Autobiography of a Yogi

Paramahansa Yogananda

ISBN 10: 0876120850 ISBN 13: 9780876120859

Publisher: Self Realization Fellowship Pub, 1996

Synopsis

The audio edition of Autobiography of a Yogi contains the complete text of the print editions read by Academy Award winning actor Ben Kingsley. Footnotes are captured in an accompanying booklet. 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. Also recorded here are his meetings with Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, the Catholic stigmatist Therese Neumann, and other celebrated spiritual personalities of East and West. 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. Considered a modern spiritual classic, the book has been translated into more than twenty languages and is widely used as a text and reference work in colleges and universities. A perennial bestseller since it was first published sixty years ago, Autobiography of a Yogi has found its way into the hearts of millions of readers around the world. This edition of Autobiography of a Yogi includes extensive material added by the author after the first edition was published, including a final chapter on the closing years of his life.

Sir Ben Kingsley came to international prominence with his Academy Award-winning performance in the title role of Gandhi. He has received high praise as well for his work in other films - among them the critically acclaimed Schindler's List. Mr Kingsley is also known for his inspired readings of books on tape, including a series on the great religions of the world.

About this title

From the Publisher:

Autobiography of a Yogi is not an ordinary book. It is a spiritual treasure. To read its message of hope to all truthseekers, is to begin a great adventure. This is a verbatim reprinting of the original, 1946 edition of "Autobiography of a Yogi". Although subsequent printings, reflecting revisions made after the author's death in 1952, have sold over a million copies and have been translated into more than 19 languages, the few thousand of the original have long since disappeared into the hands of collectors. Now, with this reprint, the 1946 edition is again available, with all its inherent power, just as the great master of yoga first presented it.

Editions past the third have been prepared since the author's passing in 1952. In 1953, Self-Realization Fellowship, acquired the rights to "Autobiography of a Yogi" from Philosophical Library; it has been the publisher of all subsequent editions, until this original reprint put out by Crystal Clarity, Publishers. In order to be faithful to the original edition, we have not corrected errors of spelling, grammar, or punctuation.

From the Author:

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

*(1) Oxford University Press, 1935.

Copyright © 1946 Paramhansa Yogananda

About this edition

• Publisher: Self Realization Fellowship Pub
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0876120850
• ISBN 13: 9780876120859
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Number of pages: 15