Who was Yogananda, and why should we pay any particular attention to what he said?
Paramhansa Yogananda wrote the spiritual classic, Autobiography of a Yogi. He was a great master of yoga, an enlightened sage. Yogananda was like Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, who told his disciple Arjuna that he knew all of their many incarnations. The idea is that spiritually advanced souls know these things, and as we advance, we will too. Yogananda knew things most people couldn’t possibly know. He told his disciples: “I know every thought you think,” and proved it to them again and again. There are many stories demonstrating Yogananda’s remarkable inner knowledge in Kriyananda’s book, The Path. Once someone sent Yogananda an unsigned letter criticizing the yogi for “promoting Jesus in the West.” The letter writer asserted that Christ was a myth. Sometime later, Yogananda saw a man in a public library and sat next to him. “Why did you write me that letter?” he inquired. The man almost jumped. “What letter?” “The one in which you claimed that Christ was a myth.” “How could you possi
