Autobiography of a Yogi

“God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature.”

In his mid-teens, Mukunda is in a temple contemplating an image of the goddess Kali. Kali is often presented as a ferocious goddess. She has many aspects, but one thing she represents is destruction. Mukunda is trying to puzzle out the dual aspect of nature, both benign and terrible. He tries to sort things out with this simple statement of the essence of the Vedantic worldview.

“Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.”

Sri Yukteswar speaks to Yogananda, encouraging him to embark on a spiritual relationship between them that will function from the level of infinite love. Quoting the words of the master is one of Yogananda’s techniques for instructing his readers in cosmic truths.

“The body is a treacherous friend. Give it its due; no more. Pain and pleasure are transitory; endure all qualities with calmness, trying at the same time to remove yourself beyond their power. 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 speaks to Yogananda. This passage suggests that imagination and belief alone can keep a person healthy, without relying on doctors or divine healers.

“If a visitor dared to relate a suggestive story in the hermitage, Master would maintain an unresponsive silence. ‘Do not allow yourself to be thrashed by the provoking whip of a beautiful face,’ he told the disciples.”

Yogananda conveys the flavor of Sri Yukteswar’s teaching. The disciple must not get enmeshed in the world of the senses. The image of a beautiful woman’s face is presented metaphorically as a whip that will strike anyone who allows himself to become attached to its allure.

“For the first time perhaps, he understood that discerning the placement of a comma does not atone for a spiritual coma.”

Yogananda uses the near pun of “comma” and “coma” to satirize the learned scholar who was forced to admit to Sri Yukteswar that, in spite of his book knowledge, he had no inner experience of the divine.

“I fetched a broom; Master, I knew, was teaching me the secret of balanced living. The soul must stretch over the cosmogonic abysses, while the body performs its daily duties.”

By the grace of the guru, Yogananda has just been granted a joyful experience of the infinite dimensions of his own being. Sri Yukteswar warns him not to get lost in ecstasy and invites Yogananda to sweep the balcony floor.

"Love, hate, health, disease, life, death:

Perished these false shadows on the screen of duality.

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.”

This is an excerpt from “Samadhi,” Yogananda’s poem that comprises 53 mostly unrhymed lines that describe the state of union with God. This excerpt contrasts the illusions of duality with the reality of the unchanging higher Self, the “I.”

“It is never a question of belief; the scientific attitude one should take on any subject is whether it is true. The law of gravitation worked as efficiently before Newton as after him. The cosmos would be fairly chaotic if its laws could not operate without the sanction of human belief.”

Mukunda has just stated that he does not believe in astrology. Sri Yuktewar implies that, like gravity, the principles of astrology are true regardless of whether he believes in them. He then goes on to explain how astrology works.

“Occasionally I told astrologers to select my worse periods, according to planetary indications, and I would still accomplish whatever task I set myself. It is true that my success at such time has been accompanied by extraordinary difficulties. But my conviction has always been justified; faith in the divine protection, and the right use of man’s God-given will, are forces more formidable than are influences flowing from the heavens.”

Yogananda is determined not to be ruled by the stars. He takes to heart his guru’s words that the closer he gets to self-realization, the more power he has over his life. The difficult periods that can be predicted by astrology become less significant.

“I, Afzal Khan, am writing these words as an act of penance and as a warning to those who seek the possession of miracle powers. For years I have been misusing the wondrous abilities imparted to me through the grace of God and my master. I became drunk with egoism, feeling that I was beyond the ordinary laws of morality.”

This quotation shows that the acquisition of spiritual powers comes with a responsibility. They must only be used in a manner that honors the divine purpose. Afzal Khan, the Islamic miracle worker, vows to reform and seek God.

“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?”

These thoughts are prompted by a mystical vision Yogananda has just received near the River Ganges. Yogananda employs a rhetorical question to emphasize the transformative nature of spiritual enlightenment.

“If you don’t invite God to be your summer Guest, He won’t come in the winter of your life.”

Sri Yukteswar often used aphorisms in his teaching. An aphorism is a pithy saying that expresses an opinion or a general truth. Here, the guru presents life metaphorically as passing through the four seasons.

“Yoga is a method for restraining the natural turbulence of thoughts, which otherwise impartially prevent all human beings, 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 people are restless and capricious; a manifest need exists for yoga: the science of mind control.”

This definition of yoga is notable for its universality, which is in keeping with Yogananda’s desire to promote spiritual techniques that originated in the East as being equally applicable to people in the West.

