Autobiography of a Yogi

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1946

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Chapters 25-28Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 25 Summary: “Brother Ananta and Sister Nalini”

Yogananda’s brother Ananta is taken ill. Yogananda takes care of him and then goes on a trip to Japan and China. In Shanghai, he buys a gift for Ananta and then drops it. The gift cracks, and Yogananda believes the accident indicates that Ananta is dead. When he gets back to India, his youngest brother Bishnu confirms that Ananta died on the same day Yogananda bought the gift.

He then tells a story about his younger sister Nalini, who has always been very thin. She desperately wants to put on weight. Throwing her medicines away, she puts her trust in God, and Yogananda tells her to consume a vegetarian diet. After several months, he visits her again and tells her that in one month’s time, she will weigh as much as he does. This prediction comes true.

After Yogananda’s return from Japan, he learns that Nalini has typhoid fever. He rushes to visit her and finds her emaciated and in a coma. The doctors offer no hope, but Yogananda prays for her and she recovers in a week, just as he had said she would. However, her legs are paralyzed. Yogananda asks Sri Yukteswar for help; the guru says Nalini will be well in a month, but she must wear a two-carat pearl against her skin. Yogananda acquires the pearl; Nalini wears it, and she recovers in one month, just as foretold.

Chapter 26 Summary: “The Science of Kriya Yoga”

Yogananda devotes this chapter to an explanation of Kriya Yoga. The word kriya is from the Sanskrit root kri, meaning to do, to act and react; Kriya Yoga is thus “union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite (kriya)” (263). He emphasizes that he cannot explain the actual technique in the book; it must be learned from an authorized teacher. He describes Kriya Yoga as “a simple, psychophysiological method by which human blood is decarbonated and recharged with oxygen” (263). He claims that other historical religious figures, including Elijah, Jesus, St. John, St. Paul, and Kabir, were practitioners of Kriya Yoga or a similar technique. Sri Yukteswar said that breath mastery through Kriya Yoga was India’s unique contribution to world knowledge.

Chapter 27 Summary: “Founding a Yoga School in Ranchi”

Yogananda founded a boys’ school in 1917. One year later, he transferred the school to Ranchi, about 200 miles from Calcutta, and it rapidly expanded. In addition to agricultural and industrial knowledge and academic study, the students were taught meditation and a system of health and physical fitness developed by Yogananda and called “Yogoda.” By 1919, there were 2,000 applications for admission. The school could only accommodate 100 residential students, so Yogananda began to accept day students as well. Over the next decades, the school continued to grow and became well-known. Many eminent people visited, including Swami Pranabanandas (the “saint with two bodies” who appeared in Chapter 3). He said he was on his way to the Himalayas, where his earthly life would end.

Some months later, Yogananda meets an old friend, Sanandan, who brings news of the swami’s death. Swami Pranabanandas had prepared Sanandan for his passing and told him not to grieve. The swami said he would shortly be reborn on earth. Yogananda later learns that the swami, having been reincarnated, has joined a group of saints in the Himalayas.

Chapter 28 Summary: “Kashi: Reborn and Rediscovered”

Yogananda is on a hike with his students. Twelve-year-old Kashi asks him what his fate will be. Yogananda tells him that he will soon be dead. He also counsels him to remain at the school, hoping that might preserve him, but he is unable to prevent Kashi’s father from taking the boy to Calcutta to visit his mother. In Calcutta, Kashi gets cholera and dies.

Kashi had asked Yogananda to find him if he is reborn and guide him along the spiritual path. Six months later, Yogananda has an overwhelming thought that Kashi is calling for him. An inner impulse directs him to a house in Calcutta, where a man tells him that his wife is six months pregnant. Yogananda replies that the child will be male. Yogananda believes the newborn child will resemble Kashi and also have a spiritual temperament. He later visits the boy, who is named Kashi, and there is an immediate bond between them. Later, Kashi writes to Yogananda in America, and the guru directs him to a Himalayan master who accepts the teenage boy as his disciple.

Chapters 25-28 Analysis

These chapters continue to elaborate on the familiar theme of Visions, Miracles, Foreknowledge, and Healing, emphasizing, in particular, the spiritual master’s foreknowledge of future events. In Chapter 25, Yogananda guesses that his brother is dead before he knows it as a fact. However, he does not yet have the classic foreknowledge that an advanced guru possesses; he thinks, instead, in signs and symbols, interpreting a damaged gift as a sign that Ananta is already dead. Nevertheless, Yogananda claims that he was correct since Ananta died on the same day that the gift was damaged.

The chapter also shows the power of prayer and its role in Yogananda’s increasing confidence that he can predict the future. After his intense prayers, for example, he foretells that his sister Nalini will recover from her illness, and she does. Sri Yukteswar also makes a contribution, knowing exactly what Nalini needs to do to cure the paralysis in her legs. Both Yogananda and Sri Yukteswar like to give an exact time when the patient will be fully recovered—a week, a month—and they are accurate to the day. Sri Yukteswar also knows the future better than the doctors since they have told Nalini that she cannot bear children. The guru says that within a few years, she will have two daughters, a prediction that turns out to be accurate. The guru who proves the doctors wrong is a recurring motif: The doctors are gloomy and predict death, but the guru knows better.

The title of Chapter 26, “The Science of Kriya Yoga,” again emphasizes The Coming Together of East and West. By describing Kriya Yoga as a science, Yogananda seeks to overcome the doubts of those who regard science and spirituality as mutually exclusive. In Chapter 24, he extensively quotes the depth psychologist Carl Jung, who said that “When a religious method recommends itself as ‘scientific,’ it can be certain of its public in the West. Yoga fulfills this expectation” (254).

Chapter 27, details the founding and development of the school, revealing Yogananda’s dynamism and organizational abilities. The final part of the chapter, however, strays into more familiar territory: another incident in which a swami has foreknowledge of death. Swami Pranabanandas predicts that his earthly life will end in the Himalayas. Yogananda also learns that the swami has been reborn on earth, just as he predicted. The reference to reincarnation creates a bridge to the next chapter.

Chapter 28 shows Yogananda’s still-growing ability to know the future. His spiritual stature is growing rapidly, and he can now sense things that the boys in his charge are unaware of. The boys on the hike want to jump into what looks like an inviting pond, but Yogananda writes that “a distaste for it [the pond] had arisen in [his] mind” (285). It turns out that the pond is full of water snakes. Yogananda’s intuition therefore chalks up another success.

Yogananda’s prediction about the destiny of Kashi shows that his foreknowledge extends beyond the boundaries of an individual life. He tells a 12-year-old boy that he will soon be dead, thus no doubt giving the boy a heavy burden that he must carry for the few remaining weeks of his life. Kashi’s anguish and bewilderment at what his beloved teacher tells him can only be guessed at. Yogananda is immediately aware of the cruelty of his remark: “The disclosure shocked and grieved me as well as everyone else” (285). However, he seeks to evade responsibility for saying it: “An irresistible power, it seemed, forced the words from my lips” (285). In the context of what follows, the “irresistible power” can be explained as a need to prepare the boy for the next stage of his journey. Soon after the boy’s death, Yogananda locates the newly reincarnated Kashi, still in the womb, and he later meets the child, who is given the same name and has an eerily similar appearance and personality. He shows affection to Yogananda, and he is able to pursue his spiritual goals, which the former Kashi was not. In the Hindu tradition, one is not usually reincarnated in such a readily recognizable form. By depicting a maximally cruel instance of fate—the death of a child—and then showing the effective resurrection of that child, Yogananda offers hope to his audience.