AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI
By Paramhansa Yogananda Saraswati
This is one of the best books I can recommend for a better understanding of Hinduism and Yoga. Pandit S.P.Tata
A YOGI IN LIFE AND DEATII
PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA entered mahasamadhi (a yogi’s final conscious exit from the body) in Los Angeks, Cali(ornia, U.S.A., on March 7, 1952, after concluding his speech at a banquet held in honor of H.E. Binay R. Sen, Ambassador of India.
The great world teacher demonstrated , the value of yoga (scientific tcchniques for God realizatibn) not only in life but in death. Weeks after his departure his unchanged face shone with the divine luster of incormptibility.
Mr. Harry. T. Rowe, Mortuary Director of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, Los Angeles (in which the body of the great master is temporarily placed), sent Self-Realization Fellowship a notarized letter from which the following extracts are taken:
“The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramahansa Y ogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience. No physical disintegrtion was visible in his body even twenty days after death. No indication of mold was visible on his skin and no visible desiccation (drying up) took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfet preservation of a body is, so f.ar as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one. At the time of receiving Yogananda’s body, the Mortuary personnel expected to observe, through the glass lid of the casket, the usual progressive signs of bodily decay. Our astonishment increased as day followed day without bringing any visible change in the body under observations. Yogananda’s body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability. No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time.
“The physical appearance of Y ogananda on March 27th, just before the bronze cover of the casket was put into position, was the same as it had been on March 7th. He looked on March 27th as fresh and as unravaged by decay as he had looked on the night of his death. On March 27th there was no reason to say that his body had, suffered any visible physical disintegration at all. For these reasons we state again that the case of Paramahansa Yogananda is unique in our experience”.
W. Y. Evans-Wentz, M.A., D.Litt., D.Sc.
“EXCEPT YE SEE SIGNS AND WONDERS, YE WILL NOT BELIEVE.”-John 4:48.
…
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
CONTENTS
Chapter
1. My Parents and Early Life
2. Mother’s Death and the Amulet
3. The Saint with Two Bodies (Swami Pranabananda)
4. My Interrupted Flight Toward the Himalaya
5. A “Perfume Saint” Performs his Wonders
6. The Tiger Swami
7. The Levitating Saint (Nagendra Nath Bhaduri)
8. India’s Great Scientist and Inventor, Jagadis Chandra Bose
9. The Blissful Devotee and his Cosmic Romance (Master Mahasaya)
10. I Meet my Master, Sri Yukteswar
11. Two Penniless Boys in Brindaban
12. Years in my Master’s Hermitage
13. The Sleepless Saint (Ram Gopal Muzumdar)
14. An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness
15. The Cauliflower Robbery
16. Outwitting the Stars
17. Sasi and the Three Sapphires
18. A Mohammedan Wonder-Worker (Afzal Khan)
19. My Guru Appears Simultaneously in Calcutta and Serampore
20. We Do Not Visit Kashmir
21. We Visit Kashmir
22. The Heart of a Stone Image
23. My University Degree
24. I Become a Monk of the Swami Order
25. Brother Ananta and Sister Nalini
26. The Science of Kriya Yoga
27. Founding of a Yoga School at Ranchi
28. Kashi, Reborn and Rediscovered
29. Rabindranath Tagore and I Compare Schools
30. The Law of Miracles
31. An Interview with the Sacred Mother (Kashi Moni Lahiri)
32. Rama is Raised from the Dead
33. Babaji, the Yogi-Christ of Modern India
34. Materializing a Palace in the Himalayas
35. The Christlike Life of Lahiri Mahasaya
36. Babaji’s Interest in the West
37. I Go to America
38. Luther Burbank—An American Saint
39. Therese Neumann, the Catholic Stigmatist of Bavaria
40. I Return to India
41. An Idyl in South India
42. Last Days with my Guru
43. The Resurrection of Sri Yukteswar
44. With Mahatma Gandhi at Wardha
45. The Bengali “Joy-Permeated Mother” (Ananda Moyi Ma)
46. The Woman Yogi who Never Eats (Giri Bala)
47. I Return to the West
48. At Encinitas in California
