Samuel clemens autobiography of a yogi
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My father was a Self-Realization Fellowship member and attended services at the temple in San Diego. No other author has approached Guruji’s explanation of miracles, reincarnation, karma, the afterlife, and the other wonderful spiritual truths contained in its pages.
What would be his reaction to the book’s renown today? The great personalities one meets in these pages…return to memory as friends endowed with rich spiritual wisdom, and one of the greatest of these is the God-intoxicated author himself.”
— Dr.
Anna von Helmholtz-Phelan,
Professor of English, University of Minnesota
“Decade after decade, Autobiography of a Yogi has been one of our best-selling books. I asked my uncle how one could achieve that state, but the only thing he could say was that one has to meditate. It was the first time I would see him face to face. He opened to a few pages, saving for last the illustration of Mahavatar Babaji.
The book continues in 1920 when Yogananda accepts an invitation to speak in a religious congress in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He then travels across America lecturing and establishing his teachings in Los Angeles, California. Robinson argues that he wrote out of an enduring need to come to terms with his remembered experiences-not to memorialize the past, but to transform it.By all accounts-including his own-Clemens's special curse was guilt.
By any measure, Autobiography of a Yogi has played a major role in introducing the science of yoga to the modern world.
“Paramahansa Yogananda, like Gandhi, brought spirituality into the mainstream of society.”
“Perhaps best known for his Autobiography of a Yogi, which has inspired countless millions around the world,” writes the metaphysical journal New Frontier (October 1986), “Paramahansa Yogananda, like Gandhi, brought spirituality into the mainstream of society.
As he walked onto the grounds of Self-Realization Fellowship headquarters for the first time, he was immediately approached by a smiling stranger. And the final form is this: I’m going to talk about whatever I want to talk about, I’m going to change the subject whenever I lose the least bit of interest, and go to some other topic.”
However, the original documents – a welter of fragments, false starts, revisions and variations – are “to a degree puzzling and confusing,” Hirst explains.
As he wrote he relived inwardly the sacred experiences he was recording. I have read many books on yoga, by yogis; but I was never impressed as with this book. That was the first miracle. Midst “Oh’s” and “Ah’s” we could scarcely express our joy to behold at last the long-awaited account of his life among the great saints and sages of India — with which he had so often enthralled us during precious hours in his company.
After each part was typed, Gurudeva would give it to Tara Mata, who served as his editor.
One day, while working on his autobiography, the Guru told us: “When I have left this world, this book will change the lives of millions. Consequently, to add even a comma requires that the metal plate of an entire page be cut apart and resoldered with a new line containing the desired comma.
A small group of us — Ananda Mata, Shraddha Mata, and myself — were around him much of that time, helping to type the manuscript. To them he recounted this story.
Brother Premamoy was born in Slovenia.
While there, he had compiled much factual data for the Autobiography, as well as stories about some of the saints and sages whom he had known and whose lives he was to describe so memorably in the book. All the way back to my office the name kept revolving in my consciousness and I became more and more filled with love and joy.