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Autobiography of a Yogi is the memoir of Paramahansa Yogananda, one of the world’s most famous yoga practitioners and teachers. It provides practical lessons about yoga, spirituality, and how to live a good life, interspersed with highlights and anecdotes from the author’s life. Yogananda is best known for bringing kriya yoga to the US, thereby creating a spiritual connection between the West and his homeland of India. He also founded the Self-Realization Fellowship, a spiritual organization that now has over 500 locations globally. Between the schools he founded and the books he wrote, Yogananda ensured that his teachings reached millions of people all over the world.

This guide will begin with foundational information about Hinduism and yoga. Then, we’ll tell Yogananda’s life story. Our commentary will go into greater detail about yoga’s central beliefs and practices. We’ll also compare some of Yogananda’s teachings to those found in other belief systems. Finally, we’ll examine some of Yogananda’s teachings about yoga’s benefits through a scientific lens.

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What Is Kriya Yoga?

Kriya yoga is a particular style of yoga that heavily emphasizes pranayama: breathing exercises and controlling your inner life energy (prana). All forms of yoga include pranayama, but not to the same extent as kriya.

Yogananda explains that these breathing exercises remove toxins from the blood, which allows life energy to flow more freely. You might picture pranayama as removing trash (toxins) that’s blocking the flow of a river (blood and life energy).

(Shortform note: While some claims about yoga’s benefits lack scientific backing, evidence suggests that deep breathing and meditation exercises boost the immune system, making you more resistant to disease and what Yogananda terms toxins. One scientific explanation for this is that yoga reduces stress, and an improved immune response is a side effect of that; it’s also possible that breathing exercises involve the placebo effect, a phenomenon where people feel healthier simply by believing that they’re healthy.)

Once your life energy is flowing freely, Yogananda continues, you must then focus it around your central nervous system (spine and brain), which boosts your natural ability to perceive and understand God. In other words, these exercises are designed to help you reach enlightenment more quickly by strengthening your mind and body.

Understanding Chakras

Although Yogananda doesn’t use the term chakra in this book, it’s likely that’s what he’s referring to when he describes concentrating your life energy around your brain and spine.

Yoga teaches that there are seven focal points for energy, called chakras, located in the central nervous system. Each of these chakras influences your physical and spiritual health. When all seven are working properly, you’re strong, calm, and spiritually aware—however, the chakras can become blocked or imbalanced, which causes various problems in your body and interferes with your attempts to reach enlightenment. Various exercises and meditations, such as those Yogananda describes, are believed to correct problems in the chakras.

A scene from the Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender provides an excellent summary of all seven chakras: where they’re located, what they do, and how they become blocked or imbalanced. However, while watching it, note that mastering meditation and energy control in real life takes years—not minutes.

Yogananda’s Birth and Early Childhood

Now that we’ve explored the basics of Hinduism and yoga, let’s discuss Yogananda’s life story.

Yogananda notes that his birth was prophesied by a Bengali guru named Lahiri Mahasaya. The prophecy said that Yogananda would become a great yogi and undertake an important spiritual mission, though it didn’t specify what that mission would be.

(Shortform note: Much of what we know about Mahasaya today comes directly from Autobiography of a Yogi. However, some quotes attributed to the guru provide some more insight into his personality and beliefs. Mahasaya said that seeking God is the only worthwhile pursuit in life—but that the trappings and ceremonies of organized religion are unnecessary. He believed that meditation is all you need to worship God and that meditating on any problem will reveal the solution to it through that connection with God.)

The man who would become Paramahansa Yogananda was originally named Mukunda Lal Ghosh. He was born on January 5, 1893, in the city of Gorakhpur, India. (Shortform note: Although the author was known as Mukunda in childhood, this guide will refer to him as Yogananda throughout to avoid confusion.)

Even as a young child, Yogananda had frequent spiritual experiences, such as prophetic dreams and visions. He also demonstrated supernatural abilities, such as causing other children’s kites to fly over to him simply by exerting his will upon them. Furthermore, Yogananda remembered his previous lives.

Siddhis: Extraordinary Abilities

As previously noted, abilities like those Yogananda describes here are called siddhis. The Sanskrit word siddhi means “success” or “perfection,” so called because they’re feats of understanding and controlling your body, mind, and the world around you.

To give a few examples of siddhis, controlling your body can allow you to levitate or exhibit superhuman strength. Controlling your mind can enable you to remember your past lives (as Yogananda did) or foretell the future (in fact, prophecy will continue to play a large role in Yogananda’s life story). Controlling the world around you can allow you to manipulate air currents, move things without touching them (as Yogananda did with the kites), or cause objects to appear and disappear as if by magic.

