Paramhansa Yogananda

Paramhansa Yogananda circa 1920.

Paramhansa Yogananda (5 Jan 1893–7 Mar 1952) was one of the first Indian teachers from the Hindu spiritual tradition to reside permanently in the West, and in particular, he was the first to teach yoga to Americans. He emphasized the universality of the great religions, and ceaselessly taught that all religions, especially Hinduism and Christianity, were essentially the same in their essence. The primary message of Yogananda was to practice the scientific technique of kriya yoga to be released from all human suffering.

He emigrated from India to the United States in 1920 and eventually founded the Self-Realization Fellowship there in Los Angeles, California. He published his own life story in a book called Autobiography of a Yogi, first published in 1946. In the book, Yogananda provided some details of his personal life, an introduction to yoga, meditation, and philosophy, and accounts of his world travels and encounters with a wide variety of saints and colorful personalities, including Therese Neumann, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Luther Burbank, and Jagadis C. Bose.

Paramhamsa, also spelled Paramahamsa, is a Sanskrit title used for Hindu spiritual teachers who have become enlightened. The title of Paramhansa originates from the legend of the swan. The swan (hansa) is said to have a mythical ability to sip only the milk from a water-and-milk mixture, separating out the more watery part. The spiritual master is likewise said to be able to live in a world like a supreme (param) swan, and only see the divine, instead of all the evil mixed in there too, which the worldly person sees.

Yogananda is considered by his followers and many religious scholars to be a modern avatar.

Early life

Yogananda at age six

Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India to a Hindu Bengali Kayastha family. He was the fourth of the eight children of Bhagabati Charan Ghosh, the vice president of Bengal-Nagpur Railway, and Gyanprabha Devi. Mukunda's awareness and experience of the spiritual were far beyond the ordinary even from his earliest years. The demands of his father's job caused the family to move several times during Mukunda's childhood, including to Lahore, Bareilly, and Kolkata. According to his memoir Autobiography of a Yogi, he was eleven years old when his mother died, just before the marriage of his eldest brother Ananta. Throughout his childhood, his father would fund train passes for his many sight-seeing trips to distant cities and pilgrimage spots, which he would often take with friends. In his youth he sought out many of India's Hindu sages and saints, including the Soham "Tiger" Swami, Gandha Baba, and Mahendranath Gupta, hoping to find an illumined teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.

After finishing high school, Mukunda left home and joined a Mahamandal Hermitage in Varanasi; however, he soon became dissatisfied with its insistence on organizational work instead of meditation and God-perception. He began praying for guidance; in 1910, his seeking after various teachers ended when, at the age of 17, he met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. In his autobiography, he describes his first meeting with Sri Yukteswar as a rekindling of a relationship that had lasted for many lifetimes.

He would go on to train under Sri Yukteswar as his disciple for the next ten years (1910–1920) at his hermitages in Serampore and Puri. Later on, Sri Yukteswar informed Mukunda that he had been sent to him by the great guru of their lineage, Mahavatar Babaji, for a special world purpose of yoga dissemination.

After passing his Intermediate Examination in Arts from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta, in 1915, he graduated with a degree similar to a current-day Bachelor of Arts or B.A. (at the time referred to as an A.B.) from Serampore College, the college having two entities, one as a constituent college of the Senate of Serampore College (University) and the other as an affiliated college of the University of Calcutta. This allowed him to spend time at Yukteswar's ashram in Serampore.

In July 1915, several weeks after graduating from college, he took formal vows into the monastic Swami order; Sri Yukteswar allowed him to choose his own name: Swami Yogananda Giri. In 1917, Yogananda founded a school for boys in Dihika, West Bengal that combined modern educational techniques with yoga training and spiritual ideals. A year later, the school relocated to Ranchi.

Teaching in America

Meditating in 1910

In his Autobiography, Yogananda wrote that he received a vision one day in 1920 while meditating at his Ranchi school: faces of a multitude of Americans passed before his mind's eye, intimating to him that he would soon go to America. After giving charge of the school to its faculty, he left for Calcutta. On the following day, he received an invitation from the American Unitarian Association to serve as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening that year in Boston. Yogananda sought his guru's advice, and Sri Yukteswar advised him to go. Still seeking guidance, in deep prayer in his room he received a surprise visit from Mahavatar Babaji, the foremost guru of his lineage, who told him he was the one chosen to spread Kriya Yoga to the West. Yogananda soon afterwards accepted the offer to go to Boston.

In August 1920, he left for the United States aboard the ship The City of Sparta on a two-month voyage that landed near Boston by late September. He spoke at the International Congress in early October and was well received; later that year he founded Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) to disseminate worldwide his teachings on yoga and its tradition of meditation. Yogananda spent the next four years in Boston; in the interim, he lectured and taught on the East Coast and in 1924 embarked on a cross-continental speaking tour, which attracted huge crowds coast to coast. During this time he attracted a number of noted followers, including soprano Amelita Galli-Curci and Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch, the daughter of Mark Twain. In 1925, he established an international center for Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, California, which became the heart of his growing work. Yogananda was the first major Indian spiritual teacher to spend a major portion of his life in America.

Kriya yoga

The technique of kriya yoga is the foundation of Yogananda's teachings. An ancient spiritual practice, known in India for millennia and even said to have been practiced by Christ and his disciples, kriya yoga is "union (yoga) with the Infinite through a certain action or rite (kriya). The Sanskrit root of kriya is kri, to do, to act and react." Kriya yoga was passed down through Yogananda's spiritual lineage: Mahavatar Babaji revived the sacred science, lost in the dark ages, back to the modern age and taught the technique to Lahiri Mahasaya, who taught it to his disciple, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, Yogananda's guru.

