I heard about Autobiography of a Yogi when I was watching this show called Ancient Aliens on the History channel.
If you haven’t heard of Ancient Aliens, it’s basically this group of people talking about how aliens did all these things for us and to us. Like making the Pyramids in Egypt or helping to advance our technology.
I swear the narrator asks the rhetorical question, did aliens do this/that at least every 5 or 10 minutes. The answer to that question is always yes. Tthe producers could easily shave off 10-15 minutes of the show, if they just took out the silly rhetorical question narration.
Anyways, I digress. The episode which introduced me to this book was discussing how aliens helped Steve Jobs. They posited that with the help of aliens he was able invent and advance our technology way more rapidly than ever before. e.g. the iPhone.
When discussing Steve Jobs, they mentioned a bunch of books that had an impact on him. And one of them was the Autobiography of a Yogi.
I like to do yoga and so I was interested in what exactly this book was about. I hadn’t really heard about it before and to be honest, it didn’t sound that interesting.
After I did some research, I found it was relatively popular and highly reviewed book.
In summary, The Autobiography of a Yogi illustrates the life of a ‘yogi’ or one who practices that lifestyle. It thoroughly illustrates the journey he took through life and lifestyle it entails.
Having been to India and seeing some of the spiritual people out in public (Varanasi), it was a very eye opening read.
After finishing the book, I also realized that a lot of the ‘yoga’ that we practice in the US, probably isn’t that authentic. I believe that Yoga in India, is much more of a spiritual practice than that of exercise.
In the US, there is always that component of spirituality, but it’s definitely not emphasized in the classes I have taken.
For better or for worse, I still think some yoga or Western yoga is better than no yoga at all.
So in summary, if you want to get an idea of what real Yoga is about, I would recommend taking a look at this book.
It was enlightening to gain more perspective on Yoga and the ways of a Yogi.
If you practice yoga, this might change the way you approach and think of yoga, in a good way! Going back to the roots is always a good thing I think.
If you don’t know much about yoga, or would like to learn more, here is a little more background about Yoga from Wikipedia.
If you’ve read this book, I would love to hear your thoughts!
Want to know what else I’ve been reading? Here is a link to some of my other book reviews!
I read the book about 45 years ago. I found it enlightening and transformational in every sense of the word.
Hi John, thanks for the note. I knew it was old, but didn’t realize how old until you just mentioned it! I’ve been looking at other books as a result like the Bhagavad Gita, have you come across any other recommended reads that cover similar or related topics?
Such books can be ageless. It was perfect for me in the early 70s. I greatly liked Alan Watt’s autobio In My Own Way. I didn’t like his The Way Of Zen so much. I’m more into Ayn Rand, Fountainhead, etc. though I hear Trump likes her a lot so I may have to cancel my fan club membership, while still maintaining my individuality. As evidenced by my blog I now read Lapham’s Quarterly voraciously for it multi-millennium sampling on various topics and philosophies.
John, thank you for the recommendations I will start looking into these 🙂