Paramahansa Yogananda

Yogananda was born, Mukunda Lal Ghosh to a devout and well-to-do Bengali family in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. According to his younger brother, Sananda, from his earliest years, young Mukunda’s awareness and experience of the spiritual were far beyond the ordinary. In his youth he sought out many of India’s Hindu sages and saints, hoping to find an illumined teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.

Yogananda’s seeking for a teacher ended when he met his guru, Swami Yukteswar Giri, in 1910, at the age of 17. He describes his first meeting with Yukteswar as a rekindling of a relationship that had lasted for many lifetimes. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree from Serampore College in 1915, he took formal vows to the monastic Swami Order and became ‘Swami Yogananda Giri’.

In 1920, Yogananda went to the United States as India’s delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston. That same year he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India’s ancient practices and philosophy of Yoga and its tradition of meditation.

For the next several years he lectured and taught on the East coast and in 1924 embarked on a cross-continental speaking tour. Thousands came to his lectures and he attracted a number of celebrity followers. The following year, he established an international center for Self Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, California, which became the spiritual and administrative heart of his growing work.

Yogananda was the first Hindu teacher of yoga to spend a major portion of his life in America. He lived there from 1920—1952, interrupted by an extended trip abroad in 1935–1936 which was mainly to visit his guru in India. While there, Yukteswar gave Yogananda the monastic title of Paramahansa which means “supreme swan” and is a title indicating the highest spiritual attainment. After returning to America, Yogananda continued to write, lecture, and establish churches in So. California. He took up residence at the SRF hermitage in Encinitas, California and it was here that he wrote his most famous book, Autobiography of a Yogi.

The last years of Yogananda’s life were quiet ones spent writing and in meditation with only his closest disciples. In the days leading up to his death, he began hinting that it was time to leave. Paramahansa Yogananda died on March 7, 1952, at the Biltmore Hotel where he was attending a dinner for the visiting Indian Ambassador to the U.S., and collapsed after addressing the assembly. He was 59 years old.

Yogananda’s writings and teachings helped launch a spiritual revolution in the west and his initial impact on the western culture was truly impressive, but his lasting spiritual legacy has been even greater and continues as strong as ever to this day.

For more information go to Self-Realization Fellowship.