Autobiography of a Yogi

Jesus Christ was a Jewish preacher who was likely born in 4 or 5 BCE and was crucified by the Romans around AD 30 or 33. The four New Testament gospels state that Jesus was resurrected from the dead on the third day and was at some point after that seen by his disciples. In the gospels, he charged his disciples with a mission to spread his teachings across the nations and then ascended into heaven to be with God the Father. Christians believe that Christ was the Son of God and enjoys that status eternally.

Yogananda honors Christ and regards him as possessing the same exalted status as the avatar Lord Krishna. He often quotes Christ’s words to illustrate some point he is making about Indian spirituality, and he shows that Christ’s teachings are compatible with the Vedanta. In the heavily Christian environment of 1920s America, this emphasis on the divinity of Jesus is an important part of Yogananda’s religious diplomacy. A high compliment Yogananda pays to an Indian spiritual master is to call him “Christlike” (3).

Yogananda even has a vision of Christ one night at his hermitage in Encinitas. Jesus appears as a young man of about 25 (like Babaji), “with a sparse beard and moustache; his long black hair, parted in the middle, was haloed by shimmering gold” (537). Yogananda is struck by Jesus’s “eternally wondrous” eyes, and in his “glorious gaze [he] felt the power that upholds the myriad worlds” (537).

Babaji is a Mahaavatar (Great Avatar), who is revered by many in India as an immortal saint. There are no details of Babaji’s date or place of birth. He is said to be many centuries old, but when he visits his devotees, he has the appearance of a 25-year-old man of medium build and height, with fair skin and long, copper-colored hair. He moves around the Himalayas with a small group of disciples. His historical mission, according to Yogananda, has been to “assist prophets in carrying out their special dispensations” (333).

Babaji appears from time to time to his followers. He was the guru of Lahiri Mahasaya. On their first meeting, Babaji materializes a palace in the Himalayas for Lahiri, who once desired to have such a thing. Sri Yukteswar meets Babaji three times, in Allahabad, Serampore, and Banaras, and promises to send him a disciple who will spread the knowledge of yoga in the West. (This is Yogananda.) Sri Yukteswar tells Yogananda that Babaji’s “spiritual state is beyond human comprehension. […] The dwarfed vision of men cannot pierce to his transcendental star” (332). Babaji also appears once to Yogananda, when the latter was about to leave for America. Babaji tells Yogananda to be confident that his mission to America will be successful. Babaji has an interest in the West and wants East and West to learn from each other.

Swami Kebalananda spent time with Babaji in the Himalayas, and he tells Yogananda how he witnessed the Mahaavatar enable one disciple to avoid death by fire and raised another disciple from the dead. Ram Gopal tells Yogananda that he met Babaji and Babaji’s sister Mataji, who has also lived for centuries. Gopal reports that Babaji said he was about to shed his physical form, but Mataji pleaded with him to retain it. Babaji then promised his sister that he would always retain his physical body. Lahiri Mahasaya reported that Babaji also had great humility. Once he had witnessed the saint washing the feet of a sadhu (an ascetic or renunciate) at the Kumbha Mela festival. Babaji remarked that humility is “the greatest of virtues, pleasing to God above all others” (355).

Lahiri Mahasaya (1828-1895) was a spiritual master who claimed to be a disciple of Babaji. The guru of Yogananda’s parents and of Sri Yukteswar, he was responsible for reviving the knowledge of Kriya Yoga.

Lahiri Mahasaya was born in Ghurni near Krishnanager, Bengal. At school, he studied the Vedas, and in 1846 he married Srimati Kashi Moni, with whom he had two sons and three daughters. In 1851, Lahiri Mahasaya became an accountant in the military engineering department of the British government, and over the years he received many promotions. According to Yogananda’s account of his life, he met Babaji in the Himalayas in 1861, when he was 32, and Babaji initiated him into Kriya Yoga. From that point on, Lahiri Mahasaya became a householder-yogi, bringing Kriya Yoga to whoever sincerely desired it while also supporting his family through his career in government. Yogananda presents Lahiri Mahasaya as an example of a modern, practical yogi who lived a life well balanced between worldly responsibilities and spiritual practice and teaching.

According to Yogananda, Lahiri Mahasaya performed many miracles. He cured his disciple, Ramu, of lifelong blindness, and he healed his employer’s wife. He also raised his disciple Rama from the dead and ensured that the ninth child of Abhoya, one of his disciples, would be born alive and survive. (Abhoya had previously had eight children, and none had survived infancy.) In addition to performing miracles, Lahiri Mahasaya had the power to disappear from sight and to levitate.

After he died in 1895, he appeared in his resurrected body the next day to three disciples in three different cities. Yogananda commented on the significance of Lahiri Mahasaya’s life: “In his power to raise his close disciples to Christlike stature and in his wide dissemination of truth among the masses, Lahiri Mahasaya ranks among the saviors of mankind” (369).