“Autobiography of a Yogi” (1946) is a fucking great book so far and I’d even call it a modern spiritual classic. If you’re looking to get into Hinduism but reading older texts like the Gitas, Vedas, or Upanishads generally sounds daunting to you, then this would be a great primer.(Yes, to get it out of the way, I understand people today and online have grievances against Indians, particularly for flooding en masse into Western nations like the U.S. and Canada, abuse of the immigration system and H1B visas, etc., but it’s still just a great book. I’m aware of the meme answers I’ll get in response.)As a story it’s incredibly entertaining, too. Yogananda has a great storyteller’s touch, a novelistic coherence to the whole thing, with lots of nested stories within the book and many fascinating characters met along the way. He’s a surprisingly eloquent stylist, too, the book is ornately written with poetic diction. Some people have made it a habit to mock Westerners today interested in Eastern spiritual teachings, the whole excesses, hypocrisies, or flaws from the hippie counterculture to the modern New Age movement and the like, associated with this spiritual tourism; but, when you study some authentic forms of Eastern spirituality, like the Kriya Yoga lineage brought to the West by Yogananda and its roots in Vedic teachings, it’s hard not to see why some people are impressed by it. They go more straightforwardly into some deeper philosophical exploration of core existential issues than, perhaps, the mainstream forms of religion that more in the West are familiar with (Christianity, Judaism, and increasingly Islam today from immigration) often do, in people’s experiences with them. And this is not necessarily even in a supremacist way, but in a harmonious and universalist way, open to other traditions and even claiming a possible shared origin and unity with them. Teachings like Yogananda’s make me see and respect Christ and Christianity in a profounder way, for instance, much as some may be angry or contemptuous of that very notion (out of the mindset of viewing religion like a competition).What do people think? Any other Yogananda enjoyers here? Am I a race-traitor for even appreciating some of Indian spirituality seriously as a Westerner? What’s going on in your heads?
>>24784516>streets shitter canon>even the cover looks yellowish brownew
>>24784516>heI thought that was a girl.
Your post is mostly defending reading the book rather than really advocating it. 4chan will always say what upsets you. You invite it. Buddha was an Indian and no one says anything about Buddhist threads
>>24784516I'd rather read the Autobiography of Yogi Berra
>>24784516I haven’t read all of it — just 100 pages or so, but eventually I’ll finish it. Yeah man it’s a super good read… it’s interesting how many supernatural masters there are in it? Isn’t there some man who’s able to levitate? Or someone who comes back from the dead or something? Frankly there is a part of me that thinks eastern spirituality is just far deeper… sure the west is “smarter,” but there really seem to have been some Hindu masters who achieved enlightenment. Ramana Maharishi seems to have. Neem Karoli Baba might have really had special powers. I guess I’ll just say that yeah it’s a gateway to better texts. It’s worth reading the texts but it really is no small feat that these men gave up their lives to mediate constantly. I think renouncing the physical word does give you a sort of peace. But it is interesting how the saddhu is supported in India? Anyway yeah.
>>24784516debunked by krishnamurti, sorry,
>>24784567Buddha was a white Aryan
I cannot relate to the spiritual traditions of my own culture. I have no hope of understand a foreign tradition.
>>24784732How do you suppose that
>>24784516>>24784629I'd rather read the Autobiography of Yogi Bear!
>>24784749Because jeets aren't even self-aware much less capable of enlightenment.
>>24784758Nigger
>>24784763Pajeet my son you are like 85% African.
>>24784777Trips of truth — but Jeets are more capable of enlightenment *because* of their lack of self-awareness — I was just calling you nigger because you are fucking stupid