“A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there he is like butter on water, and not like the unchurned, easily diluted milk of undisciplined humanity. Fulfilling one’s earthly responsibilities need not separate man from God, provided he maintains mental uninvolvement with egotistical desires and plays his part as a willing instrument of the Divine.”

As he makes his point that yoga is not for monks only, Yogananda uses two similes: Just as butter will not dissolve in water, so the yogi can maintain his spiritual status even while acting in the world. The rest of humanity, in contrast, lacks the firmness of the yogi in terms of spiritual knowledge; it is like unchurned milk that is easily diluted in its worldly environment.

“A child is in his natural setting amidst the flowers and songbirds. There he may more readily express the hidden wealth of his individual endowment. True education is not pumped and crammed in from outward sources, but aids in bringing to the surface the infinite hoard of wisdom within.”

Rabindranath Tagore speaks these words to Yogananda. Tagore shows that his vision of education is similar to Yogananda’s, especially given Yogananda’s aversion during his student years to having to cram for exams. He believed it was better to bring out wisdom from within, and his life was a testament to the very principle that Tagore enunciates here.

“The consciousness of a perfected yogi is effortlessly identified not with a narrow body but with the universal structure.”

This is a succinct expression of the essence of spiritual enlightenment. The yogi experiences his essential nature as independent of time and space, and his Self as identical with the Cosmic Self.

“By these feats Trailanga sought to teach men that human life need not depend on oxygen or on certain conditions and precautions. Whether the great master was above water or under it, and whether or not his body challenged the fierce solar rays, he proved that he lived by divine consciousness: Death could not touch him.”

The pages of Autobiography of a Yogi are populated by many saints who point the way to spiritual truth and possess supernormal powers. This story about Trailanga’s power is one such account.

“Before us stood a vast palace of dazzling gold. Ornamented with countless jewels, set amidst landscaped gardens, reflected in tranquil pools—a spectacle of unparalleled grandeur! Towering archways were intricately inlaid with great diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds. Men of angelic countenance were stationed by gates redly splendored with rubies.”

Babaji manifests a palace in the Himalayas for his disciple Lahiri Mahasaya. It reveals the power of the godlike guru to manifest anything he chooses. Babaji explains that the entire cosmos is only a thought of God and that every material thing emerges from consciousness. Babaji is able to command the atoms of creation to combine in any form.

“To the awe of all beholders, Lahiri Mahasaya’s habitual physiological state exhibited the superhuman features of breathlessness, sleeplessness, cessation of pulse and heartbeat, calm eyes unblinking for hours, and a profound aura of peace. No visitors departed without upliftment of spirit; all knew they had received the silent blessing of a true man of God.”

The physiological phenomena described here are typical of many reports of the altered state saints exhibit. The guru also silently exudes a blessing that creates a feeling of peace in those around him. These characteristics, Yogananda states, are different from the physiology of the average person. This is just one of the many instances in which Yogananda uses supernormal phenomena to demonstrate the truth of his philosophy.

“‘East and West must establish a golden middle path of activity and spirituality combined,’ he continued. ‘India has much to learn from the West in material development; in return, India can teach the universal methods by which the West will be able to base its religious beliefs on the unshakable foundations of yogic science.’”

Babaji speaks to Yogananda. Yogananda has just suggested that East and West may be too far apart in their approaches to knowledge ever to come together. Babaji reassures him, arguing for the universality that will be a major theme of Yogananda’s work.

“Do not do what you want, and then you may do what you like.”

These paradoxical words are attributed to Sadasiva Brahman, an 18th-century Indian saint. He meant that a person should not follow their lower desires but act from a different level. If their thoughts and desires are anchored in the divine rather than the sensual realm, whatever they choose to do will produce a positive outcome.

“Gandhi’s epoch has extended, with the beautiful precision of cosmic timing, into a century already desolated and devastated by two World Wars. A divine handwriting appears on the granite wall of his life: a warning against the further shedding of blood among brothers.”

Yogananda pays tribute to Mahatma Gandhi. The metaphor of the handwriting on the wall shows that in Yogananda’s eyes, Gandhi’s work was blessed by God. The granite wall suggests that Gandhi’s words and work will endure for a very long time.

“It is on the anvil of this gross earth that struggling man must hammer out the imperishable gold of spiritual identity. Bearing in his hand the hard-won golden treasure, as the sole acceptable gift to greedy Death, a human being wins final freedom from the rounds of physical reincarnation.”

Yogananda uses figurative language to convey his point. Human life is metaphorically presented as a process of hammering out a precious metal on an anvil. Yogananda also uses the technique of personification when he describes Death as greedy. Personification presents an abstract quality as possessing human characteristics.