Autobiography of a Yogi

The following quotation from the gospel of John appears on the title page of Autobiography of a Yogi: “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe” (4:48). Yogananda follows this maxim, providing an overwhelming number of “signs and wonders” including divine visions, predictions of the future, telepathic communication, and miraculous healings to convince his Western readers that the East has something to offer them. The first supernatural occurrence is in Chapter 1, when the spiritual master Lahiri Mahasaya appears before Yogananda’s father’s eyes to tell him that he is being too hard on his employee in mocking his desire to visit his guru. Father is so impressed by the guru’s ability to materialize and intercede for his disciple that he becomes a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya himself, virtually on the spot. The miracles described in the text usually have this kind of transformative effect on those who witness them. People find their lives permanently changed by the divine intervention. Also in Chapter 1, eight-year-old Mukunda is healed from Asiatic cholera—an illness that was frequently fatal at that time—simply by gazing at the photograph of Lahiri Mahasaya that adorns the family altar. Later in the same chapter, Mukunda has a vision of a group of saints who declare themselves to be Himalayan yogis. Immediately after that, he experiences a “wondrous glow” and a disembodied voice that declares, “I am Ishwara. I am Light” (13). (Iswara, Yogananda explains in a footnote, is the Lord in his aspect as cosmic ruler.)

In the course of the book, Yogananda describes 22 of his visions. These include visions of the Divine Mother, the goddess Kali, Lord Krishna, Christ and the Holy Grail, and a captain in charge of a battleship in World War I. On one occasion, the vision came in a dream: a pet deer whose life he had tried to save told him that in his efforts to save him, he was holding him back. Yogananda awoke, and the deer, which was in the corner of the room, stumbled to its feet and then dropped dead (Chapter 27). One frequently recurring vision that came when he was young was the face of his future spiritual master. By the time he meets the guru, as recorded in Chapter 10, he has seen his face “in a thousand visions” (102).

The miracles and healings come thick and fast. At least eight are attributed to Lahiri Mahasaya, including restoring the sight of a man blind from birth and raising his disciple Rama from the dead. Sri Yukteswar is recorded as having performed up to 10 miracles, including the healing of people with chronic diseases. In addition to Rama, Yogananda mentions five other examples of resurrection from the dead. These are Christ, Kabir (a 16th-century saint), a man who jumped from a Himalayan cliff (resurrected by Babaji), Lahiri Mahasaya, and Sri Yukteswar. Taken together, these resurrections present Yogananda and his living teachers as part of a chain of mystical knowledge spanning millennia and crossing geographical and religious boundaries.

Another arrow in the guru’s quiver is the ability to predict the future. There are numerous examples. When Mukunda is 11 years old, he has foreknowledge of his mother’s death. Later, he has foreknowledge of the imminent death of Kashi, one of his students at the school he founded. When Mukunda is 12, Swami Pranabananda tells him his destiny is to pursue a spiritual path of renunciation and yoga. Sri Yukteswar knows in advance that Mukunda will soon contract Asiatic cholera; he also has foreknowledge that one day Yogananda will go to America and that while there he will come to love the taste of strawberries, even though he dislikes them now. Sri Yukteswar also knows that Nalini, Yogananda’s sister, will within a few years give birth to two children, even though the doctors have said she is unable to bear children. Lahiri Mahasaya predicted that 50 years after his death, his biography would be written due to an interest in yoga in the West. Sri Yukteswar tells Yogananda that writing Lahiri’s life story will be part of his work.

Even in the time of Christ, miracles were a double-edged sword, as likely to inspire skepticism as belief. Yogananda confronts the skepticism of his 21st-century audience by explaining, in “The Law of Miracles,” that the miraculous events he describes are not actually supernatural, but instead subject to natural laws not yet accessible to science. When Babaji conjures a golden palace out of thin air, he does so by controlling the arrangement of atoms. Yogananda consistently uses terms and theories derived from physics and other sciences to explain the wonders that he and other gurus perform. By doing so, he not only enhances his credibility but also advances his larger project of synthesizing Eastern and Western thought.

When one adds to all this the various supernormal powers that Yogananda describes—including levitation, being in two places at once, becoming invisible, and not needing to sleep or eat or even take breath—Yogananda compiles a dazzling array of “signs and wonders” designed to persuade his Western readers that, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet tells his friend Horatio, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in their philosophy.