Reddit reviews Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship)

I took Yoga at a college. It was offered as part of the exercise sciences program (phys. ed just wouldn't do any longer). The instructor was great and I benefitted and did recommend it to many people. It also had a blatant religious component. We were required to buy and read Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Then we had to complete a 10 page paper dealing with the text, the class, and our lives.

I enjoyed the physical development and noticed great gains (we had an initial set of tests and a final set to gauge improvement). I also enjoyed learning a bit about Yoga. It did occur to me that in p.c. new agey California religion could be taught and exercised in a public exercise class so long as it was not Christianity. Namaste.

Basically, you are not a body. If life after death is still a question, it means that you think you are a body. But there does come a point after which it is not a question, just a fact. You are Spirit.

At that point, your body is a "wholly neutral" thing (see "A Course in Miracles") because its forms aren't positive or negative. Just utilitarian. If you want to go get breakfast at McDonald's, it will help to have two legs. But other than that, you wouldn't be attached to any particular form. Just whatever's useful at the time.

As such, materializing and dematerializing at will would be something that happens without any mystery. Read Autobiography of a Yogi. The Great Babaji is known to materialize and dematerialize in locations as a means of travel. (Much faster than booking with kayak.com.)

Jesus doesn't really seem to materialize, per se, though I have no doubt that he could. Same with Mary. But they do appear to people and have throughout the centuries. Usually to encourage us. (I refer you to "The Great Apparitions of Mary" by Ingo Swann)

And the Babaji actually shows up in different forms (different physical descriptions). Sometimes he has facial hair, sometimes not. He also speaks all languages. (Known to converse with people in their native tongues). Really quite an interesting read. Really ... a must read. Pity it took me so many years to get around to it. It's more Christian than very many modernly-labelled "Christian" books.

Welcome. Namaste. My humble suggestion is in agreement with Plutoid--order the sampler box. Hot yoga certainly doesn't have a corner on the market in being the most beneficial physically. It is on the athletic side, but as is several types of hatha yoga, power yoga etc. And I've been reading that the benefits of the heat tend to be more personal/experiential than scientific.

I'm no gymnast but Vinyasa has been the perfect equilibrium of physicality in postures (asanas), paired with breath strengthening (pranayama). I'd suggest you give it a shot to perfect your breathing, and then move on to the more physically demanding versions.

Re-reading your post, you did enjoy the heat--so my suggestion is to follow that direction if you still prefer it over the other styles, having worked on breath in this evaluative period.

Sidenote, in a very un-yogi-like observation, the founder of Bikram yoga, Bikram Choudhury, has been accused of many wrongdoings over the years. Despite the help and power he's given people over the years, he actually began to copyright his sequence of poses, which amassed him billions of dollars. In addition to his materialistic (and sometimes bizarre) pursuits, he has also been accused of sexual harassment by his disciples and trainees. If I did do hot yoga, I'd rather support a local studio that's not the Bikram brand.

Good luck and enjoy!

PS If you're interested in the spirituality and contemporary history, I highly recommend Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yogananda. He was a Shakespeare merged with a Buddha. Beautiful writing about Hindu yogic spirituality and his journey helping to bring yoga to America in the early 20th century.

A great book that connects meditation and spirituality is Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Yoga is actually a science of meditation that allows a person to connect to the highest levels of spirituality -- realizing your essentially unity with all that is.

What we know in the West as "yoga" is mostly the preparatory exercises for making the body strong and healthy to be able to meditate deeply for long periods of time.

So this book is a wonderful introduction to the power of spirituality gained from deep yoga meditation.

This book is what got me started meditating!

> I feel like I get a slight head change when I do it.

That feeling of getting a 'head change' will increase as your bran/mind gets this skill of meditating developed.

The effect can be quite pronounced.

> I do feel as though I have more mental energy and focus after doing this (placebo maybe?).

It's not at all a placebo effect. It comes from the fact that you have made your mind more efficient. Imagine a river that runs silently, so deep and quiet that it doesn't seem to move at all. Then imagine a whitewater stream that is chaotic and wild. Which has more power?

By harmonizing the flow of your mental energy, you stop it being wasted in chaotic patterns, which leaves you much more calm, rested, and energized.


>Eventually if I lose focus with reading will meditating for 10-15 minutes help bring the focus back?

Yes, although taking a light walk and breathing deeply with fresh oxygenated air will help as well.

Also, the meditation breaks will refresh and recharge you as well. After a while you could be surprised with what even a 5 minute meditation can do for you.

