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Awake: The Life of Yogananda
Awake: The Life of Yogananda is an unconventional biography about the
Hindu Swami who brought yoga and meditation to the West in the 1920s.
Paramahansa Yogananda authored the spiritual classic “Autobiography of a
Yogi,” which has sold millions of copies worldwide and is a go-to book
for seekers, philosophers and yoga enthusiasts today. (Apparently, it
was the only book that Steve Jobs had on his iPad.) By personalizing his
own quest for enlightenment and sharing his struggles along the path,
Yogananda made ancient Vedic teachings accessible to a modern audience,
attracting many followers and inspiring the millions who practice yoga
today.
Filmed over three years with the participation of 30
countries around the world, the documentary examines the world of yoga,
modern and ancient, east and west and explores why millions today have
turned their attention inwards, bucking the limitations of the material
world in pursuit of self-realization.
Archival material from the
life of Yogananda (who died in 1952) creates a spine for the narrative,
but the film stretches the dimensions of a standard biography. The
footage includes stylized interviews, metaphoric imagery and
recreations, taking us from holy pilgrimages in India to Harvard’s
Divinity School and its cutting-edge physics labs, from the Center for
Science and Spirituality at the University of Pennsylvania to the Chopra
Center in Carlsbad, California. By evoking the journey of the soul as
it pushes its way through the oppression of the human ego and delusion
of the material world, the film creates an experiential immersion into
the unseen realms. Awake is ultimately the story of humanity itself: the
universal struggle of all beings to free themselves from suffering and
to seek lasting happiness.
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