..... man may reascend from the limited consciousness of himself as a mortal being to the immortal consciousness of his true Self, the soul, one with the infinite Spirit. Spirit projects the desire to create an individualized expression of Itself. The soul becomes manifest and projects the idea of the body in causal form. On the bodies that each god/soul occupies in its journey through creation God intended man to behold the human body and mind as delusive thought-forms that provide the soul with a means to experience the Lord’s cosmic drama. Human beings were created by God with a unique endowment possessed by no lower forms: awakened spiritual centers of life and consciousness in the spine and brain that gave them the ability to express fully the divine consciousness and powers of the soul. Man’s soul consciousness - the realization of his oneness with the eternal, all-blissful Spirit - has descended through various gradations into mortal body-consciousness. The very tenuous first covering of the soul, which individualizes it from Spirit, is one of pure consciousness; it is composed of God’s thoughts or ideas that cause the other two sheaths. Thus it is referred to as the causal body. The soul thinly clothed in the causal has vast realizations of power. [Man's] astral and physical body have evolved from a causal body of consciousness, which is the fine covering that gives individual existence and form to the soul. Every soul is garbed with its own unique individuality. When a soul changes its fleshly garment from one incarnation to the next, donning a newly inherited racial and familial appearance, it is no longer recognizable to those who look only to physical features. But ...... [there are] telltale indications in the eyes, facial features, and bodily characteristics that reveal certain similarities to the soul’s garb in a former existence ..... The eyes, especially, change very little, for they are the windows of the soul. At death of the physical body, a soul garbed in its astral form ascends to the astral heavenly level merited by the balance of that person’s good and evil actions on earth. ..... While persons of wicked deeds are attracted to astral nether regions and may experience something akin to periodic dreadful nightmares, the majority of souls awaken in a luminous land of incredible beauty, joy, and freedom, in an atmosphere of love and well-being. When the astrally garbed soul leaves the astral world, at the end of its astral life, it is attracted to parents and an environment on earth (or to similar inhabited planets in other island universes) which are suited to the working-out of that individual’s store of good and bad karma. The earth memories of astral beings gradually fade, but they meet and recognize many of their loved ones lost to them on earth—so many mothers, fathers, children, friends, spouses, of so many incarnations; it becomes difficult to isolate special feelings for one over another. The soul rejoices to embrace them all in its consciousness of universal love. In the incarnate state it is the astral body that is the real body, the purveyor of life, sensory powers, consciousness—more tangible than the gross atomic form, and powerfully invulnerable to sickness, diseases, and troubles. On man's struggles with ego/body-consciousness There is constant conflict between the forces of the materialistic senses (engaging the consciousness in the pursuit of external pleasure) and the pure discriminative power that tries to return man’s consciousness to its native state of soul-realization. Man stakes all his bodily kingdom, all his power of soul bliss, in gambling with the deceitful, matter-inclined senses, only to be overpowered by them—i.e., the pure discriminative intelligence of the soul is ousted from its reign over the bodily kingdom and sent into exile. The soul, as the ego, ascribes to itself all the limitations and circumscriptions of the body. Once so identified, the soul can no longer express its omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. It imagines itself to be limited—just as a rich prince, wandering in a state of amnesia in the slums, might imagine himself to be a pauper. The soul, while dwelling within the body, becomes identified with its physical and mental experiences and forgets its divine nature; it masquerades instead as the body-circumscribed ego, the pseudosoul. Gratifying the body and ego with material experiences and possessions can never compensate man for his lost infinite soul-happiness. Man has falsely identified himself with the pseudo-soul or ego. When he transfers his sense of identity to his true being, the immortal Soul, he discovers that all his pain is unreal. Souls, descending into form to experience the Lord’s cosmic drama of maya-creation ..... are diminished into limited egos entangled in mortal relationships, circumscriptions, and national and social identities. Blind attachments lead to selfishness, quarrelsomeness, delusion of permanent possession, inharmony, worries; and on a national scale produce commercial greed, desire of wresting the possessions of others, and terrible wars. After accumulating a bewildering collage of adventurous and often painful incarnations, the beleaguered soul cries, “Enough!” and a serious search for emancipation begins. God intended His human children to live on earth with an awakened perception ..... and thus to enjoy His dream-drama as a cosmic entertainment. Alone among living creatures, the human body was equipped, as a special creation of God, with the instruments and capacities necessary to express fully the soul’s divine potentials. But ..... man ignores his higher endowments and remains attached to the limited fleshly form and its mortality. The ordinary man ..... cognizes himself as so many pounds of flesh rather than as pure consciousness indwelling as the soul. Through the small outer windows of the five senses, body-bound souls perceive nothing of the wonders beyond limited matter. On the process of man's re-attainment of his god/soul-consciousness When the soul is concentrated within rather than manifesting outwardly, it is one with the absolute Spirit, ensconced on the throne of ever new bliss within the thousand-petaled lotus, in a region beyond circumscription by the three bodies In the first state of samadhi (sabikalpa), the devotee shuts off all sensory testimony of the outer world. He is rewarded then by sounds and scenes of inner realms fairer than the pristine Eden. The advanced yogi may rejoice in this blissful achievement of samadhi [union of soul and Spirit in cosmic consciousness] many times, yet find that he cannot maintain this union permanently. He is drawn down again into ego and body consciousness by his karma—effects of past actions—and by remnants of desires and attachments. But through each triumphant contact with Spirit, the soul consciousness becomes strengthened and more firmly in control of the bodily kingdom. At last, karma is overcome, the lower nature of desires and attachments is subdued, and ego is slain—the yogi attains kaivalya, liberation: permanent union with God. The liberated yogi may then discard his three bodily encasements and remain a free soul in the ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new bliss of Omnipresent Spirit. Or if he chooses to descend again from his samadhi into the consciousness and activities of his body, he does so in the sublime state of nirvikalpa samadhi. In this highest state of externalized soul consciousness, he remains in his pure soul nature, untouched and unchanged, with no loss of God-perception. By meditation, man’s consciousness is transferred from the body to the soul, and through the soul’s power of intuition he experiences himself not as a mortal body, but as immortal indwelling consciousness, one with the noumenal Divine Essence. On the powers and bliss of our true selves as gods (souls) As souls, individualized sparks of unconditioned Spirit, children of God are immortal, free from any dependence on materiality. Within the soul is a source of infinite realization. With the all-seeing intuitive perception of his soul he could see God in any aspect, materialized out of the Vibratory Light, or in divine oneness embrace his Father as the Formless Absolute. God created a wondrous human form to be charged by cosmic energy, and to live in a free, unconditioned divine state ..... God made man immortal, to reign on earth as an immortal ..... he was to return to the ..... Eternal Blessedness by consciously dematerializing his physical form. To remain in the world of illusion while experiencing the indescribable bliss of the Sole Unmanifested Reality makes one’s hold on the body tenuous indeed ..... So even in the highest states of divine oneness, the outer nature of the God-united retains some degree of the individualized consciousness of egoity and delusion, just to keep body and soul together. Through awakening the “sixth sense,” intuition, ..... the soul’s consciousness, instead of being tied to the material plane, is free to roam in the boundless, eternally joyous empire of Spirit. |
Quotations from 
Sri Yukteswar
Guru of Paramahansa Yogananda 
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On our true essence as gods (souls) Man is a soul, and has a body. On the bodies that each god/soul occupies in its journey through creation God encased the human soul successively in three bodies — the idea, or causal, body; the subtle astral body, seat of man’s mental and emotional natures; and the gross physical body. Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied. A soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence of its body or bodies. When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings — astral and causal — still remain to prevent the soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Amplitude. Souls in the causal world recognize one another as individualized points of joyous Spirit. On the process of man's re-attainment of his god/soul-consciousness Completing there the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the confined soul thrusts out the last of the three corks of ignorance and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles with the Eternal. When a soul finally gets out of the three jars of bodily delusions, it becomes one with the Infinite without any loss of individuality. On the powers and bliss of our true selves as gods (souls) The soul expanded into Spirit remains ..... intoxicated with its ecstasy of joy in God’s dream of cosmic creation. |
Quotations from Swami Abhayananda 
Swami Abhayananda
Modern day mystic 
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On our true essence as gods (souls) Each of us is an individual soul that is distinct and unique. Here, for example, is the Muslim mystic-philosopher, Ibn Arabi (1165-1240): When the mystery of the oneness of the soul and the Divine is revealed to you, you will understand that you are no other than God. The seers who authored the Upanishads had known in themselves the great Unity and had declared for all to come thereafter that the soul of man and the Lord of all creation were one and the same. On the bodies that each god/soul occupies in its journey through creation Individualized souls, we must not forget, are manifestations of the Divine. Nonetheless, while inhabiting or being associated with bodies, they pass through various experiences which may serve to forge a strong bond with the material world. However, over time, the indwelling Divinity instructs those ‘individualized souls’ by those very experiences in the errors of their ways and returns them by various and sundry ways to the awareness of their true nature. On man's struggles with ego/body-consciousness The soul’s excursion into the material realm is frought with difficulties and dangers and may bring with it many painful and binding impressions. These must be resolved and released in order for the soul to regain its blissful freedom. And so. the process of soul-evolution may be prolonged and stretched over a number of soul-incarnations. The soul is identical with the transcendent Source of all, and is supremely, absolutely, free. In its transcendent aspect, it is always free, immutable and unaffected by the bodily conditions or worldly circumstances of individuals. However, when the soul identifies with the conditional, it is bound; it is subject to being carried along in the floodwaters of the archetypal forces of Nature. The habits of past karmic tendencies are very powerful in their influence; and they can lead us where we don’t necessarily want to go. On the process of man's re-attainment of his god/soul-consciousness Soul is able to search within itself and ascend in consciousness all the way to God. If it were not an expression of the Divine, it could not do that. When a soul rises to the vision of God, it is no longer soul, but is merged in and made one with God, so that it is ..... God Himself who is seeing Himself. |
Quotations from Others 
Swami Vivekananda
19th century mystic 
