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Autobiography of a Yogi: with bonus CD | 
 enlarge | Author: Paramahansa Yogananda
Publisher: Self-Realization Fellowship
Category: Book
List Price: $12.50
Buy Used: $5.71
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Rating:  217 reviews
Sales Rank: 5099
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 520
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 0876120834
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.55
EAN: 9780876120835
ASIN: 0876120834
Publication Date: June 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: Moderate shelf wear to cover - inside very good - QUICK SHIP - MOST ORDERS SHIP OUT WITHIN 24 HOURS - SATISFACTION GUARANTEED - We love selling books... and it shows !!
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Product Description
Often described as the book that has changed the lives of millions, Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi has been translated into 20 languages, and is regarded worldwide as a spiritual classic. It was selected as "One of the 100 Best Spiritual Books of the Twentieth Century." It reads like an adventure story while answering questions about religion, God, existence, yoga, higher consciousness, and the challenges of daily spiritual living. It is a book for people of all faiths; anyone yearning to know what life is truly all about. Profoundly inspiring, it is at the same time vastly entertaining - warmly humorous and filled with extraordinary personages.Self Realization Fellowship's editions, and none others, incorporate all of the author's significant revisions to the text of the 1946 first edition. A bonus audio CD is included, featuring the first four chapters of the full audio-book (also available from Self-Realization Fellowship), as narrated by Academy Award-winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 212 more reviews...
 Read the best excerpt in this book October 2, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
Why the author was drawn to becoming a Yogi as a child is very revealing. Paramahansa plainly relates that he believed he would have power over animals, such as having tigers as pets. What child doesnt fantisize about super powers?; India at the turn of the last century was rooted in superstition,with countless Fakirs demonstrating all manner of powers from levitating to producing the the smell of various flowers at the tip of ones fingers,as the author relates. The Discovery channel has shown how such feats,(tricks)are performed by fakirs(fakers),but such knowledge would not have been known by the author who obviously absorbed the cultural beliefs of that time period and built on such magical thinking.
Many of his stories as heresay,such as a herb appearing in the hand of a relative,and monks that live without eating for hundreds of years. Other accounts,such as witnessing the astral projections of other gurus,and bringing the dead back to life,leave me wondering whether Paramarhansa purposely fabricated such accounts to enhanse his teachings or whether he was honestly delusional in his perceptions.
The most memorable account to me,and perhaps the one which has imspired so many ratings of 5, is the following discription of a meditation experience he had:
....."My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my lungs as if by some huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physical bondage, and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every pore. The flesh was as though dead, yet in my intense awareness I knew that never before had I been fully alive. My sense of identity was no longer narrowly confined to a body, but embraced the circumambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of their sap. The whole vicinity lay bare before me. My ordinary frontal vision was now changed to a vast spherical sight, simultaneously all-perceptive. Through the back of my head I saw men strolling far down Rai Ghat Road, and noticed also a white cow who was leisurely approaching. When she reached the space in front of the open ashram gate, I observed her with my two physical eyes. As she passed by, behind the brick wall, I saw her clearly still.
All objects within my panoramic gaze trembled and vibrated like quick motion pictures. My body, Master's, the pillared courtyard, the furniture and floor, the trees and sunshine, occasionally became violently agitated, until all melted into a luminescent sea; even as sugar crystals, thrown into a glass of water, dissolve after being shaken. The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation. An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light. A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges; there I could see a mellow radiance, ever-undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light. The divine dispersion of rays poured from an Eternal Source, blazing into galaxies, transfigured with ineffable auras. Again and again I saw the creative beams condense into constellations, then resolve into sheets of transparent flame. By rhythmic reversion, sextillion worlds passed into diaphanous luster; fire became firmament. I cognized the center of the empyrean as a point of intuitive perception in my heart. Irradiating splendor issued from my nucleus to every part of the universal structure. Blissful AMRITA, the nectar of immortality, pulsed through me with a quicksilverlike fluidity. The creative voice of God I heard resounding as AUM, {FN14-1} the vibration of the Cosmic Motor. Suddenly the breath returned to my lungs. With a disappointment almost unbearable, I realized that my infinite immensity was lost. Once more I was limited to the humiliating cage of a body, not easily accommodative to the Spirit. Like a prodigal child, I had run away from my macrocosmic home and imprisoned myself in a narrow microcosm. My guru was standing motionless before me; I started to drop at his holy feet in gratitude for the experience in cosmic consciousness which I had long passionately sought. He held me upright, and spoke calmly, unpretentiously. "You must not get overdrunk with ecstasy. Much work yet remains for you in the world. Come; let us sweep the balcony floor; then we shall walk by the Ganges." 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. When we set out later for a stroll, I was still entranced in unspeakable rapture. I saw our bodies as two astral pictures, moving over a road by the river whose essence was sheer light.
