An introduction to religious and spiritual experience

Swami Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952)
Born Mukunda Lal Ghosh, Paramahansa Yogananda recounts his 
extraordinary life in 
Autobiography of a Yogi
. In the book he tells of his 
profound spiritual experiences, as well as his meetings with Mahatma 
Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. He gives a deep insight into the life of 
a mystic, right from his very earliest memories of being aware of a 
previous incarnation as a yogi in the Himalayas and impatience with the 
limitations of his infant body. His mother died when he was young, 
and he was warned in a vision that she was on her deathbed far from 
home, arranging the wedding of his elder brother. She left him a mystic 
amulet, with a message foretelling his future as a yogi.
Paramahansa Yogananda saw his guru (referred to in the quote below 
as ‘gurudeva’, meaning divine teacher) Sri Yukteswar, while walking in 
Benares and was then guided to him by being unable to walk in any other 
direction.
Retracing my steps as though wing-shod, I reached the narrow lane. 
My quick glance revealed the quiet figure, steadily gazing in my 
direction. A few eager steps and I was at his feet.
‘Gurudeva!’ The divine face was the one I had seen in a thousand 
visions. . . .
‘O my own, you have come to meet me!’ My guru uttered the words 
again and again in Bengali, his voice tremulous with joy. ‘How many 
years have I waited for you!’
We entered a oneness of silence; words seemed the rankest superflui-
ties. Eloquence flowed in soundless chant from the heart of master to 
disciple. With an antenna of irrefragable insight I sensed that my guru 
knew God and would lead me to Him. The obscuration of this life 
disappeared in a fragile dawn of prenatal memories. Dramatic time! 
Past, present, and future are its cycling scenes. This was not the first 
sun to find me at these holy feet!
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Mystics
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Paramahansa Yogananda
 
gave an account of his experience of cosmic 
consciousness, induced by his Guru, Sri Yukteswar, who gently struck him 
on the chest above the heart:
My body became immovably rooted; breath was drawn out of my 
lungs as if by a huge magnet. Soul and mind instantly lost their physi-
cal bondage and streamed out like a fluid piercing light from my every 
pore. The flesh was as though dead; yet in my intense awareness 
I knew that never before had I been so fully alive. My sense of identity 
was no longer narrowly confined to a body but embraced the circum-
ambient atoms. People on distant streets seemed to be moving gently 
over my own remote periphery. The roots of plants and trees appeared 
through a dim transparency of the soil; I discerned the inward flow of 
their sap.
. . . The unifying light alternated with materializations of form, 
the metamorphoses revealing the law of cause and effect in creation.
An oceanic joy broke upon calm endless shores of my soul. The 
Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless 
tissues of light. . . . 
I cognized the centre of the empyrean as a point of intuitive percep-
tion in my heart. Irradiating splendour issued from my nucleus to every