Strangely, no edition of the Autobiography of a Yogi can be found stating it to be a “2nd edition”. Sometimes, therefore, a London edition by Rider and Company, published in Great Britain, is considered the 2nd edition. Did the Philosophical Library maybe figure: “Well, since in Great Britain another publishing house also printed their first edition, we’ll count that as our 2nd edition.” Not very likely! As a matter of fact, the 3rd and 4th editions both refer to the existence of a 2nd Philosophical Library edition, printed in 1949. But then… where did it disappear to?
Also strangely, two quite different versions of the 1946 1st edition exist: A thinner and a thicker book- quite different in appearance. Both, however, state the year 1946 as their publication year.
Three reasons make it certain that the thicker 1946 version is, in truth, the 1949 2nd edition – which has exactly the same wording as the 1st edition, without even changing the publishing year:
1) It was printed on different, thicker paper; also the cover colors are slightly different. And the binding (the number of “signatures”, groups of pages sewn together) is different as well: these differences wouldn’t usually happen within a single edition.
2) The table of illustrations and the order of illustrations are different in the two books. Also the thicker edition’s illustrations are double sided, the thinner edition’s are single sided. In other words, the set-up of both books is different, meaning: these are obviously two different editions.
3) On the back of the dust jacket of the thinner book is a list of other books published by Philosophical Library, all published between 1942 and 1946. On the back of the dust jacket of the thicker edition is a list of books published in 1948 and 1949, showing that this book must have been printed in 1949 or later. It couldn’t have been published in 1946.
So: If you are a owner of a 1946 edition and want to find out if it’s a true 1st or (sigh!) a 2nd edition, here is what you can do: measure the thickness of the book. If it is 7/8″, and if it has thin, almost translucent paper, and find single sided illustrations, you have a 1st edition. If however you measure 1-3/16″, seeing thicker paper and double sided illustrations, you have a 1949 2nd edition!
To make things even more mysterious: there is yet another version of the 1946 edition, and it is difficult to place it. It is 1-1/4″ thick and is printed on slightly thicker paper than the 1st edition, not on reflective paper. The list of books on the back is the same as in the 1st edition, but, on the other hand, it shares the same double-sided illustrations which one finds in the 2nd edition. We leave it to the reader to figure out where it belongs to: to the first or to the second edition. (Maybe a “in-between” edition?)
Worldwide
In 1949 the Autobiography of a Yogi was, as we said, also published in Great Britain, by Rider & Company. For that edition, Yogananda wrote: “The arrangement for a London edition of this book has given me opportunity to revise, and slightly to enlarge, the text. Besides new material in the last chapter, I have added a number of footnotes in which I have answered questions sent me by readers of the American edition.” Many of these changes, however, didn’t find their way into any of the later American editions.
At any rate, after Great Britain many other countries followed, opening all corners of the world to the liberating message of Kriya Yoga and Self-realization. One is reminded of Yogananda’s words in his Autobiography:
“Many spiritually thirsty men and women eventually found their way to the cool waters of Kriya Yoga. Just as in the Hindu legend, where Mother Ganges offers her divine draught to the parched devotee Bhagirath, so the celestial flood of Kriya rolled from the secret fastnesses of the Himalayas into the dusty haunts of men.”
Next chapter: 1951, 3rd edition