Yogi’s amazing spiritual journey

Anecdotes and tales of the fantastic and the incredible mark the life of an unusual spiritual guru.

BOOK REVIEW

(Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda) In 1986, I met a man who changed my life significantly. He was someone who had brought spiritual nourishment to North America because his guru told him to make that journey to the continent because his new home had prayed for spiritual guidance.

The only issue about my encounter with Yogananda was that he had died in 1952. I had actually “met” him through his most famous book, “Autobiography of a Yogi”.

When the book found me, I was at a stage in my life when I was searching the universe for answers to some bewildering eternal mysteries.

Initially, when I read the first few chapters of Yogananda’s book, I wasn’t sure if the writer was a real person or a fictionalised character. Some of the happenings which Yogananda mentioned in his book were incredible.

But I kept reminding myself that in order to learn anything new, one mustn’t close the doors to one’s mind. Like a parachute, so the famous saying goes, it works best when it is open.

Yogananda’s spiritual quest began at a very early age. Unlike other children of his age, the boy asked searching questions of which the answers always eluded him.

Then at the age of 17 in 1910, he finally met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. It was supposedly a meeting that had undergone various phases in several lifetimes.

Yogananda describes it in his book:
“We entered a oneness of silence; words seemed the rankest superfluities. Eloquence flowed in soundless chant from heart of master to disciple. With an antenna of irrefragable insight I sensed that my guru knew God, and would lead me to Him. The obscuration of this life disappeared in a fragile dawn of prenatal memories.”

Exceptional figure

At 27 on the request of his guru Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda travelled to America. Then for the next 32 years, he lectured and taught Kriya Yoga and meditation to Americans who hungered for the kind of spiritualism that was uncommon in their own land.

From a picture in the book, Sri Yukteswar looked like Moses of the Ten Commandments or maybe the actor Charlton Heston.

Yukteswar’s guru, Mahavatar Babaji, was even a more exceptional figure. He seemed to travel through dimensions like how ordinary people cross the highways.

Loosely translated, Mahavatar Babaji means “Revered Father the Great Avatar”. In his book, Yogananda gave an account of meeting a very young man who showed up at his house whom he later learnt was his guru’s guru.

“Autobiography of a Yogi” is filled with anecdotes and tales of the fantastic and the incredible. A normal person may at times find some of the revelations incredulous, may be even ludicrous but Yogananda didn’t seem to be the kind of man who told tall tales.

In his explanation of Kriya Yoga, Yogananda states:
“Kriya Yoga is a simple, psychophysiological method by which the human blood is decarbonised and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centres.

“By stopping the accumulation of venous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues; the advanced yogi transmutes his cells into pure energy. Elijah, Jesus, Kabir and other prophets were past masters in the use of Kriya or a similar technique, by which they caused their bodies to dematerialise at will.

“Kriya is an ancient science. Lahiri Mahasaya received it from his guru, Babaji, who rediscovered and clarified the technique after it had been lost in the Dark Ages.

“The Kriya Yoga which I am giving to the world through you in this 19th century,” Babaji told Lahiri Mahasaya, “is a revival of the same science which Krishna gave, millenniums ago, to Arjuna, and which was later known to Patanjali, and to Christ, St John, St Paul, and other disciples.”

Twilight zone
A reader who has a low tolerance for the unimaginable may languish in the twilight zone of ignorance when he reads those words but Yogananda proved the truth of his teachings upon his death.

Twenty days after Yogananda passed away on March 7, 1952 at the age of 59, his body was found to be absent of any signs of decay.

There was “no indication of mold was visible on his skin, and no visible drying up took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one…. No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time”.

The statement was contained in a letter from Harry T Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary director of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, where Yogananda’s body was embalmed.

In his lifetime, Yogananda came across some of history’s most famous saints. They included the German Catholic mystic Therese Neumann and Hindu saint Sri Anandamoyi Ma. He also met Mahatma Gandhi and poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore.

“Autobiography of a Yogi” was published in 1946 and has since been translated into 25 languages. Its worldwide sales have exceeded more than a million copies.

In 1999, a panel of inspirational leaders and theologians concluded that Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi” is “one of the 100 Most Important Spiritual Books of the 20th Century”.

Through the decades, I have returned to this book on numerous occasions to remind myself that if and when mankind faces its darkest hour, there will always be an inextinguishable light that shines brightly from the realm of eternity to guide ordinary mortals safely across the stormy waters.