Book review: Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Book review: Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. 1946 First Edition, First Printing Published by THE PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY, INC. 15 East 40th Street, New York, N. Y. 1995 Reprint of the 1946 First Edition Published by Crystal Clarity Publishers, USA.

A fantastic book. Recommended for everybody who wants to become aware of the reality of this world, of what lies behind the shroud of the mist that prevents us seeing beyond the moronic daily grind.

I decided to read this book sometime in 2012 C.E., but somehow read a few other Yoga books before I could start with this most famous of all Yoga and spirituality book. It was probably in the list of the favourite book of some celebrity business entrepreneur, although I dont clearly remember now when I first came to know about this book.

I did not always like the author's prose, the usage from his age often sounded cliché, and at some places thought it repetitive [which can be forgiven considering the eagerness the author felt in succeeding in conveying his message]. At one point towards the end where the writer explains his position regarding Indian Nationalism, a much controversial topic in the then colonial India, I thought he was not straight forward to say the least, or worse, that his thinking lacked clarity.

Having said that, the book presents the reality of a world that is unknown to most of us, literally and figuratively. It shows how little the conventional education system teaches us and how little the conventional knowledge contains about the reality of the universe, of what is important, of what is preferable. It makes you aware how blissfully ignorant we remain and waste the valuable life in the pursuit of the false, valueless, illusory objectives, forgetting our purpose in this world.

Paramhansa Yogananda quotes:

“So long as the soul of man is encased in one, two, or three body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings—astral and causal—still remain to prevent the soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny human soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Amplitude.”

-Autobiography of a Yogi (Reprint of Original 1946 Edition), Yogananda, Paramhansa, page 391 | location 5984-5988

The book also shows through the personal experiences of the author and his Guru and other Yogis the ever-present love of the Allah Subhanahu Tayala, the God, throughout the universe, the love that sustains the universe, sustains the devotee.

It is above all things that I said, a book of love.

Goodreads.com: Abu Raihan Muhammed Khalid's Reviews > Autobiography of a Yogi

Book Review: In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire by Tom Holland

Book Review

In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire 
by Tom Holland 

Copyright © 2012 by Tom Holland, All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. eISBN: 978-0-385-53136-8.

I was delighted at the beginning of the book seeing the ease with which Mr. Holland glides through the narrative. The opening of the book like a thriller, his mastery over the language and the smooth edges of the stories are all very delightful.

But after I came to about the half of the book I started to wonder was it not supposed to be a book on the history of Islam? Why are these mind boggling intricate details of the 4th, 5th century C.E. dynasties of Persia and Rome occupying the two thirds of the book then? I was getting impatient to get started with what the title of the book promised.

Then I became aware of the subtle indications throughout the book that tries rather to hurt the feelings of a Muslim, indications and suggestions such the Islamic source of law, the Sunnah or the Seerah, was actually the work of the newly converted Jew scholars of the famous Jew religious schools in Sura and Pumpedita in modern day Iraq and that the Hadith or the traditions that are attributed to the Prophet Muhammad SA were actually invented by the Jew scholar converts and then following their Jew system of referencing attributed those to the Prophet SA. This in addition to that the location of the Kaba, the House of Allah Sunhanahu Tayala, is not beyond controversy and may be the subject to error by an entire city, and that the Quran Majid that we have now may be not what the Prophet SA actually gave to the people, and attributing the Quran to the Prophet Sa instead of it being the words of Allah Subhanahu Tayala. In effect reducing the whole of Islam to a shadow of something that, at best, did not exist or worse created by the later Arab elites to justify their position in power.

Mr. Holland says:

"Fortunately for them, just across the mudflats from Kufa—where the yearning to forge a new understanding of Islam was at its most turbulent and intense—the perfect role models were ready to hand. The rabbis of Sura, after all, had been labouring for many centuries to solve precisely the sort of problem that now confronted the ulama."