Yogananda gave a general description of kriya yoga in his Autobiography:

The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half-minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.

Autobiography of a Yogi

Autobiography of a Yogi book cover, 1st edition

In 1946, Yogananda published his Autobiography of a Yogi. It has since been translated into 45 languages, and in 1999 was designated one of the "100 Most Important Spiritual Books of the 20th Century" by a panel of spiritual authors convened by Philip Zaleski and HarperCollins publishers.

The book describes Yogananda's spiritual search for enlightenment, in addition to encounters with notable figures such as Therese Neumann, Anandamayi Ma, Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Luther Burbank, and Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. The book is a literary tour de force, full of references to world literature, modern science, and ancient wisdom of India and contains numerous references to supernatural events.

The Autobiography has been an inspiration for many people including George Harrison, Ravi Shankar, and Steve Jobs. In the 2011 book Steve Jobs: A Biography, Walter Isaacson writes that Jobs first read the Autobiography as a teenager and regularly reread it. Jobs famously gave away digital copies of the book on his death. TV producer Gene Roddenberry is said to have been inspired by some of the miracles in the book when creating the TV science-fiction series Star Trek.

Yogananda's signature. CREDIT: public domain.

Main disciples

Rajarsi Janakananda (James Lynn, an American businessman) and person of great realization was chosen by Yogananda to become the first President of SRF/YSS when he was gone. He also provided SRF with a multi-million-dollar endowment in the 1950s that preserved the financial stability of the organization. Yogacharya Oliver Black was another key male disciple, a businessman from the Detroit, Michigan area. Dr. W.M. Lewis, a dentist from Boston, was Yogananda's first American student.

Other key disciples included Sister Gynamata, Sister Durga Mata, and Swami Kriyananda. In the early 1960s, Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters), then a vice-president of Self-Realization Fellowship and one of the few men in a leadership position there was asked by the board to leave. He later founded a worldwide group called the Ananda Church of Self-Realization, with meditation centers and spiritual communities in the United States, Europe, India, and elsewhere.

Daya Mata (Faye Wright), a direct disciple of Yogananda who was personally chosen and trained by Yogananda and with him since age 17, was head of Self-Realization Fellowship from 1955 to 2010. Mrinalini Mata was the president and spiritual head of SRF/YSS from 2011 until her death in 2017.

Self-Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India

Yogoda Satsanga Society of India is a non-profit religious organization founded by Yogananda in 1917. In countries outside the Indian subcontinent it is known as the Self-Realization Fellowship. Yogananda founded the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in 1917 and then expanded it in 1920 to the United States, naming it Self-Realization Fellowship. In 1935, he legally incorporated it in the U.S. to serve as his instrument for the worldwide dissemination of his teachings.

SRF/YSS is headquartered in Los Angeles and has grown to include more than 500 temples and centers around the world. It has members in over 175 countries. In India and surrounding countries, Yogananda's teachings are disseminated by YSS, which has more than 100 centers, retreats, and ashrams.

Dramatic death

Yogananda suddenly died at a large banquet at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on March 7, 1952. He was the featured speaker in honor of Binay Ranjan Sen, Indian ambassador to America. Yogananda gave a talk and then read his poem "My India." As he concluded the poem, he suddenly passed out and fell to the floor. He was dead, or as yogis say, had left the body.

A notarized letter was later sent to Self-Realization Fellowship from Harry T. Rowe, Forest Lawn Memorial's mortuary director, indicating that Yogananda's body apparently had almost no bodily decay, although there was a delay of several weeks before the body was finally sealed within a crypt. The letter noted the extraordinary nature of this phenomenon. Yogananda's crypt is at the Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Legacy

Yogananda's work is continued by people and organizations around the world. Self-Realization Fellowship is headquartered in Los Angeles and has meditation centers and temples worldwide.

The Ananda Church of Self-Realization, headquartered near Nevada City, California, was founded by Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Yogananda. Ananda expresses an aspect of Yogananda's vision for World Brotherhood Colonies, an idea for spiritual intentional communities that Yogananda often recommended to his students. There are Ananda World Brotherhood communities, centers, and meditation groups throughout the world.

Song of the Morning Retreat Center, near Vanderbilt, Michigan, was founded by Yogacharya Oliver Black, another direct disciple of Yogananda. The Clear Light Community, an intentional spiritual community, is also located within the the 800-acre (3 km²) retreat property. The retreat center offers classes on yoga and meditation and hosts programs featuring visiting spiritual teachers.

The Center for Spiritual Awareness (CSA), located in Lakemont, Georgia, was founded by Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of Yogananda. The CSA publishes books and audio cassettes, and offers meditation seminars at its retreat center headquarters on a voluntary donation basis.

On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Yogananda's passing in 1977, his contributions were given formal recognition by the Government of India. A special commemorative stamp was issued in his honor, together with a tribute that read, in part:

The ideal of love for God and service to humanity found full expression in the life of Paramahansa Yogananda…. Though the major part of his life was spent outside India, still he takes his place among our great saints. His work continues to grow and shine ever more brightly, drawing people everywhere on the path of the pilgrimage of the Spirit.

George Harrison of the Beatles was significantly influenced by Yogananda, and Yogananda's image appears on the cover of the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, and Swami Sri Yukteswar, other gurus in Yogananda's lineage, are also on the album cover

Awake: The Life of Yogananda is a 2014 documentary about Paramhansa Yogananda, in English with subtitles in seventeen languages. The documentary includes commentary by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar, among others.