Autobiography of a Yogi

First published in 1946, **"Autobiography of a Yogi"** by **Paramahansa Yogananda** is one of the most influential spiritual books in modern history—famously reread every single year by Apple co-founder **Steve Jobs** (who arranged for a copy in a brown box to be handed to every guest at his 2011 memorial service) and cited by leaders from **Virat Kohli** to George Harrison as life-changing.

Born **Mukunda Lal Ghosh** in 1893 in Gorakhpur, India, into a devout Bengali family whose parents were disciples of the revered householder yogi **Lahiri Mahasaya**, young Mukunda possessed an unquenchable yearning from earliest childhood to experience the Divine directly rather than merely reading religious dogma. In his youth, he repeatedly ran away toward the Himalayas and crisscrossed India meeting extraordinary saints, mystics, and scientists—including the "Perfume Saint," the "Tiger Swami," the levitating saint Nagendra Nath Bhaduri, the sleepless saint **Anandamoyi Ma**, Nobel Laureate poet **Rabindranath Tagore**, great Indian botanist **Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose**, and **Mahatma Gandhi** at Wardha.

The spiritual heart of the book begins when seventeen-year-old Mukunda meets his destined guru, **Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri**, in a quiet lane of Banaras (Varanasi) and spends the next ten years being trained in Sri Yukteswar's hermitage in Serampore. Unlike stereotypical depictions of passive mysticism, Sri Yukteswar was a rigorous, rational, and sternly loving teacher who united the wisdom of the *Bhagavad Gita* and Patanjali's *Yoga Sutras* with scientific inquiry and cosmic astronomy. Under Sri Yukteswar's guidance, Mukunda attains *Sabikalpa* and *Nirvikalpa Samadhi* (states of cosmic consciousness) and takes monastic vows as Swami Yogananda.

Central to the book is the explanation of **Kriya Yoga**—an ancient psychophysiological meditation technique revived in the modern era by the deathless Himalayan master **Mahavatar Babaji** and passed through Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar to Yogananda. Yogananda explains Kriya Yoga not as a sectarian belief system, but as a universal scientific method of directing life-force energy (*prana*) and breath up and down the astral spine, oxygenating the blood, calming the restless heart and sensory nerves, and allowing the practitioner to experience direct **Self-Realization**: the knowing—in body, mind, and soul—that we are one with the omnipresent Spirit.

In 1920, fulfilling Babaji's commission to bridge the spiritual wealth of the East with the practical material efficiency of the West, Yogananda sailed to Boston to address the International Congress of Religious Liberals and founded **Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF)** in Los Angeles (and **Yogoda Satsanga Society of India — YSS**), teaching hundreds of thousands of seekers before his *mahasamadhi* in 1952.