Autobiography of a Yogi

“‘What is behind the darkness of closed eyes?’ This probing thought came powerfully into my mind. An immense flash of light at once manifested to my inner gaze. Divine shapes of saints, sitting in meditation posture in mountain caves, formed like miniature pictures on the large screen of radiance within my forehead.”

Yogananda is eight years old when he has this vision. The figures tell him that they are the Himalayan yogis. The vision ends, but the light expands to infinity, and from this point the boy knows that his destiny is to seek God. The passage reveals his intensely spiritual nature from an early age.

“God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature.”

In his mid-teens, Mukunda is in a temple contemplating an image of the goddess Kali. Kali is often presented as a ferocious goddess. She has many aspects, but one thing she represents is destruction. Mukunda is trying to puzzle out the dual aspect of nature, both benign and terrible. He tries to sort things out with this simple statement of the essence of the Vedantic worldview.

“Ordinary love is selfish, darkly rooted in desires and satisfactions. Divine love is without condition, without boundary, without change. The flux of the human heart is gone forever at the transfixing touch of pure love.”

Sri Yukteswar speaks to Yogananda, encouraging him to embark on a spiritual relationship between them that will function from the level of infinite love. Quoting the words of the master is one of Yogananda’s techniques for instructing his readers in cosmic truths.