Introduction
By The Reluctant Messenger Preface:
By W. Y. Evans-Wentz
Chapter 01:
My Parents and Early Life
Chapter 02:
My Mother's Death and the Mystic Amulet
Chapter 03:
The Saint With Two Bodies
Chapter 04:
My Interrupted Flight Toward the Himalayas
Chapter 05:
A "Perfume Saint" Displays His Wonders
Chapter 06:
The Tiger Swami
Chapter 07:
The Levitating Saint
Chapter 08:
India's Great Scientist, J.C. Bose
Chapter 09:
The Blissful Devotee and His Cosmic Romance
Chapter 10:
I Meet My Master, Sri Yukteswar
Chapter 11:
Two Penniless Boys in Brindaban
Chapter 12:
Years in My Master's Hermitage
Chapter 13:
The Sleepless Saint
Chapter 14:
An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness
Chapter 15:
The Cauliflower Robbery
Chapter 16:
Outwitting the Stars
Chapter 17:
Sasi and the Three Sapphires
Chapter 18:
A Mohammedan Wonder-Worker
Chapter 19:
My Master, in Calcutta, Appears in Serampore
Chapter 20:
We Do Not Visit Kashmir
Chapter 21:
We Visit Kashmir
Chapter 22:
The Heart of a Stone Image
Chapter 23:
I Receive My University Degree
Chapter 24:
I Become a Monk of the Swami Order
Chapter 25:
Brother Ananta and Sister Nalini
Chapter 26:
The Science of Kriya Yoga
Chapter 27:
Founding a Yoga School in Ranchi
Chapter 28:
Kashi, Reborn and Rediscovered
Chapter 29:
Rabindranath Tagore and I Compare Schools
Chapter 30:
The Law of Miracles
Chapter 31:
An Interview with the Sacred Mother
Chapter 32:
Rama is Raised From the Dead
Chapter 33:
Babaji, the Yogi-Christ of Modern India
Chapter 34:
Materializing a Palace in the Himalaya
Chapter 35:
The Christlike Life of Lahiri Mahasaya
Chapter 36:
Babaji's Interest in the West
Chapter 37:
I Go to America
Chapter 38:
Luther Burbank - A Saint Amidst the Roses
Chapter 39:
Therese Neumann, the Catholic Stigmatist
Chapter 40:
I Return to India
Chapter 41:
An Idyl in South India
Chapter 42:
Last Days With My Guru
Chapter 43:
The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar
Chapter 44:
With Mahatma Gandhi in Wardha
Chapter 45:
The Bengali "Joy-Permeated" Mother
Chapter 46:
The Woman Yogi Who Never Eats
Chapter 47:
I Return to the West
Chapter 48:
At Encinitas in California
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Autobiography of a Yogi
by Paramahansa Yogananda
Original 1946 EditionPREFACE
By W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ, M.A., D.Litt., D. Sc.
Jesus College, Oxford; Author of
The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa,
Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, etc.
The value of Yogananda's Autobiography is greatly enhanced by the fact that it is one of the few books in English about the wise men of India which has been written, not by a journalist or foreigner, but by one of their own race and training—in short, a book about yogis by a yogi. As an eyewitness recountal of the extraordinary lives and powers of modern Hindu saints, the book has importance both timely and timeless. To its illustrious author, whom I have had the pleasure of knowing both in India and America, may every reader render due appreciation and gratitude. His unusual life-document is certainly one of the most revealing of the depths of the Hindu mind and heart, and of the spiritual wealth of India, ever to be published in the West.
It has been my privilege to have met one of the sages whose life-history is herein narrated—Sri Yukteswar Giri. A likeness of the venerable saint appeared as part of the frontispiece of my Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines.1 It was at Puri, in Orissa, on the Bay of Bengal, that I encountered Sri Yukteswar. He was then the head of a quiet ashrama near the seashore there, and was chiefly occupied in the spiritual training of a group of youthful disciples. He expressed keen interest in the welfare of the people of the United States and of all the Americas, and of England, too, and questioned me concerning the distant activities, particularly those in California, of his chief disciple, Paramhansa Yogananda, whom he dearly loved, and whom he had sent, in 1920, as his emissary to the West.
Sri Yukteswar was of gentle mien and voice, of pleasing presence, and worthy of the veneration which his followers spontaneously accorded to him. Every person who knew him, whether of his own community or not, held him in the highest esteem. I vividly recall his tall, straight, ascetic figure, garbed in the saffron-colored garb of one who has renounced worldly quests, as he stood at the entrance of the hermitage to give me welcome. His hair was long and somewhat curly, and his face bearded. His body was muscularly firm, but slender and well-formed, and his step energetic. He had chosen as his place of earthly abode the holy city of Puri, whither multitudes of pious Hindus, representative of every province of India, come daily on pilgrimage to the famed Temple of Jagannath, "Lord of the World." It was at Puri that Sri Yukteswar closed his mortal eyes, in 1936, to the scenes of this transitory state of being and passed on, knowing that his incarnation had been carried to a triumphant completion.
I am glad, indeed, to be able to record this testimony to the high character and holiness of Sri Yukteswar. Content to remain afar from the multitude, he gave himself unreservedly and in tranquillity to that ideal life which Paramhansa Yogananda, his disciple, has now described for the ages.
W. Y. EVANS-WENTZ
Author's Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to Miss L. V. Pratt for her long editorial labors over the manuscript of this book. My thanks are due also to Miss Ruth Zahn for preparation of the index, to Mr. C. Richard Wright for permission to use extracts from his Indian travel diary, and to Dr. W. Y. Evans-Wentz for suggestions and encouragement.
PARAMHANSA YOGANANDA
October 28, 1945
Encinitas, California
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Autobiography of a Yogi (Original 1946 version)
Autobiography of a Yogi (Current 1994 Edition)
Autobiography of a Yogi (Current 1994 Edition)
Autobiography of a Yogi (Original 1946 version)