International Yoga Day 2023: Venture capitalist Rizwan Virk retells yogi Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography

I first read the Autobiography when I was a young programmer and entrepreneur, just after having graduated from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the US). For me, it was an inspirational book that opened up my mind to the possibility that there was still magic in the world, and that the ancient Indian traditions of yoga offered a doorway into that world. The stories were so memorable that I could recount them many years later. I often go back and re-read the Autobiography every year or two, like Steve Jobs and George Harrison from the Beatles did.

Why a retelling for modern seekers?

Swami Yogananda came to the US over a 100 years ago, in 1920. He often used ‘modern’ analogies to try to explain ancient concepts. For example, movies and projectors were among his favourite ways to explain karma, maya and suffering. However, his analogies are not so modern today — where we are used to working with computers, smartphones, and most importantly, video games. If he were alive today, he would use these technologies as analogies and utilise them to talk about ancient concepts, which is what I wanted to do in this book. I also wanted to tell stories of people in the modern world to support the lessons that have come from [Yogananda’s] book and his life.

What, in particular, are a few lessons you would like entrepreneurs and business-minded people to take away from the spiritual and mystic realm of the Autobiography?

Here are two of the 14 lessons from the book:

You don’t need to go to the Himalayas: When Yogananda was young, he was constantly trying to run away from his home in Calcutta to “go to the Himalayas” to be a monk and find a yogic master, and his older brother often had to chase him across northern India to bring him home. However, when he finally found his guru, he turned out to be only a few miles from Calcutta. This was true for Steve Jobs [too] who went all the way to India to find enlightenment; instead, someone left a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi in his hostel room there, which he read and then re-read each year.

Sometimes, the universe unexpectedly gives you an important task: When Yogananda received an invitation to go to America to speak at the Congress of World Religions, he was not the best person for the task. As a young swami, while he had taught schoolchildren, he had rarely given public lectures about yoga and never had given a single lecture in English.  Yet, the task was presented to him, and he had many “clues” that this was the right thing to do. Sometimes, we are given tasks by the universe, by our karma, by our jobs, by our business, or by our country, that we don’t feel we are necessarily the “best” qualified to do. Nevertheless, the task is yours and it would not be given to you if it wasn’t within your capacity to learn and grow to make this important task happen.

What do you think is the biggest obstacle facing the modern generation to pursue a “yogic path of self-discovery”?

Today we’ve too many distractions in the physical and virtual worlds. Yoga is defined by the sage Patanjali as the stilling of the vrittis, or whirlpools of thought and feeling that live in our fields. In ancient times, it was easier to cause this storm of thoughts and feelings that we have to settle down; today, our phones are sending us push notifications, social media is always asking for our attention in ways that was never there before. So, the biggest obstacle is just taking some time to do “yoga,” which by Patanjali is any activity that causes this stillness — meditation, asanas, concentration, pranayama, but also prayer and nimaz, mantra or zikr.

Many would argue that fulfilling your worldly duty and the Zen path are two separate ambitions. Can they both be led together by striking some sort of a balance, and how?

I believe that our worldly duties can be part of our Zen path to clarity. On the one hand, yoga and meditation can help us build our concentration ability to do our worldly duties better. On the other hand, our worldly duties are there in some ways to present challenges and obstacles, just as in a video game, you’ve to choose specific quests and achievements and then go after them, the great engine of karma is creating quests and situations for us in the world. If we can pursue them with calmness of mind, and use our intuition to navigate the turbulent waterways of samsara, then we are integrating the two together.

Any recommendation you have for people/seekers to notice the “Big Clue,” as you note in the book? What can make them more aware to pay attention to the everyday motivations and signals that one is bound to miss in this hyper-active world burdened with all kinds of information?

Yogananda tells us “intuition is soul guidance, arising naturally in man when the mind is calm”. I would say: learn to pay attention to what I call clues, which include synchronicity, little hunches, gut feelings, odd feelings and the “little voice”. When the world is screaming to go in one direction, but you have an inner clue, which could be during waking life or in a meditation or in a dream, that is showing you a different direction, perhaps it’s your soul guidance telling you that you’ve some things to accomplish.

Besides Autobiography, is there any other book that you’d like to recommend readers that’s related to spirituality and yoga?

There are many great spiritual books, but none match Autobiography of a Yogi in my opinion. I wrote a blog post about “What to Read After the Autobiography of a Yogi” for those who are interested in reading similar books.