He then cements the suggestion by stating:

"Was it merely coincidence, then, that the earliest and most influential school of Islamic law should have been founded barely thirty miles from Sura? It was in Kufa, at around the same time as Walid, far distant in Damascus, was building his great mosque, that Muslim scholars first began to explore a momentous proposition: that there existed, alongside the Prophet’s written revelations, other, equally binding revelations that had never before been written down. Initially, in the manner of rabbis citing their own masters, members of the ulama were content to attribute these hitherto unrecorded doctrines to prominent local experts; then, as time went by, they began to link them to the Prophet’s companions; finally, as the ultimate in authorities, they fell to quoting the Prophet himself directly. Always, however, by bringing these previously unrecorded snatches of the past—these hadiths—to light, Muslim scholars were following a trail that had been blazed long before. Islamic though the isnads were, they were also more than a little Jewish."

Note: Sura and Pumpedita are two places in Mesopotemia "on the western bank of the Euphrates", where "the rabbis of Mesopotamia, back in the time of Ardashir, had founded the famous yeshivas"  or “school,” with ambitions to change the world".

Abu Raihan Muhammed Khalid's Reviews > In the Shadow of the Sword: The Birth of Islam and the Rise of the Global Arab Empire

The Reasons behind the Mass Conversions to Islam in the Pre-colonial period [13th (?) to 18th Century C.E.] in Bengal.

Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim

10.12.2017

"Traditions attributing the mass conversion of the people of a region to a specific saint may raise some doubt; one may even be tempted to interpret them as· a posteriori rationalization or explanation for the presence of so many. Muslims in a given area: throughout history, in biblical stories as well as in some accounts of World War II, popular mind shows a consistent tendency to ascribe· to individual personalities (heroes or villains) events or phenomena which actually resulted from complex factors through a long process. If it can ever be proved that such as the case of these traditions in Bengal, it would still be significant that the conversions were ascribed to the Sufies and not to other factors: it suggests that traditions may have merely amplified facts that actually happened in the life of the saints."

Source: Milot, Jean-René, The Spread of Islam in Bengal in the pre-Mughul Period, (1204-1538 A.D.) - Context and Trends. A thesis submitted to the faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfilment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Montreal, January, 1970; downloaded from, and accessed on-line last on 02.12.2017 at, http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca, Pages 74.

Our comment:

It remains a statistical truth that the large number of population of the Bengal were found to be Muslims. The author, like many other, opined that the number of migrants were small. This live only a mass conversion to answer for the presence of the large number of Muslims in Bengal. If these conversions were not conducted by the Sufies as he is apparently inclined to believe, then who converted these people? We need to remember here that a person cannot become a Muslim without a formal act of conversion where a religious authoritative figure directs him formally to recite the Kalema of faith and thus become a Muslim.

If it were not the Sufies, than it has to be some other Muslim authority, such as the Imam in the nearby Mosque or an Ulama who has conducted the conversion. If that is the case, why there remains no mention of it in either popular literature or in official records?

If the people, arguendo, themselves changed their names and started to pretend that they were Muslims in order to gain favours of the Royal courts why such tendencies are not recorded anywhere? Besides, as it is suggested by this author and others that the conversions took place in the remote villages of Bengal, far away from the urban centres, how can it be assumed that these rural people living far away from the centres of power expected to gain royal favours by becoming Muslims? It is also important to remember that Bengal remains a rare example of Muslim expansion in the early period of Islam where the non-Muslims were not charged a Jizyah tax before the Mughals did that in the 16th century C.E, (see,interalia,Eaton, Richard Maxwell, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760, University of California Press, 1993, limited preview at Google Books)

Millot, perhaps indirectly suggesting informal conversions without a conductor, stated previously that "(I)n modern context, the term "conversion" suggests adherence to a well defined ensemble of religious tenets and practices, implying the rejection of previous tenets and practices which do not figure in the newly adopted religion. But it seems that in the context of mediaeval Bengal, "conversion" did not imply the same clear-cut and totalitarian character: Islam, as propounded by the Sufis, especially in the rural areas, showed lees rigid and more permeable contours than lslâm as represented by the jurists and the ulama; moreover, the awareness of basic distinctions and oppositions between Islâm and 'Hinduism must have been less vivid at that time than it is to-day, after years of clashes between revivalist movements.", page 71, ibid.

But he stopped short of arriving at a direct conclusion on the above matter.

[Transliteration symbols not always copied in quotations.]