Reading List

Authors Like Paramahansa Yogananda

Mukunda Lal Ghosh was born in Gorakhpur, in northern India, on 5 January 1893. At 17 he met Swami Sri Yukteswar, the teacher he trained under for about ten years. In 1917 he started a boys' school that taught yoga alongside ordinary lessons, and in October 1920 he spoke in Boston as India's delegate to an international congress of religious liberals. He stayed in America, founded Self-Realization Fellowship that year and set up its Los Angeles headquarters in 1925. Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) has sold more than four million copies; Steve Jobs ordered copies to be given to the guests at his memorial. Yogananda died at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles on 7 March 1952, and in June 2025 his society published a new anthology of his talks. The ten writers below share his ground: the inner life described from the inside, and teachings carried between India and the West.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Spiritual autobiography · Yoga · India and the West · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

The closest matches to Paramahansa Yogananda are Swami Vivekananda, who brought Vedanta to America 27 years before him; Ram Dass, whose Be Here Now tells an American's journey to an Indian guru; and Thomas Merton, whose spiritual autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain appeared two years after Autobiography of a Yogi. Further down are a sixteenth-century nun's book of visions, a novelist's seeker, and the teacher who told his followers not to follow anyone.

10 authors like Paramahansa Yogananda

01
The first to bring Vedanta west

Swami Vivekananda

Indian · Raja Yoga (1896), Karma Yoga (1896)

Vivekananda was born Narendranath Datta in Calcutta in 1863 and became the leading disciple of the mystic Ramakrishna. In 1893, the year Yogananda was born, he spoke at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago and then lectured across America and Britain; Raja Yoga grew out of those talks. He founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897 and died in 1902, aged 39.

Vivekananda did first what Yogananda did in Boston in 1920: explained yoga and Vedanta to American audiences in their own terms. He is more philosophical and less personal; there are no miracles in Raja Yoga, only method.

— Lisanne

Every book by Swami Vivekananda →

02
A mystic's life, written plainly

Teresa of Ávila

Spanish · The Book of Her Life (c. 1565), The Interior Castle (1577)

Teresa (1515–1582) was a Carmelite nun who reformed her order together with John of the Cross. She wrote The Book of Her Life at the request of her confessors; it describes her visions and raptures in plain, practical prose. The Interior Castle pictures the soul as a castle of seven dwellings, moving inward towards God. She was made a saint in 1622 and, in 1970, one of the first two women named Doctors of the Church.

Four centuries earlier and in another religion, Teresa wrote the same kind of book: an account of the spiritual life in which extraordinary experiences are reported as calmly as facts. Suits readers who loved the saints and wonders in Autobiography of a Yogi.

— Lisanne

Every book by Teresa of Ávila →

03
The poet he compared schools with

Rabindranath Tagore

Indian · Gitanjali (1910; English 1912), The Home and the World (1916)

Tagore (1861–1941) was a Bengali poet, composer and educator who in 1913 became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, largely for the English Gitanjali, his own prose versions of his devotional songs. In 1901 he founded a school at Santiniketan where classes were held outdoors. A chapter of Autobiography of a Yogi, “Rabindranath Tagore and I Compare Schools”, describes their meeting.

Tagore and Yogananda both ran schools that joined spiritual and ordinary education, and both spoke to the West about India's inner traditions. Gitanjali gives Yogananda's devotion in the form of poetry.

— Lisanne

Every book by Rabindranath Tagore →

04
The seeker as a novel

Hermann Hesse

German-Swiss · Siddhartha (1922), Steppenwolf (1927)

Hesse (1877–1962) was born in Germany to a family of missionaries with ties to India, and became a Swiss citizen. Siddhartha follows a young Brahmin in the Buddha's time who leaves home, meets the Buddha and decides he must find enlightenment through his own experience rather than any teaching. Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1946.

Siddhartha tells the seeker's story Yogananda tells, but as fiction, and with a twist: Hesse's hero walks away from the greatest teacher of his age. Read it after the Autobiography for a Western novelist's answer to the guru.

— Lisanne

Every book by Hermann Hesse →

05
The American monk's autobiography

Thomas Merton

American · The Seven Storey Mountain (1948), Zen and the Birds of Appetite (1968)

Merton was born in Prades, France, in 1915, and entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky in December 1941. The Seven Storey Mountain, the story of his conversion and his path to the monastery, sold more than 150,000 copies within a year or so of publication. He wrote widely on Zen and in 1968 travelled through Asia, meeting the Dalai Lama three times, before dying near Bangkok that December.

Published two years after Autobiography of a Yogi, Merton's book is its Christian counterpart: a life told as a search ending in a vocation. His later turn to Asia meets Yogananda coming the other way.

— Lisanne

Every book by Thomas Merton →

06
The teacher who refused disciples

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Indian · The First and Last Freedom (1954), Freedom from the Known (1969)

Krishnamurti (1895–1986) was raised by the Theosophical Society to be a coming World Teacher. In 1929 he dissolved the order built around him, saying that “truth is a pathless land”, and spent the next six decades giving talks against following any teacher or organised path. A 1991 memoir by Radha Rajagopal Sloss described a secret relationship of about 25 years with her mother, Rosalind Rajagopal, which he never confirmed.