Though these powers seem supernatural, yogis claim that anyone can learn siddhis with enough training. Being born with such abilities—as Yogananda says he was—is rare, but not unheard of.

Running Away From Home

Yogananda, eager to begin his spiritual training, frequently ran away from home. Each time, he planned to either look for a guru or to make a pilgrimage to the sacred Himalayan mountains.

(Shortform note: In Hinduism and Indian culture, Guru means someone who’s both a teacher and a spiritual guide in Hinduism. This word has entered the English language with a definition more like simply “teacher” or “expert,” but the religious connotations are crucial to its original meaning.)

However, no matter how many times he tried, he never made it far from home. Yogananda explains that he failed because it wasn’t the right time for him—his destined teacher hadn’t appeared yet, so God and fate blocked him from beginning his spiritual journey.

(Shortform note: Destiny is a complex subject in Hinduism. Hindu scriptures teach that every living thing has a destiny (called dharma) that’s determined by karma and set by God. However, people also have free will, which can be misguided by the illusions of maya—they trick themselves into believing that they’re in control of their own destiny and thereby trap themselves in a delusion. You could think of your destiny as what you’re supposed to do, but fulfilling your destiny requires you to understand and submit to God’s will.)

The Prophecy and the Amulet

In addition to foretelling Yogananda’s birth, Mahasaya gave a second prophecy: Yogananda’s mother would receive an amulet, which she would pass to Yogananda after her death. Yogananda would then carry the amulet—and when the amulet disappeared, it would be time for Yogananda to meet his guru.

The prophecy came true. Yogananda’s mother left the amulet to him when she died. It was one of Yogananda’s most precious possessions, and he kept it in a locked box, except for brief times when he wanted to look at it.

(Shortform note: Psychic powers and prophetic abilities are frequently attributed to yoga masters such as Lahiri Mahasaya. However, yogis don’t claim such abilities as their own—rather, Mahasaya would likely say that he was simply a conduit for the knowledge and will of God, and that was how he knew the future.)

However, one day, Yogananda opened the box to find that the amulet was gone. That same day, seemingly by chance, he met Sri Yukteswar Giri—a swami who would become his guru.

(Shortform note: Swami is a title of respect for a senior member of a Hindu monastic order. This word can also mean “religious teacher,” similar to guru. Sri is also an Indian title of respect, used when speaking about or to an important person. Unlike guru and swami, sri doesn’t necessarily suggest a religious leader—although in this case, Sri Yukteswar happened to also be a spiritual guide.)

Yogananda’s Education

To fulfill his destiny, Yogananda needed to learn a great deal about both the spiritual and the physical world. In this section, we’ll discuss his studies of kriya yoga with Sri Yukteswar, as well as the education he received at Calcutta University.

Sri Yukteswar: The Prophesied Teacher

Yogananda—still called Mukunda at the time—says that he and Yukteswar felt a spiritual connection before they even spoke to each other. Both of them knew immediately that they were destined to become student and teacher.

Yogananda says he lived and studied at Yukteswar’s ashram (religious community) from 1910 to 1920. Despite being his teacher, Yukteswar rarely told Yogananda what to do or directly answered his questions—instead, he offered gentle guidance and helped Yogananda find the answers himself.

(Shortform note: By guiding his pupils rather than simply telling them the answers, Sri Yukteswar was engaging them in active learning. As the name suggests, active learning involves students taking active roles in their education—for example, by practicing skills, discussing complex topics, and looking for answers to questions themselves. Active learning is generally believed to produce better results than rote memorization in terms of student engagement, information retention, and true understanding of the subject matter (as opposed to simply parroting answers without knowing what they mean).)

In addition to offering spiritual training, Yukteswar taught the value of living and participating in daily life. Yukteswar had great respect for people with practical skills, from handymen to artisans.

Yogananda explains that this appreciation for the mundane was unusual for a spiritual leader like Yukteswar. However, it provided his students with a more well-rounded education and a better understanding of the world. This is important because understanding the physical world is a key step toward understanding that the physical isn’t real—a core tenet of Hinduism—and thereby reaching enlightenment.

(Shortform note: Again, the Bhagavad Gita can provide some insight into Yogananda’s writing; in this case, how earthly pursuits like work or art help you to connect with God and reach enlightenment. Recall our earlier discussion about destiny (dharma)—fulfilling your dharma is synonymous with doing God’s will, and therefore it’s crucial to spiritual growth. For example, Arjuna is a warrior, so his dharma is to fight. For artisans, fulfilling their dharma would mean working diligently to create the best products they can.)