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On our true essence as gods (souls) "We are in reality that Infinite Being, and our personalities represent so many channels through which this Infinite Reality is manifesting Itself." ~ Vivekananda "The Atman within [the individualized soul] is your real nature." ~ Vivekananda "One should understand that the Atman is ..... distinct from the body, senses, mind and intellect ..... and is the witness of their functions." ~ Shankara "The mystic and the physicist arrive at the same conclusion; one starting from the inner realm, the other from the outer world. The harmony between their views confirms the ancient Indian wisdom that Brahman , the ultimate reality without, is identical to Atman , the reality within." ~ Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics "You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body." ~ C. S. Lewis I am not this hair, I am not this skin. I am the soul that lives within. ~ Rumi On the bodies that each god/soul occupies in its journey through creation "The soul is immortal. ..... Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals... and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise."~ Ralph Waldo Emerson On the process of man's re-attainment of his god/soul-consciousness The power of meditation separates ourselves from the body, and then the soul knows itself as it is – the unborn, the deathless, and birthless being." ~ Vivekananda On the powers and bliss of our true selves as gods (souls) Look within. Within you is the hidden God. Within you is the immortal soul. Within you is the inexhaustible spiritual treasure. Within you is the ocean of bliss. Look within for the happiness which you have sought in vain. ~ Sivananda "The soul advances and ..... becomes one with the Divine Mind - but not to its own destruction: the two are one, and [yet] two." ~ Plotinus "The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience." ~ Emily Dickinson |
How to Re-Discover Who We Are? 
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"Sooner or later, after a few or many painful incarnations, the soul in every human being will cry out to remind him that his home is not here, and he will begin in earnest to retrace his steps to his rightful heavenly kingdom." ~ P. Yogananda The cosmic hypnosis of maya keeps us enthralled in this cosmic playground for many, many, many lifetimes - alternating between physical and astral body-forms. As noted above, at some point the search begins to find our true identity as gods, i.e. to re-discover our native souls - immortal, boundless, formless consciousness of indescribable bliss. "At the end of each earthly sojourn the soul emerges from its fleshly prison, garbed in its heavenly causal and astral coverings of consciousness and life energy—an “angelic” contrast to the corruptible physical form. Astral freedom is temporary for those whose karma compels eventual return to physical incarnation; but those who transcend the self-woven cause-effect nets of earthbound desire progress by continuing spiritual effort through ever higher spheres of the astral heaven and the even finer causal heaven, eventually earning enrollment in the Heavenly Host of perfected beings. Thus does each soul rise to its source in Spirit." ~ P. Yogananda We enter the virtual reality game of creation by donning body-forms and then become entranced with the body-forms and forget that we are gods. In order to re-discover our true selves as gods/souls, we have to put the virtual creation game on pause, on hold. Once the game is paused, we remember our true selves outside the game - i.e. we remember our true soul nature as gods. How do we put the game on pause? We must temporarily stop the action by making the body perfectly still and by silencing the constant chatter of thoughts. When one tries to do that, one discovers just how restless the body-form is and just how relentless the stream of thoughts are. That is why the mystics of all ages and all lands have suggested that one should practice meditation. Meditation is the key to putting the creation game on pause. Much more on this topic can be found in the Journey of Awakening section of this website, in particular The Path to Awakening page. "From the heavenly causal and astral spheres every physically incarnate soul has descended, and every soul can reascend by retreating to the “wilderness” of interior silence and practicing the scientific method of lifting up the life force and consciousness from body identification to union with God." ~ P. Yogananda "These souls, enamored of the material world, become disoriented, bound by their own attachment to matter; but by a deliberate reversal of its intention, an individualized soul is able to look within, examine itself, and ‘see’ its Origin, its higher Self, thereby regaining awareness of its true, eternal identity." ~ Swami Abhayananda |
Final Thoughts 
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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"Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool" The essence of who we are is magnificently captured by the 12 word phrase above, written by the 19th century New England Transcendentalist poet and spiritual adept, Ralph Waldo Emerson. In order to play the game of creation, Spirit creates souls/gods - individualized extensions of Itself. To make the game interesting, the gods are given a split consciousness. Part of the consciousness of each of the gods knows that its real self is the soul - that it is a god, that it is Spirit Itself. Part of the consciousness of each of the gods thinks that it is the body-form. However, the intent is that each of the gods be able to easily switch between its pretend consciousness as a body and its true awareness as a god. Unfortunately, the virtual creation game is so enthralling that the gods forget their true selves and are left with the sole awareness of the body-form. Our mission is to recover that lost memory of our true selves; to recover our Paradise Lost. The mystics, who have re-discovered the blissful awareness of their true selves as gods, come to tell us, over and over again, that we are not the body, we are the soul. We are gods. 
"It is not the material form that constitutes our true and eternal identity, but it is, rather, our soul that is our true being, our eternal source of life and joy. ..... Our material form is merely a transient appearance that serves as our terrestrial vehicle." ~ Swami Abhayananda "You are the soul, free and eternal." ~ Vivekananda |
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