Autobiography of a Yogi

Yogananda and his secretary visit a female saint, Ananda Moyi Ma, in Calcutta. She is with a hundred disciples and is about to depart by car, but she delays her departure for Yogananda. One of her disciples tells Yogananda that the Blissful Mother travels extensively in India and is responsible for much social reform.

Yogananda invites her to the Ranchi school. When she visits, she tells Yogananda that she has never identified with her temporary physical body, even in childhood. She has always been enveloped in the eternal. Yogananda admires her because her only allegiance is to God. He sees her on one more occasion, at the Serampore railway station, and she tells him she is going to the Himalayas, where her well-wishers have built a hermitage for her.

In May 1936, Yogananda, his secretary, and three friends drive to visit Giri Bala, a female saint who practices a yoga technique as a result of which she never needs to eat. She has not eaten in five decades. In her late sixties, she lives surrounded by friends and family. Yogananda and his friends travel to the village of Biur, in a remote part of Bengal.