Part of what is going on when you are losing focus is that there is an internal conversation happening in your bran about the reading material that eventually takes over and takes you off track. You will find after a few months of continued practice that this conversation will start diminishing leaving you with a focus that will help you retain and remember the material much more efficiently.

>Very pleased with the results I've seen thus far. If you have anything you have read that you found especially helpful in your journey I'd love to have it.

What really got me going in meditation was a set of home-study lessons from an Indian yogi named Paramahansa Yogananda who came to America in the 1930s to teach meditation and internal yoga methods for achieving bliss to westerners.

He wrote the book Autobiography of a Yogi and while It deals with spiritual things, i figured that 'this guy could teach me how to meditate'. So I sent off for the home-study series of lessons he wrote in the science of internal yoga and meditation, and it actually ended up delivering in the promise he made of learning how to get in touch with inner peace and joy.

So that's how I ended up getting so excited about meditation -- essentially using Paramahansa's techiques of meditation I ended up learning to have spiritual experiences on demand. Which is pretty cool. The techniques themselves deal with the breath and so on, and the idea is that when the mind gets quiet enough then you can directly experience the inner bliss that is at the core of your being. What worked for me since I was extremely skeptical is that you can prove everything for yourself by direct experience.

I know you are basically looking for non-spiritual techniques / outlook on meditation, but since you asked, this is the stuff that's been inspiring me, teaching me, and thinking that meditation is the best thing ever.

The book that really got things started for me is the Autobiography of a Yogi. The group he founded is called Self Realization Fellowship who have carried on his mission of teaching powerful yoga techniques of meditation. I can certainly testify that their techniques work very well, and they have plenty of meditation groups around the world.

So if you like what I have written you can check to see if there is a local center of that group. However there are all kinds of groups out there.

What kinds of spiritual groups do you resonate with? Christian? Jewish? Hindu? Buddhist? Native American?

You can use meetup.com to find local mediation or spiritual groups, or find a metaphysical bookstore to find groups of like-minded people that get together. Then find the individuals that seem to 'glow' and are positive and lovely people and find out where they go for spiritual strength and support and training.

Then always check to see how you feel after you leave any person or group of people -- you should feel uplifted, joyful, buoyant, cheerful.

A group of people gathered in a place like a church should have a tangible uplifting atmosphere that takes you up out of your problems and makes you feel energized and positive.

Once you find a group that you like, you want to use the power of their community space plus a personal daily practice of connecting to the Divine within to really accelerate your growth.

If you keep asking around and making it clear what you are looking for, you will find individuals that will speak up. There are many like me that are passionate about this kind of thing, and there is plenty of power out there if you will look and start to open your 'spiritual eyes' and pray for guidance.

The Divine exists within you as you, so you will find plenty of inner help if you ask within and don't doubt and create static to mess up your answers. Just ask with faith and trust that you will be guided and you will, slowly but surely, even though you may make mistakes along the way.

I don't want to be too specific with my recommendations because you will have your own unique set of circumstances that will really resonate with you. However the principles will stay the same.

Edit:

IF your senses are strongly focused on material plane, as is the case with many people, you may not get seemingly strong results or a strong sense of light/upliftment. If your physical eyes are closed, a strong physical light may show up as rather dim. Likewise if your spiritual eye is closed, then a strong spiritual light may similarly show up dimly to you.

However just as the sunlight shows up very faintly in the first dim glow of dawn, if you follow that light it will keep getting stronger and stronger until you get full daylight. The same thing applies with spiritual practices. You may think you are not getting much of a result in most cases, but you are seeing the very subtle first rays of dawn. So if you only get a little peace, or only a little joy, or only a little love or upliftment, don't discount those results but treasure them instead. Just like tiny gold flakes will indicate a mother lode of gold nearby, tiny spiritual results will
Indicate great spiritual returns if you keep seeking and working and praying -- developing your spiritual abilities takes great time and patience -- but it is worth all that investment because nothing else will give you that kind of lasting and powerful results.

Autobiography of a Yogi - While not mind altering, it gave me a new perspective on things I would have initially labeled as quackery.

The Believing Brain by David Shermer - explains the mechanics of why we believe in the things we do without any critical examination especially on topics like religion, politics, ghosts, and conspiracy theories.

Awareness by Osho - Osho might have been a controversial personality, but some of his writings were brilliant and refreshing. This book blew me away and provoked me to live life more consciously and with greater deliberation.

