For those who've never heard of him, Paramhansa Yogananda was on of India's premiere practitioners of what's called kriya yoga, and the first major Indian spiritualist to spend significant time in the U.S., specifically the last 30 years of his life (he died in 1952). "Autobiography" was published in 1946.
Kriya yoga is not the typical, twist-my-legs-up-into-a-pretzel kind of yoga (that kind is called hatha yoga). Kriya is more focused upon specific mediation practices with the goal of conscious acceleration of spiritual evolution. PY called it the "jet airplane" path, since each meditative session, properly undertaken, is supposed to be the equivalent of years, decades, or even centuries of typical spiritual progress.
AoaY is half a biography, half a spiritual treatise. PY is very scientific in his explanations of his spirituality, but some of the circumstances in the book are incredible enough to make most people doubt it's veracity: co-location, precognition, faith healings, materialization and dematerialization of physical objects, levitation, people going years without sleep, all happen frequently throughout the book. For those with an open mind, the claims in it are fantastic, especially in the realm of spiritual progress.
The book is quite well written and thoroughly footnoted. I'd recommend it to anyone capable of keeping an open mind about miracles.
JCS