Sri Yukteswar taught me how to summon the blessed experience at will, and also how to transmit it to others if their intuitive channels were developed. For months I entered the ecstatic union, comprehending why the UPANISHADS say God is RASA, "the most relishable." One day, however, I took a problem to Master. "I want to know, sir-when shall I find God?" "You have found Him." "O no, sir, I don't think so!" My guru was smiling. "I am sure you aren't expecting a venerable Personage, adorning a throne in some antiseptic corner of the cosmos! I see, however, that you are imagining that the possession of miraculous powers is knowledge of God. One might have the whole universe, and find the Lord elusive still! Spiritual advancement is not measured by one's outward powers, but only by the depth of his bliss in meditation. "EVER-NEW JOY IS GOD. He is inexhaustible; as you continue your meditations during the years, He will beguile you with an infinite ingenuity. Devotees like yourself who have found the way to God never dream of exchanging Him for any other happiness; He is seductive beyond thought of competition. "How quickly we weary of earthly pleasures! Desire for material things is endless; man is never satisfied completely, and pursues one goal after another. The 'something else' he seeks is the Lord, who alone can grant lasting joy."...
As far as I am conserned the above is a beautiful excerpt which is the prize of the book,sandwich among what is either boring, fanciful,and questionable. I am sorry to shatter any goal anyone has of this author being a Guru with all the answers. Just consider the author's 'teachings' regarding a heathy diet, basically cow fat(ghee)on too many starchy carbohydrates, he dropped dead of a heart attack in his late 50s; yet in a clip on Youtube he is teaching how one can live 100 years.
If you search Youtube you can hear the author's voice which is in the same "grand sounding authoritarian style" of the politicians of the 1930s. I think it shows an accurate image of a man who unequivically believes in the power of amulets but who just may be attempting to oversell the power of being a Yogi with a few good Avatar stories,topped off by an Indian-style Lazareth-raised-from-the-dead account,but then again he may have been honestly delusional. I suggest buying The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle.
 Classic must read September 29, 2008
This is one of the best books I have ever read. I would highly recommend it to any one interested in spirituality, India, history, Yoga and just life. Slow start, but interesting, inspiring and really a classic. I ran into the book after someone recommended it to me, and I am so glad I did....my favorite parts about the living saint Babji and the miracles the author witnessed. Fun and thought provoking. Loved it.
Someone has opened his heart for all September 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In fact I read this after I read the book ""God Talks to Arjuna"by Paramhansa Yogananda. The variuos terminology given in the book and the Kriya Yoga has attaracted me to become a member of the Yogoda Satsang Society and get the lessons. I have never read any other Auto Biography so vivid and truthful account of what transpires the young man seeking God. Though I was at the age of 49/50 at the time of reading this book in the year 1997 the details are still very much deeply imprinted on my mind as if I have read it now. This shows as to how much this book has the powerful grip of the Author and one has to read only once.
I strongly recommmend this book to those who wants to do something different than eating , sleeping , producing kids and vanishing away like any other insects than Human.
Ramamrat Iyer
Life changing book September 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book got me interested in Kriya yoga. It has been a life changing book. Next step after the book to delve deeper is :
Kriya Yoga - Its Mystery and Performing Art
by Swami Sadhanananda Giri book:
This Book will Change Your Life September 4, 2008
I agree with all those who gave it 5 stars. I'm writing to address the comment made by a Western male regarding the homoeroticism between the guru and his devotee and the misogynistic slant of the book. You're having difficulty because you are reading this book trapped in the perspective of your homophobia and expectation. That is exactly why you should read this book, so it can make you get out of your limitations and call to your soul, which has no gender. God has no gender, though of course God can appeal to you as a Mother God or Father God, depending on your need for it. Paramahansa Yogananda cannot possibly write for the current trend of political correctness of American society to assuage your criticism for not putting more women in his book; he is obviously way beyond the trappings of human identifications of the gross material body and gender. Spend some time meditating and detaching from all that, including the fact that you're a heterosexual male, so your soul can be awakened by the words of this giant of a man. Don't worry, you won't turn gay!
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