I read Autobiography of a Yogi when I was 19 and soon after started studying the Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons. Thirty-two years later, in 2005, I had the idea of collecting first or early editions of the books mentioned in Paramahansa Yogananda’s autobiography and launching an online bookstore. I collected a shelfful of books at that time, but it became too expensive to continue buying collectible books.

One of the books I acquired back then was a first edition of The Song Celestial, a poetic translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Sir Edwin Arnold, which was published in 1885. It turned out to be the first version of this sacred text that Mahatma Gandhi read. At that time he was in England studying law and knew Arnold personally. Yoganandaji quotes from The Song Celestial four times in his autobiography.

Another volume I collected was a first edition of Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, translated and edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz, who wrote the preface to Autobiography of a Yogi. Evans-Wentz met Swami Sri Yukteswar, Paramahansaji’s guru, in Puri, India, and took a photo of him that later appeared on the frontispiece of Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines.

My collection sat on a bookshelf for a couple of decades. In 2024 my wife suggested that I sell them. That rekindled my interest in the original plan to the point where my enthusiasm led me to start collecting more books by or related to Paramahansaji as well as those published by Self-Realization Fellowship. I signed up with Biblio.com and have posted these books there, and then decided to create this online bookstore, Mahasaya Books. It’s time for me to share my enthusiasm with other devotees of Paramahansa Yogananda.

J.B.