After Yogananda completed his training, Yukteswar initiated him into the Swami Order. Ordinarily, the initiate’s guru chooses a new name for him to reflect his spiritual journey or some exceptional quality he displays. However, with his characteristic emphasis on gentle guidance, Yukteswar simply told Yogananda to choose his own name. This was when he took the name Yogananda, meaning “bliss through union with God.”

(Shortform note: Yogananda doesn't give many details about the Swami Order in this book. It’s an ancient monastic organization whose members take vows renouncing physical and selfish attachments. These vows are poverty (renunciation of possessions), chastity (renunciation of sex), and obedience (renunciation of ego). Taking a new name is part of becoming a swami, and it’s also a common practice across many religions and spiritual traditions, ranging from Buddhism and Hinduism to Christianity and Judaism.)

Yogananda’s Worldly Education

In addition to receiving training in kriya yoga, Yogananda earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Calcutta University in 1915. Yukteswar had encouraged him to go to university; he’d foreseen that Yogananda would teach yoga in America and said that Westerners would listen more readily to somebody with a degree.

(Shortform note: Calcutta University is consistently rated as one of the best public universities in India, and it often ranks #1 in the country. Holding a degree from such a prestigious university likely gave Yogananda much greater credibility in the Western world, as Yukteswar predicted.)

However, though he did get his degree, Yogananda says that he was always too focused on his spiritual training to study. In fact, he only passed his final exams by a series of seemingly impossible coincidences.

For example, Yogananda had a friend make up questions about the exam material to quiz him, and then those same questions appeared—nearly word for word—on the finals. On another exam, he failed to answer so many questions that it should’ve been impossible for him to pass, but the passing grade for that subject was unexpectedly lower that same year.

Yogananda says that these strokes of luck weren’t actually luck at all, but were due to the spiritual power of yoga. In other words, he believes that God helped him shape events to his benefit so that he would graduate.

(Shortform note: What Yogananda describes here is a form of manifesting—shaping the world around you through focused intentions and the belief that those intentions will become reality. Rhonda Byrne's book The Secret provides a more modernized explanation of manifesting, which she calls the Law of Attraction. However, Byrne's version requires you to focus on what you want, which is incompatible with Hinduism's drive for selflessness; that's why Yogananda credits God and yoga for his success on his final exams, rather than his own spiritual abilities.)

Yogananda Passes On His Knowledge

Yogananda had become an accomplished yogi, but his mission in life was far from over—he’s remembered as a great teacher, not just a great practitioner of yoga. In this section, we’ll discuss the schools Yogananda founded and his legacy.

Yogananda says that, throughout his life, he’d received visions of three different buildings. While studying with Yukteswar, he came to understand that these were three schools he would found.

The first third of his vision came true when he founded the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in 1917, near the city of Ranchi. However, it would be many years before the other two schools from his visions became reality.

Yogananda says that his schools combined spiritual and practical education, much like his own training with Yukteswar did. The school in Ranchi, for example, taught students academic subjects like math and literature, along with offering classes in agriculture, industrial job training, and business.

(Shortform note: The Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS) still exists today, and it teaches kriya yoga to people of all backgrounds and religions. The YSS now has four separate ashrams and hundreds of smaller facilities throughout India and the surrounding countries. The organization also upholds Yogananda’s belief that practical and religious education are both beneficial in seeking God. One of the YSS’s goals is to unite science and religion by showing that they have the same fundamental principle: the search for truth.)

Even when teaching yoga, Yogananda couched his lessons in practical terms—he taught what he calls the science of kriya yoga, which explains yoga’s seemingly impossible effects using biology and physics. For example, he taught that the human body functions much like a battery; certain yoga techniques connect you with God’s infinite energy to recharge that battery, thereby explaining why some yogis don’t seem to need sleep.

Sri Yukteswar foretold that this well-rounded approach to teaching yoga would bridge the gap between Eastern and Western cultures—people who would normally be skeptical about spiritual practices would listen to a college-educated man explaining those practices and their benefits in scientific terms.

Evaluating the Science Behind Ideas in Yoga

Using scientific terms and principles to explain spiritual topics is a fairly common practice, but nonscientists may use these terms differently from their formal scientific definitions. This is often referred to as pseudoscience: something that appears to be science but actually isn’t.

For instance, when Yogananda says that the body stores and uses energy, in one sense, that’s scientifically accurate: The body uses energy that it extracts from food and stores excess food as fat. However, Yogananda was actually talking about a different form of cosmic, spiritual energy that can’t be observed or measured in any way.

