I had heard of the ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahansa Yogananda, many times before but never felt like picking it up. After all how interesting can a yogi’s life be? So my money and time was spent on other books but definitely not this one, not even if someone was letting it to me for free.

Then one day my brother told me of how this book was Steve job’s favorite. I had read online that Jobs came to India in his youth searching for mystical experience but was disappointed to not find one. I wondered, then why would he be so impressed by a book about a Yogi from India. It seemed strange and even more incredible was the fact that it was the last gift to those who attended his memorial. I mean seriously, how impressed can you be by a book to hand it over as your last gift?

Well, this was reason enough for me to check out the book. As soon as I read it, I felt grateful to Steve jobs for his last gift to me as well. I am not as grateful to him for my iPhone as I am for this book.

I read spiritual or motivational books very slowly, savoring each page. 5 to 10 pages at bedtime. No wonder it took me some months to complete it.

I won’t say it is some extraordinary book that suddenly changed my life or showed me paradise or gave the answers to all life’s questions. No, instead the way it impacted me was very subtle. It just showed me how there is something more to this physical world. There is now, this possibility of surpassing the ordinary.

I don’t know how it will affect a non-believer, I guess I have to wait for my brother to read it. But for a believer, it just crystallizes your beliefs in the supernatural. The idea of God, Energy, Meditation, Mysticism, Intuition, Miracles, and all similar supernatural beliefs become much stronger. And these beliefs are necessary for a magical life.

In this ordinary life, it is the belief in extraordinary that makes life seem beautiful. It’s like love, you suddenly start looking at the world with rosy lenses. Your expectations from everything and even from yourself change. I am still ambitious and still a regular employee, but now I no more believe in linearity. I now realize life is all about either exponential, linear, or a horizontal line depending on what you expect from it.

Has my life changed after the autobiography of a yogi, have I initiated on the yogic path? Not exactly. But now with a different lens to see life, many of my problems have evaporated. I now have more creative and impossible solutions at hand.

I was since a long time on the path of Law of Attraction, Meditation, and Positivism, this book just got me deeper and stronger in this direction.

Steve jobs had read it every year. I may not do that. But once in a while, I may open any page of the book to stay in touch with my newly founded beliefs.