Autobiography of a Yogi

by Paramahansa Yogananda. This is the man's life story of his spiritual journey in India and America. This is Yoga with a big Y. He begins his life always knowing and searching for a higher power. His run-ins with many saints and the miracles they perform seem magical. The skeptic in me always held a splash of incredulity of some of the tales: saints with two bodies, resurrections, saint who could live without food or water, levitation, curing disease, etc. At the same time, these stories are inspiring, and i don't reject any of it outright. Authenticated by impartial coroners, the power of yoga is such that upon death, Yogananda's body did not decay for one month before he was burried.

Additionally, his overall message of uniting East and West is inspiring. Throughout the book he compares Hindu and Christian teaching showing that they have much more similarities than differences. In America, i've seen all too well the divisive nature of the Christianity. This book is a refreshing look at religion and its place in the world.

Some gems:

It is the Infinite, the Ocean of Power, that lies behind all phenomenal manifestations. Our eagerness for worldly activity kills in us the sense of spiritual awe. Because modern science tells us how to utilize the power of Nature, we fail to comprehend the Great Life in back of all names and forms. Familiarity with Nature has bred contempt for her ultimate secrets; our relation with her is one of practical business. On the other hand, when the seld is in communion with a higher power, Nature automatically obeys, without stress or strain, the will of man.

quoting the great guru Babaji:

'Child, for the faults of the many, judge not the whole. Everything on earth is of mixed character, like a mingling of sand and sugar. Be like the wise who seizes the sugar, and leaves the sand untouched.'

War and crime never pay. The billions of dollars that went up in the smoke of explosive nothingness would have been sufficient to have made a new world, one almost free of disease and completely free of poverty. Not an earth of fear, chaos, famine, pestilence, the danse macabre, but one broad land of peace, prosperity, and widening knowledge.