Self-Realization Fellowship Blog

Solving the Mystery of Life, the much-anticipated fourth volume in the Collected Talks and Essays series by Paramahansa Yogananda, was officially released on June 22, at the start of the 2025 Self-Realization Fellowship World Convocation.

At Convocation’s opening class, SRF monk Brother Satyananda read to an expectant audience of thousands of SRF members and friends — joining in person in Los Angeles and online — a letter from SRF President Brother Chidananda welcoming all to the special week of events and announcing the arrival of this new anthology of Paramahansaji’s “how-to-live” wisdom.

Brother Chidananda, who also serves as SRF’s editor-in-chief, during his Convocation satsanga near the end of the week spoke of the release as a significant milestone in the progress of Paramahansaji’s worldwide mission to spread the teachings of Kriya Yoga. He described the new book as “a potent, concentrated seed,” adding that as each copy makes its way around the world, “Who knows what fertile soil of souls it will fall upon? But that great work of this divine seed, this divine book, begins this week….”

A New Volume in Paramahansaji’s Wisdom-Legacy

The anthology series Collected Talks and Essays on Realizing God in Daily Life began fifty years ago in 1975 with Man’s Eternal Quest (Volume I), followed by The Divine Romance in 1986 (Volume II), and then Journey to Self-realization in 1997 (Volume III).

Since the mid-1990s, SRF has also published Paramahansaji’s landmark multi-volume works on the teachings of Krishna and Christ, respectively titled God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita and The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of the Christ Within You. And the final and comprehensive edition of the Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons, Paramahansaji’s home-study course on meditation and balanced living, reached the world in English in 2019 (with translations into Italian and Portuguese soon after, and many more languages forthcoming).

All of this was possible because of the attunement with Paramahansaji’s wishes embodied in the efforts of Sri Mrinalini Mata (1931 – 2017), former president and editor-in-chief of SRF. About Mrinalini Mata’s personal training under Paramahansaji, Sri Daya Mata wrote: “Gurudeva made clear to all of us the role for which he was preparing her, giving her personal instruction in every aspect of his teachings and in his wishes for the preparation and presentation of his writings and talks.”

Whether one is a devoted student of Paramahansa Yogananda’s SRF Lessons, or has just recently become a reader of his spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi,Solving the Mystery of Life will provide a wealth of new inspiration, insights, and methods to help illuminate and make accessible the richness of universal spirituality.

“In deep meditation, you too will realize your Self as the transcendent soul,” says Paramahansa Yogananda.

As one who had solved the mystery of life for himself, Paramahansaji explains in this new anthology the divine laws at work in the universe, reminding us: “Our paramount duty while on earth is to change our status from that of a mortal being to that of a divine being.”  

The Incalculable Contributions of Sri Daya Mata

Solving the Mystery of Life is dedicated to Sri Daya Mata (1914 – 2010), SRF’s beloved third president and one of Paramahansa Yogananda’s earliest and closest disciples. As she explains in her Preface to the book, she took on the role of recording his talks, in shorthand, at the beginning of her life as a nun in the ashram, in 1931:

“As I felt the transfiguring power of his words on my own life during those early days with Paramahansaji, there arose within me a feeling of the urgent need to preserve his words for all the world, for all time. It became my sacred and joyous privilege….”

And describing that process she says: “As Gurudeva spoke, the rush of his inspiration was often reflected in the swiftness of his speech; he might speak without pause for minutes at a time, and continue for an hour. While his hearers sat enthralled, my pen was flying!”

Until Paramahansa Yogananda’s mahasamadhi (a great yogi’s final conscious exit from the body), in 1952, she faithfully fulfilled that role. For many decades afterwards, while also attending to myriad other duties, Sri Daya Mata worked on transcribing those shorthand notes so that Paramahansaji’s “vast treasure-house of wondrous wisdom and God-love” would be indeed preserved for the benefit of future generations. This new anthology in the series is another direct result of her inspiring devotion and diligence in that sublime effort. 

Solving the Mystery of Life is available in hardback, paperback, and ebook editions.

We hope that the wisdom and love of Paramahansaji to be discovered in this new book will bring you ever closer to experiencing the true wonder and soul-joy waiting for all of us when we set out to solve life’s intriguing mystery.