Note that science requires data: Theories must be testable, and the results of those tests must be repeatable. Therefore, because there’s no way to test Yogananda’s claims about spiritual energy and yogis’ abilities to forgo sleep, those claims can’t be described as truly backed by science, regardless of whether he uses scientific language to describe them.

Yogananda’s Life in America

True to Yukteswar’s prediction that Yogananda would teach yoga in the West, Yogananda received an invitation to speak at the 1920 meeting of the International Congress of Religious Liberals, held in Boston. Yogananda accepted the invitation and made the trip to America.

During his speech, Yogananda spoke about how God is universal. Therefore, regardless of their specific beliefs and rituals, all who seek God should think of themselves as part of the same religion.

Yogananda’s First Speech in America

Yogananda gives very few details about this speech in Autobiography of a Yogi. However, the Self-Realization Fellowship’s blog provides a brief summary of it. His speech covered three key points.

First, he said that religions shouldn’t be separated from each other by dogmatic beliefs and practices. Rather, all religions should be united by the universal understanding that God is bliss, and union with God is the only way to achieve true happiness.

Second, Yogananda stated that God must be understood intuitively—through experience—rather than logically. This is crucial because trying to understand something logically means separating yourself from it and trying to learn through observation, while the purpose of religion is to unite with God.

Finally, he elaborated that kriya yoga provides concrete, practical techniques for people to understand and unite with God.

In short, Yogananda’s speech was a distillation of his beliefs and his mission: to bring people of all backgrounds and faiths together with God through kriya yoga.

Yogananda Fulfilling His Destiny

By this time, Yogananda explains, he fully understood the destiny that Lahiri Mahasaya had foretold for him: He would bring yoga to the West, becoming a teacher and guide for thousands of people. So, after the Congress of Religious Liberals ended, Yogananda stayed in the US, and California became his home for the rest of his life.

(Shortform note: Although Yogananda officially made his home in California, he spent the next 10 years traveling all over the US to give lectures and presentations about yoga. In fact, he spoke at many of the largest auditoriums in the country during this time, and these venues were frequently filled to capacity.)

In 1925, Yogananda founded the headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship—a global branch of the YSS—in Los Angeles, California. The headquarters was the second of the three buildings he’d seen in his visions.

(Shortform note: In the mid-1930s, Yogananda reduced his traveling and lecturing to focus on growing and guiding the YSS and the Self-Realization Fellowship. Yogananda compiled his teachings into a series of lessons that people could continue to study after his death, and he developed a retreat program that the Fellowship still uses. Today, the Self-Realization Fellowship consists of more than 500 temples, ashrams, and schools all over the world.)

Yogananda notes that he visited his home country of India in 1935. While he was there, Yukteswar granted him the title Paramahansa—the highest honor a yogi can earn—to commemorate his spiritual achievements.

(Shortform note: Paramahansa translates to “supreme swan” and indicates someone who’s achieved enlightenment. The title comes from a myth about a swan that was able to drink only the milk from a solution of milk and water. Just as that swan could separate the milk from the water, a Paramahansa can separate the real (God) from the illusory (maya).)

Yogananda traveled back to America in 1937. He says that upon returning, he found that his students had founded an ashram for the Self-Realization Fellowship in Encinitas, California, near the coast. What his students had intended as a pleasant surprise was, in fact, the fulfillment of the final part of Yogananda’s vision: an ashram by the sea, the third building he’d foreseen.

(Shortform note: The Encinitas ashram is much more than just a religious retreat: It’s a tourist attraction, a concert venue, and a nature reserve as well. Yogananda spent much of the remainder of his life at this ashram; in fact, it’s where he wrote Autobiography of a Yogi.)

The End of Yogananda’s Life

Yogananda ends his story in 1945, at the end of World War II. He explains that he and the other residents of the Encinitas ashram came together to thank God for bringing peace and pray that the world would never know such strife again. Yogananda looked at the assembled yogis and remarked that he—a monk sworn to celibacy—had been blessed with an enormous family.

Yogananda died in 1952. His funeral service, held in Los Angeles, attracted hundreds of people who came to pay their last respects to the great teacher and spiritual leader.

(Shortform note: Paramahansa Yogananda was buried in Forest Lawn Park in Glendale, California. A report by Forest Lawn’s mortuary director notes that Yogananda’s body had not decayed in the 20 days between his death and burial and that he seemed to be contently smiling even in death. Yogananda’s legacy lives on through the YSS and the Self-Realization Fellowship, which ensure that his spiritual “family” continues to grow.)

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