164 Biography of a Yogitold her, “Little mother, thy son will be a yogi. As a spiritual engine, he will carry
many souls to God’s kingdom.”^23 This destiny was subsequently confirmed to her
by another sādhu who came to her shortly before her death, foretelling the event.
It was also confirmed by the miraculous materialization of a silver amulet, which
his mother was charged with delivering to Yogananda after her death by way of
her eldest son. Upon receiving the object, Yogananda recounts:
A blaze of illumination came over me with possession of the amulet;
many dormant memories awakened. The talisman, round and anciently
quaint, was covered with Sanskrit characters. I understood that it came
from teachers of past lives, who were invisibly guiding my steps. A further
significance there was, indeed; but one does not reveal fully the heart of
an amulet.^24The amulet thus kindles within Yogananda the profound sense of destiny that
would guide many of his pursuits. He refers in the first pages of the Autobiography
to the lucid recollections “of a distant life, a yogi amidst the Himalayan snows”^25
that constituted his earliest memories in infancy. One can assume that the “dis-
tant memories” awakened by the amulet may have been of a similar nature. The
amulet places Yogananda’s quest within the framework of a larger spiritual jour-
ney, spanning multiple lifetimes and perhaps guided by multiple superhuman
hands of gurus past and present.
After this revelation, Yogananda embarks on a wide- ranging spiritual search.
It will be another five years until he finally finds his long- awaited guru in Sri
Yukteswar. His tantric explorations, chronicled elsewhere, are alluded to in the
following statement, illustrating the single- pointed nature of his ambitions:
My promise to Father had been that I would complete my high school stud-
ies. I cannot pretend to diligence. The passing months found me less fre-
quently in the classroom than in secluded spots along the Calcutta bathing
ghats. The adjoining crematory grounds, especially gruesome at night, are
considered highly attractive by the yogi. He who would find the Deathless
Essence must not be dismayed by a few unadorned skulls. Human inad-
equacy becomes clear in the gloomy abode of miscellaneous bones. My
midnight vigils were thus of a different nature from the scholar’s.^26Although we know that his childhood friend, the future Swami Satyananda,
occasionally accompanied him on these midnight excursions, this must have
been a largely solitary practice for Yogananda. Like his attic meditation room,
the Calcutta charnal grounds were host to young Yogananda’s experiments with a