The Autobiography of a Yogi is today in its 13th edition. It has truly become a spiritual classic. It can be found all over the world and has been elected as one of the 100 most important spiritual books of the century.
In the West, in 1993, celebrating Yogananda’s 100th birthday anniversary, the Ananda community re-published the original 1946 edition (Crystal Clarity Publishers).
You can freely read it online.
Celebrating 50 years of the Autobiography of a Yogi, in 1996, in India, SRF/YSS also arranged for the re-publication of the original 1946 edition, “in response to interest generated by the fiftieth anniversary of this historic work” (Jaico-Publishers).
Ananda, too, in 2004, published that edition in India, since the Jaico book was either out of print or very hard to find in bookstores.
In 2021, celebrating 75 years of the Autobiography of a Yogi, SRF published a 75th Anniversary Deluxe Edition.
The original 1946 Autobiography of a Yogi is now in the public domain. Everyone can freely print it, including all its pictures. Its text can be downloaded from the internet.
Also, thanks to the internet, hardcopies of all early editions can be obtained by interested readers, with some patience. Obviously the 1st and 3rd editions are highly requested, and expensive. One also finds precious editions signed by Yogananda.
Here we see a beautiful example, signed for the famous actor and comedian Harold Lloyd (1893–1971). He was a Freemason, a highest ranking “Imperial potentate” at Shriner International, even featured on the cover of the TIME magazine).
In the East-West magazine May-June 1948, in an article Formal Opening–Self-Realization, Golden World Colony, we read that Harold Lloyd’s mother Sarah Elisabeth (Fraser) Lloyd
was one of the speakers during that event. Yogananda introduces her like this: “Here is Mrs. Lloyd. As a guest in her home, I have met her son, Harold Lloyd, the great comedian, who is a wonderful person and has high ideals. Mrs. Lloyd, will you say a word?”
The Autobiography of a Yogi is a book that will probably make even more history, if Yogananda’s statement will prove to be true: “The blessed role of Kriya Yoga in East and West has hardly more than just begun.”
Beautifully, all editions end with Yogananda’s words of Love: “Lord, Thou hast given this monk a large family”.
This brings us to our last question: What did he mean with “large family”? “SRF members”? “All his disciples”? “All kriyabans of any line”? Or “even larger…”?
Oh Lord, may we all understand Yogananda’s Divine Love!
An ending story:
Here is a fascinating ending story for all to enjoy, which Yogananda originally wanted to include in his Autobiography of a Yogi:
Yogananda tells of the following event which one of his friends witnessed with his own eyes: The point of his story was to show that bodies can be changed “like car models”:
There was a young man in India who had died, and his body was lying ready for cremation; the family was about to set fire to the funeral pyre. At this moment an old yogi came running out of a nearby forest, shouting: “Stop it, stop it! I need that young body, cremate this one”, and the family was stunned. He fell to the ground, dead. A moment later the young man leapt up off the pyre; before anybody was able catch him, he ran off into the forest. The family could only cremate the old man’s body. That was a yogi who changed his “model”: His body was too old- and so he got himself into a new “model”!
Yogananda explains that he couldn’t find his saintly friend who had witnessed this incredible scene- that’s why he chose not to publish it.
ENDING PRAYER
Oh Lord,
May this detail-study never draw anyone away
from his simple love for Yogananda
and his divine Autobiography of a Yogi!
Sat-Gurum twam namami! AUM