Krishnamurti argues with Yogananda's whole model: no guru, no lineage, no technique. Reading him after the Autobiography sharpens the question of what a teacher is for.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jiddu Krishnamurti →

07
The American who found his guru

Ram Dass

American · Be Here Now (1971), Still Here (2000)

Ram Dass was born Richard Alpert in 1931 and taught psychology at Harvard until he was dismissed in 1963 after his psychedelic research with Timothy Leary. In 1967 he travelled to India and met Neem Karoli Baba, who gave him his new name. Be Here Now, part memoir and part hand-drawn guide to spiritual practice, became a counterculture bestseller. He died on Maui in 2019.

Be Here Now is the American mirror of Autobiography of a Yogi: a disciple's story of meeting a master in India, full of wonder and told with complete conviction. Ram Dass is funnier and more self-mocking.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ram Dass →

08
The interpreter without a lineage

Alan Watts

British-American · The Wisdom of Insecurity (1951), The Way of Zen (1957)

Watts (1915–1973) was born in England, moved to the United States in 1938, and became the best-known Western explainer of Zen, Taoism and Vedanta through his books and radio talks. The Way of Zen was one of the first popular histories of Zen in English.

Where Yogananda teaches from inside a lineage, with a guru and a technique, Watts explains Eastern ideas as ideas any reader can test. Suits readers who want the philosophy without the miracles.

— Lisanne

Every book by Alan Watts →

09
Practice in plain words

Thich Nhat Hanh

Vietnamese · The Miracle of Mindfulness (1975), Peace Is Every Step (1991)

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926–2022) was a Vietnamese Zen monk who was exiled from Vietnam in 1966 after speaking against the war; Martin Luther King Jr. nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967. In 1982 he founded Plum Village in France. The Miracle of Mindfulness began as a letter of practical instruction to a fellow worker.

Like Yogananda, he spent most of his life teaching a meditation practice to Western students, far from the country he came from. His books are quieter and more practical; there is nothing in them you cannot try tonight.

— Lisanne

Every book by Thich Nhat Hanh →

10
Presence, without the guru

Eckhart Tolle

German-born Canadian · The Power of Now (1997), A New Earth (2005)

Tolle was born in Germany in 1948 and lives in Vancouver. The Power of Now describes a sudden inner shift at 29 and teaches attention to the present moment; A New Earth became a bestseller after Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club in 2008.

Tolle is today's most-read teacher in Yogananda's territory, the promise that the self you are looking for is already here. He teaches without lineage, technique or miracles, which makes him a useful contrast.

— Lisanne

Every book by Eckhart Tolle →

Where to start if you loved Paramahansa Yogananda

If you loved the wonders in Autobiography of a Yogi, read Teresa of Ávila.

The Book of Her Life: visions and raptures, reported as calmly as facts.

If you loved the teacher-and-disciple chapters, read Ram Dass.

Be Here Now, for an American's meeting with Neem Karoli Baba.

If you want the story as fiction, read Hermann Hesse.

Siddhartha: a young man in the Buddha's India who has to find his own way.

If you want the counter-argument, read Krishnamurti.

Freedom from the Known (1969), from the teacher who refused to be anyone's guru.

If you want more Yogananda, read his talks.

Man's Eternal Quest, the first collected volume of his talks and essays, or the newest, Solving the Mystery of Life (2025).

Frequently asked questions about authors like Paramahansa Yogananda

Who writes like Paramahansa Yogananda?

Swami Vivekananda, who brought Vedanta to America in 1893, is the closest predecessor. Ram Dass's Be Here Now and Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain are the closest spiritual autobiographies. For a contrasting view, read Jiddu Krishnamurti, who rejected gurus altogether.

What should I read after Autobiography of a Yogi?

Ram Dass's Be Here Now (1971) for another disciple's story of an Indian master, Teresa of Ávila's The Book of Her Life for a Christian mystic's account of visions, and Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha (1922) for the seeker's journey as fiction.

Which Paramahansa Yogananda book should I read first?

Autobiography of a Yogi (1946). It tells his life from childhood in India to his work in America and introduces his teachers and Kriya Yoga. His collected talks, beginning with Man's Eternal Quest, come next.

Is there a new Paramahansa Yogananda book?

Yes, posthumously: in June 2025 Self-Realization Fellowship published Solving the Mystery of Life, a 400-page anthology of his talks and essays and the fourth volume in its series of his collected talks.

Is Yogananda like Krishnamurti?

Both were Indian teachers who spent much of their lives in California, but they taught opposite things. Yogananda taught a specific practice, Kriya Yoga, through a line of gurus; Krishnamurti dissolved the order built around him in 1929 and told listeners not to follow any teacher.

Did Yogananda meet Gandhi?

Yes. During his visit to India in 1935–36 he met Mahatma Gandhi and initiated him into Kriya Yoga, which he describes in Autobiography of a Yogi.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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