Mukunda Lal Ghosh (1893–1952) took the monastic name Yogananda and arrived in Boston
in 1920 as India’s delegate to a congress of religious liberals. He stayed for most of
the next three decades, founded the Self-Realization Fellowship, and lectured to packed
halls across the United States at a time when almost no Indian teacher had done so.
Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) is the source of most of what is quoted from
him, and it is an unusual book: part memoir, part travelogue, part catalogue of miracles
reported flatly and without argument. It has never gone out of print and has introduced
more Western readers to Indian practice than any other single volume.
“Change yourself and you have done your part in changing the world.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Live quietly in the moment and see the beauty of all before you.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“The greater the will, the greater the flow of energy.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Be afraid of nothing. Hating none, giving love to all, feeling the love of God, seeing His presence in everyone, and having but one desire — for His constant presence in the temple of your consciousness — that is the way to live in this world.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Remain calm, serene, always in command of yourself. You will then find out how easy it is to get along.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“The power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all man’s slavery.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Look past the appearances of the world and you will find that the Creator is supporting all life.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Destroy wrong thought as soon as it enters your mind by substituting good thoughts. Every morning tell your mind what kind of thoughts you want it to hold throughout the day.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Think of the divine qualities you have within you. You are made in the image of God.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“There is a magnet in your heart that will attract true friends. That magnet is unselfishness, thinking of others first.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Happiness is not a result of what we get, but of what we give.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“The entire universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe. Only God exists.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“You do not have to struggle to reach God, but you do have to struggle to tear away the self-created veil that hides him from you.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“The purpose of human life is to find God: that is the only reason for our existence on this earth.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
“Seek not happiness; it will come. Seek not peace; it will find you.”
— Paramahansa Yogananda
Yogananda taught Kriya Yoga, a specific set of breath and energy techniques he
received from Sri Yukteswar, who received them from Lahiri Mahasaya. That transmission
matters for reading him: when he writes about energy in the spine or about scientific
method applied to God, he is describing a technique with steps, not offering a
metaphor. The techniques themselves are given under vow through the Fellowship’s lesson
series rather than in the public books.
The autobiography contains levitation, bilocation, materialised palaces and a saint
who does not eat. Yogananda reports these without hedging, and modern readers tend to
either accept the whole frame or dismiss the book. There is a third option: read them as
he presents them — as claims made by a named person about named people — and separate
them from the instructional material, which stands or falls on its own.
Two things. First, the insistence that spiritual practice is empirical: do the
technique, observe the result, do not take it on faith — a framing designed for the
audience he actually had. Second, the refusal to treat householder life as a lesser
path; he taught working Americans with jobs and families, not renunciates, and adapted
accordingly.
Start with chapters 1-12 of the autobiography, which cover his childhood and the
meeting with Sri Yukteswar and are the strongest writing in the book. His commentaries
on the Bhagavad Gita and the Gospels are much longer and much less read, and they are
where the actual teaching, rather than the biography, is set out.
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