Why would Paramahansa exaggerate stuff in his book?

[Jodistrict]

Yoganandra went into mahasamadhi  and according to a notarized letter from the mortuary director of Forest Lawn Memorial Park, his body showed no signs of decay for weeks afterwards.

 

 

[How to be wise]

On 08/01/2026 at 5:50 AM, Leo Gura said:

Because it is part of Hindu culture, tradition, and group-think. The exaggeration is baked into the culture and he is repeating things he's heard since he was a child.

You don't need to be a liar to spread fantasy and belief.

But some of these 'exaggerations' he has narrated in the first person. I remember he mentioned in the book that while he was talking to a swami, a tiger came and bit off his arm. The swami was just talking like nothing had happened, with a piece of his arm just hanging from him. The swami then just reattached it and it was fully healed. Yogananda claimed this happened in front of him. So either this happened, or Yogananda is a liar. 

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, How to be wise said:

But some of these 'exaggerations' he has narrated in the first person. I remember he mentioned in the book that while he was talking to a swami, a tiger came and bit off his arm. The swami was just talking like nothing had happened, with a piece of his arm just hanging from him. The swami then just reattached it and it was fully healed.

I would bet that did not happen.

People easily delude themselves.

Edited 12 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Jodistrict]

Yogananda also said that Jesus appeared to him confirming that his teachings in "The Second Coming of Christ" was correct.   

[Jayson G]

On 1/8/2026 at 4:44 AM, Leo Gura said:

No, I believed it could work. I paid money in the hope that it would work. I needed it to work.

Yes, epistemic rigor closes the mind to certain things, like fantasy and falsehood.

I am not saying healing is impossible. But most people who claim it are surely self-deceived. You should be skeptical of such people until they demonstrate otherwise. It's way too easy to claim you healed people when you didn't, they just improved on their own. Spiritual people claim credit for healings they didn't actually cause but deluded themselves into thinking they caused. I know for a fact they do this.

@Leo Gura but how much value do you think is in the new agey space now? or even eastern medicine? I think one time you also said a psychic predicted a few things and they were surprisingly accurate to your knowledge - so Im sensing there has to be a good amount of value in all this? 

I haven't delved much in these areas but I was planning to over the years to see if theres value. I'll test for myself, but was wondering what your take was. 

But there's no doubt to me that most are BS'ers. I mean thats human nature in almost every field I see, that most people are either average, liars, fake, exaggerating, etc. 

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Jayson G said:

I think one time you also said a psychic predicted a few things and they were surprisingly accurate to your knowledge - so Im sensing there has to be a good amount of value in all this? 

I did stumble into such a psychic 15 years ago. But I haven't met another one like that. So perhaps it is very rare. I don't know.

[Jodistrict]

It’s interesting that Vivekananda’s writings emphasis rational thought.  He sounds like a dry Western philosopher.  I have been to the Vedanta Society and it has the feel of a protestant church service.   But Vivekanda himself was an off the charts mystic at the same level as Yogananda.  But he understood Western culture and only gave them what they could handle.  When you see how Yogananda is ridiculed, it is easy to see the wisdom of his strategy.   

[Wilhelm44]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

I did stumble into such a psychic 15 years ago. But I haven't met another one like that. So perhaps it is very rare. I don't know.

Apparently there is a town in America, called Lily Dale, where loads of psychics live. How good they are I don't know.

[AION]

Psychics do exist but they come with different features. I’m one too. 

[Ajay0]

14 hours ago, How to be wise said:

But some of these 'exaggerations' he has narrated in the first person. I remember he mentioned in the book that while he was talking to a swami, a tiger came and bit off his arm. The swami was just talking like nothing had happened, with a piece of his arm just hanging from him. The swami then just reattached it and it was fully healed. Yogananda claimed this happened in front of him. So either this happened, or Yogananda is a liar. 

Yogananda wrote a story related to a yogi in his book , ' Autobiography of a yogi', of a naked yogi stumbling into the tent and harem of a muslim chieftain . Seeing the commotion caused by the naked yogi, the chieftain lopped off his hand with his sword. Unperturbed , the yogi just walked away. 

Feeling sorry for what he done, the chieftain took the lopped hand back to the yogi, who just reattached and healed it. The yogi then imparted some wisdom to the chieftain who sought the same.

This is how the story goes in the book.  There is no tiger and yogananda was not present during this incident, but only wrote it out of hearsay.

I am not inclined to believe it unless there is direct witnessing. However I have read, heard and seen yogis capable of doing some fantastic stuff with their bodies and minds,  some of which has been documented as well, so I won't be that surprised if the above story is true as well.

I incline to the agnostic position here.