STORY OF THE MONTH
(Aug 2026)


What is the Astral Cosmos Like?

(As Narrated by Sri Swami Sri Yukteswar Giriji)

“Lord Krishna!” The glorious form of the avatar appeared in a shimmering blaze as I (Paramahansa Yogananda) sat in my room at the Regent Hotel in Bombay.

Shining over the roof of a high building across the street, the ineffable vision had suddenly burst on my sight as I gazed out of my tall open third-storey window. The divine figure waved to me, smiling and nodding in greeting.

When I could not understand the exact message of Lord Krishna, he departed with a gesture of blessing. Wondrously uplifted, I felt that some spiritual event was presaged.

My Western voyage had, for the time being, been cancelled. I was scheduled for several public addresses in Bombay before leaving on a return visit to Calcutta and Puri.

Sitting on my bed in the Bombay hotel at three o’clock in the afternoon of June 19, 1936—one week after the vision of Sri Krishna—I was roused from my meditation by a beatific light. Before my open and astonished eyes, the whole room was transformed into a strange world, the sunlight transmuted into supernal splendour.

Waves of rapture engulfed me as I beheld the flesh and blood form of Sri Yukteswar!

“My son!” Master spoke tenderly, on his face an angel-bewitching smile.

“But is it you, Master, the same Lion of God? Are you wearing a body like the one I buried beneath the cruel Puri sands?”

“Yes, my child, I am the same. I am in truth resurrected—not on earth but on an astral planet. Its inhabitants are better able than earthly humanity to meet my lofty standards. There you and your exalted loved ones shall someday come to be with me.”

“Deathless guru, tell me more!”

“As prophets are sent on earth to help men work out their physical karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet as a saviour,” Sri Yukteswar explained. “It is called Hiranyaloka or ‘Illumined Astral Planet.’ There I am aiding advanced beings to rid themselves of astral karma and thus attain liberation from astral rebirths.

“Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from earth must go at death; there they destroyed many seeds of karma connected with their past actions in astral worlds.

“Adorable Master, please tell me more about the astral cosmos.”

“There are many astral planets, teeming with astral beings,” Master began. “The inhabitants use astral planes, or masses of light, to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity and radioactive energies.

“The astral universe, made of various subtle vibrations of light and colour, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos. The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere.

“The astral world is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial blemishes—weeds, bacteria, insects, snakes—are absent. Unlike the variable climates and seasons of the earth, the astral planets maintain the even temperature of an eternal spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of many-coloured lights. Astral planets abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers.

“The ordinary astral universe—not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka—is peopled with millions of astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the earth, and also with myriads of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance with karmic qualifications.

Various spheric mansions or vibratory regions are provided for good and evil spirits. Good ones can travel freely, but the evil spirits are confined to limited zones.

“Among the fallen dark angels, expelled from other worlds, friction and war take place with lifetronic bombs or mental mantric vibratory rays. These beings dwell in the gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma.

“In the vast realms above the dark astral prison, all is shining and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than the earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. 

“The earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land, and air,” my guru continued, “but the astral realms know a happy harmony and equality.

Astral beings dematerialise or materialise their forms at will. Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed, definite, natural law hems them round—any astral tree, for example, can be successfully asked to produce an astral mango or other desired fruit, flower, or indeed any other object.

“No one is born of woman; offspring are materialised by astral beings through the help of their cosmic will into specially patterned, astrally condensed forms. The recently physically disembodied being arrives in an astral family through invitation, drawn by similar mental and spiritual tendencies.

“In most cases the astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form. The face and figure of an astral person resemble those of his youth in his previous earthly sojourn.

“Friends of other lives easily recognise one another in the astral world,” Sri Yukteswar went on in his beautiful, flutelike voice. “Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realize the indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of earthly life.

“The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualised expressions of God.

Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed, more or less according to the development of new qualities in the latest life of any particular soul, the astral being employs his unerring intuition to recognise all those once dear to him in other planes of existence, and to welcome them to their new astral home.

“The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being’s average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly standards of time.” 

(Excerpts from the book, “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Sri Sri Paramahansa Yogananda and published by Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India) 


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Notes:

1. Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri was the Guru of Paramahansa Yogananda. Sri Yukteswarji took Mahasamadhi on 9th Mar 1936 and was given a burial in Puri by Paramahansa Yogananda - his chief disciple. The incident narrated above occurred three months after the passing of Swamiji.

2. The above excerpt of the astral world is, necessarily, a brief one. A far more detailed description of the astral and the causal worlds is given in 'Autobiography of a Yogi', the magnum opus of Sri Sri Paramahansa Yoganandaji.

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