Book
Review - Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography Of A Yogi.
How can a book be rubbish and brilliant at
the same time? This one achieves it. Yogananda cornered the market in telling
tall stories with a straight face, and making people swallow them. The plot of
this long autobiography (fiction to the core) is straightforward enough.
Yogananda traces his life story from infancy to when he took his place as a
fully qualified Yogi. He is half-reluctant to take on such a role at first, for
being unsure of himself and the temptations to take his life in other
directions. He goes on to meet a series of incredibly remarkable people with
occult powers beyond anything you’d see in The X-Files, but all of whom seem to
take their abilities for granted. In fact, they actually find him the oddity
for not having mastered such wonders. The ludicrous things he sees are legion,
but my favourite is the one armed-policeman who has lost his arm to a tiger in
the jungle. On meeting him again, Yogananda is somewhat surprised to see the
man has two arms again. The man seems rather puzzled that Yogananda doesn’t
know you can grow them back at will.
Bemused and amazed by the various sages and
miracle workers he encounters, Yogananda slowly grows more confident of his own
abilities, and takes his place as a Yogi accordingly. For a supposedly true
story, it reads with astonishing clarity and beguiling charm. Of course, it’s
all straight out of Alice In Wonderland, but the sincerity oozes through every
page with frightening ease. Many people utterly failed sadly to notice that
they had been sold a yarn by a master story teller, and set off for India to
see for themselves. Yogananda had effectively helped launch the migration to
the East of many westerners, who disillusioned by Christianity, turned not to
Humanism (which was too middle class to notice a gap in the youth market) but
to the gurus and swamis who promised that they were just like Yogananda.
Tragically, many of those gurus also realized the importance of selling their
mysticism directly to the West, and the 1970’s saw the rise of cults ruled by
Atavistic Maharajis, swamis, and Bhagwans. Yogananda’s book sold well in the
early days of that invasion of the minds of the young; Yogananda was fully
aware that he was contributing to this; he concludes the ‘autobiography’ by
talking of meetings with western saints able to do equally impossible things
before breakfast. So, a book can be rubbish and brilliant at one and the same
time. I suppose that is a miracle of sorts.
Arthur Chappell
LINK TO THIS PAGEhttp://arthurchappell.me.uk/book.review-yogananda-autobiography.of.a.yogi.htm
LINKS TO OTHER PEOPLES PAGES E-mail arthur@chappell7300.freeserve.co.uk
UPDATES MYSPACE - http://www.myspace.com/arthurchappell
FACEBOOK - http://profile.to/arthurchappell/
FACEBOOK BLOG http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blogpage.php?blogid=85623
MY BOOKS - http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=952521
MY TWITTER PAGE - http://twitter.com/arthurchappell