This life story follows an Indian yoga teacher from his childhood to his work in America. One chapter recounts his visit to Gandhi at his ashram in Wardha.
590 pages 11h 27m reading time
One of the best-known spiritual life stories of the 20th century, and for many Western readers their first close look at Indian spiritual life.
Argues that God can be known through direct personal experience, reached through meditation, rather than only through belief or ritual.
Presents Eastern and Western faiths as sharing the same core truths, and argues that science and spiritual practice do not have to conflict.
Brought Kriya Yoga (a meditation technique built around breath and focus) to a wide audience outside India, and it is still studied and practiced by followers today.
Helped spark the wider Western interest in yoga and meditation that grew in the decades after its publication.
Jobs's last gift
Guests at Steve Jobs's 2011 memorial each received a copy, a final gift he had planned himself.
A book foretold
Yogananda writes that his guru's guru, Lahiri Mahasaya, foretold a Western book about his life fifty years after his death.
Written by the ocean
Yogananda wrote much of it at his hermitage overlooking the Pacific in Encinitas, California, with longtime student Laurie Pratt editing.
A Beatle's favorite gift
George Harrison of the Beatles kept boxes of copies to give away, and Yogananda appears on the Sgt Pepper cover.