The Freedom of Choice by Tom Chalko - Simple but powerful read (only 100 pages)

You should read this book

I recommend checking out Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda if anything it was entertaining to read and helped me look at things differently :)

Autobiography of a Yogi

Ohh I got some goodies for ya, Hermann Hesse is amazing and opened me up to many books.

1. Just buy it right now..seriously. The Book of Mirdad by Mikhail Naimy
   
   
2. Another Classic by Herman Hesse Demian
   
   3)Another with a similar feel as Siddhartha The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
   
   So these top 3 are the "closest" to Siddartha that I've read. You will defintely like the top 3, they are amazing books with such fundamental truths told through a story. All easy to read and similiar in length.
   
   These next 4 are just suggested for anyone that is into these types of books, I would almost guarantee that you will love them! They are just less "story" like. The Autobiography is an amazing read, and is indeed a story but it's non-fiction. The Way of Zen is just a beautiful book, but is not a fiction along with the Bhagavad and The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (The author actually suggests Siddhartha in it!)
   
   
3. If you liked Siddhartha heavily for it's spiritual aspects and the effect it left on you, this book has changed me deeply (they all have but this book is a little different) The Autobiography of a Yogi by
   Paramahansa Yogananda
   
   5)And his translation of The Bhagavad Gita
   
   6)Good ol' Allan Watts The Way of Zen
   
   
4. Another highly suggested book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma
   
   Enjoy my friend!

Autobiography of a Yogi - Paramahansa Yogananda

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - Swami Satchidananda

The Yoga Teachers' Toolbox - Le Page

The Essence of the Bhagavad Gita: Explained by Paramhansa Yogananda, As Remembered By His Disciple, Swami Kriyananda

Do you like fantasy stories? The Gita is actually just one chapter in India's greatest epic, the Mahabharata. It's an amazing story, and gives a great cultural background for Hinduism. Hindu's other epic, the Ramayana, is also lauded by many. I actually just began reading it recently.

Hindu's purest (and probably the world's longest) treatise on non-duality is the book at the very top of the bookshelf, Vasistha's Yoga. It's intense, so if you are just beginning, it's probably not the best intro to Hindu thought.

The most ancient written roots of pure Hinduism are found in the Upanishads. Eknath Eswaran's introduction and commentary are sublime.

A more modern, yet just as mystical take on Hinduism is The Autobiography of a Yogi.

India is definitely the place for that! I am born in the US but visited India in my college years when I was getting interested in spirituality. I am blessed that I had some strong experiences in the US and had a few in India. You can take that as confirmation that you are on the right path. You are right, they will just happen when you least expect it. Sometimes I get experiences like deja-vu, but I just take it as a confirmation that I am where I am supposed to be. I had a few amazing ones that really pushed me into spiritual life as well.

When I was getting interested in spirituality I was a big fan of Paramahamsa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. A classic from earlier in this century. This is maybe off topic, but when I was visiting Kurukshetra I had a sadhu stop me on the road and wanted to show me things and then asked for money. He actually changed a rock into some sugar candy in front of me. I thought "OK whatever, he did some slight of hand". Then he had me pick up a rock in my own hand, close his hand over mine, then chanted a mantra and it turned into sugar rock candy within my closed fist. I ate it. I had read about those things in the Paramahamsa Yogananda book and it was happening. He then asked for money and wasn't happy with how much I gave. He opened his shirt and showed me scars and said he had been doing a lot of austerities!

An interesting experience. I eventually read more of Shrila Prabhupada's books and settled in as a Hare Krishna devotee. Shrila Prabhupada and even Paramahamsa Yogananda explained that those sort of mystic powers are not the end goal of self-realization.

This is also a great book, this person is still alive and has written an amazing tale of his travels from the US around the world in search of God. How he ends up in Himalayas living amongst the yogis and then meets his guru.
The Journey Home

The authors site: http://www.thejourneyhomebook.com/

Gratitude is very powerful. Are you familiar with Yogananda?

Autobiography of a Yogi (Self-Realization Fellowship) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0876120796/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UrH0CbZT74B9G

You can do your own research about this, it's not too hard to track down the roots of what grew into american pop yoga from wikipedia. There are multiple books too about original yogis. It is true, some of their work is physical related, but it is not at all how westerners think of it. This book is a good place to start to understand why yoga is the way it is in America today, and also a lot of experiences and stories from India. People in this subreddit may have passing knowledge of this sort of thing, like myself, but if you seek the truth, there is plenty of already written material that covers what you're asking.

The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy

Autobiography of a Yogi

The Field,
The Intention Experiment, The Bond

Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah