A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga - Softcover

Ramacharaka, Yogi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503113930 ISBN 13: 9781503113930

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga is an Eastern philosophy classic by Yogi Ramacharaka. The Yogi Philosophy may be divided into several great branches, or fields of Hindu beliefs. What is known as "Raja Yoga" deals with the Mind; its control; its development; its unfoldment, etc.

About this title

About the Author

William Walker Atkinson (December 5, 1862 – November 22, 1932) was an attorney, merchant, publisher, and author, as well as an occultist and an American pioneer of the New Thought movement. He is also thought to be the author of the pseudonymous works attributed to Theron Q. Dumont and Yogi Ramacharaka.

He is the author of an estimated 100 books, all written in the last 30 years of his life. He was also mentioned in past editions of Who's Who in America, Religious Leaders of America, and several similar publications. His works have remained in print more or less continuously since 1900.

William Walker Atkinson was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 5, 1862, to William and Emma Atkinson. He began his working life as a grocer at 15 years old, probably helping his father. He married Margret Foster Black of Beverly, New Jersey, in October 1889, and they had two children. The first probably died young. The second later married and had two daughters.

Atkinson pursued a business career from 1882 onwards and in 1894 he was admitted as an attorney to the Bar of Pennsylvania. While he gained much material success in his profession as a lawyer, the stress and over-strain eventually took its toll, and during this time he experienced a complete physical and mental breakdown, and financial disaster. He looked for healing and in the late 1880s he found it with New Thought, later attributing the restoration of his health, mental vigor and material prosperity to the application of the principles of New Thought.

Some time after his healing, Atkinson began to write articles on the truths he felt he had discovered, which were then known as Mental Science.

In the 1890s, Atkinson had become interested in Hinduism and after 1900 he devoted a great deal of effort to the diffusion of yoga and Oriental occultism in the West. Atkinson died November 22, 1932 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 69, after 50 years of simultaneously successful careers in business, writing, occultism, and the law.

Many mysteries still surround Atkinson's life, including the fact that a certificate of copyright issued three years after his death is said to have been signed by the author himself.

From the Back Cover

Yogi Ramacharaka was the pseudonym of William Walker Atkinson a prolific writer, and his many books achieved wide circulation among New Thought devotees and occult practitioners. He published under several pen names, including Magus Incognito, Theodore Sheldon, Theron Q. Dumont, Swami Panchadasi, Yogi Ramacharaka, Swami Bhakta Vishita, and probably other names not identified at present. Atkinson has been identified as the author or co-author of 105 separate titles.

These works treat themes related to the mental world, occultism, divination, psychic reality, and mankind's nature. They constitute a basis for what Atkinson called "New Psychology" or "New Thought". Titles include Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World, and Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing: A Course of Lessons on the Psychic Phenomena of Distant Sensing, Clairvoyance, Psychometry, Crystal Gazing, etc.

Ramacharaka's Advanced Course in Yoga Philosophy and Oriental Occultism remains widely respected as an excellent primer for the Western layman, despite the fact that it was 100 years old in 2004 and is understandably dated in some respects.

Edition details

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503113930
• ISBN 13: 9781503113930
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 174