Paramahansa Yogananda
Paramahansa Yogananda was an Indian and American Hindu monk, yogi, and guru who founded the Self-Realization Fellowship /Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, a religious meditation and Kriya Yoga organization, to disseminate his teachings. A chief disciple of the yoga guru Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, he was sent by his lineage to spread yogic teachings to the West. He immigrated to the US at the age of 27, intending to demonstrate a unity between Eastern and Western religions and advocate for a balance between Western material growth and Indian spirituality. His longstanding influence on the American yoga movement, and especially the yoga culture of Los Angeles, led yoga experts to consider him the "Father of Yoga in the West". He lived his final 32 years in the US.
Yogananda was among the first Indian religious teachers to settle in the US, and the first prominent Indian to be hosted in the White House ; his early acclaim led to him being dubbed "the 20th century's first superstar guru" by the Los Angeles Times. Arriving in Boston in 1920, he embarked on a successful transcontinental speaking tour before settling in Los Angeles in 1925. For the next two and a half decades, he gained local fame and expanded his influence worldwide: he created a monastic order and trained disciples, went on teaching tours, bought properties for his organization in various California locales, and initiated thousands into Kriya Yoga. By 1952, SRF had over 100 centers in both India and the United States., they had groups in nearly every major American city. His "plain living and high thinking" principles attracted people from all backgrounds among his followers.
He published his Autobiography of a Yogi in 1946 to critical and commercial acclaim. It has sold over four million copies, with Harper San Francisco listing it as one of the "100 best spiritual books of the 20th Century". Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs ordered 500 copies of the book, for each guest at his memorial to be given a copy. It was also one of Elvis Presley's favorite books, and one he gave out often. The book has been regularly reprinted and is known as "the book that changed the lives of millions". A documentary about his life commissioned by SRF, Awake: The Life of Yogananda, was released in 2014. He remains a leading figure in Western spirituality. A biographer of Yogananda, Phillip Goldberg, considers him "the best known and most beloved of all Indian spiritual teachers who have come to the West".
Early years
Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, to a Hindu Bengali Kayastha family. He was the fourth of eight children and second of four sons of Bhagabati Charan Ghosh, the vice president of Bengal-Nagpur Railway, and Gyanprabha Devi. According to his younger brother Sananda, Mukunda's spiritual awareness and experiences were far beyond the ordinary even from his earliest years. His father's job required the family to move several times during Mukunda's childhood, including to Lahore, Bareilly, and Kolkata. According to Autobiography of a Yogi, he was eleven years old when his mother died, just before the marriage of his eldest brother, Ananta. She left behind a sacred amulet for Mukunda, given to her by a holy man, who told her that Mukunda was to possess it for some years, after which it would vanish into the ether from which it came. 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 formally 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 mostly ended when, at the age of 17, he met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri; at that time his well-guarded amulet mysteriously vanished, having served its spiritual purpose. In his autobiography, he describes his first meeting with Sri Yukteswar as a rekindling of a relationship that had lasted for many lifetimes:
"We entered a oneness of silence; words seemed the rankest superfluities. Eloquence flowed in soundless chant from heart of master to disciple. With an antenna of irrefragable insight I sensed that my guru knew God, and would lead me to Him. The obscuration of this life disappeared in a fragile dawn of prenatal memories. Dramatic time! Past, present, and future are its cycling scenes. This was not the first sun to find me at these holy feet!"
Training and vows
He went on to train under Sri Yukteswar as his disciple for the next ten years at his hermitages in Serampore and Puri. Later, 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. from Serampore College, the college having two entities, one as a constituent college of the Senate of Serampore College 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. One of the school's first group of pupils was his youngest brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh. This school would later become the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, the Indian branch of Yogananda's American organization, the Self-Realization Fellowship.
Teaching in America
In his autobiography, Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda writes 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 over 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. According to Philip Goldberg, Yogananda shared the following account in his Autobiography of a Yogi. While in deep prayer in his room, he received a surprise visit from Mahavatar Babaji, the foremost guru of his lineage, who told him directly that he was the one chosen to spread Kriya Yoga to the West. Reassured and uplifted, Yogananda soon afterwards accepted the offer to go to Boston. This account became a standard feature of his lectures.Before leaving India, Yogananda sought the blessing of Nagendranath Bhaduri Mahasaya, a saint who had aided Yogananda's spiritual efforts during his college days in Calcutta. Yogananda wrote that Bhaduri Mahasaya had previously foreseen his future mission to America, and that Bhaduri Mahasaya advised him: "Son, go to America. Take the dignity of hoary India for your shield. Victory is written on your brow; the noble distant people will well receive you."
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 to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient practices and philosophy of 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. Thousands came to his lectures. During this time he attracted a number of celebrity followers, including soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, tenor Vladimir Rosing 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 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 in the United States from 1920 to 1952, interrupted by an extended trip abroad in 1935–1936, and through his disciples he developed various temples and meditation centers around the world.
Yogananda was put on a government watch list and kept under surveillance by the FBI and the British authorities, who were concerned about the growing independence movement in India. A confidential file was kept on him from 1926 to 1937 due to concern over his religious and moral practices. Philip Goldberg's biography describes Yogananda as being up against a perfect storm of America's worst defects: media sensationalism, religious bigotry, ethnic stereotyping, paternalism, sexual anxiety, and brazen racism.
In 1928, Yogananda received unfavorable publicity in Miami, and the police chief, Leslie Quigg, prohibited Yogananda from holding any further events. Quiggs said it was not due to a personal grudge against the Swami but rather in the interest of public order and Yogananda's own safety. Quigg had received veiled threats against Yogananda. According to Phil Goldberg:
It turns out that Miami officials had summoned the British vice consulate to advise them on the matter... One consulate officer said that the Miami city manager and Chief Quigg "recognized the fact that the swami was a British subject and apparently an educated man, but unfortunately he was what is considered in this part of the country a coloured man." Given the South's cultural mores, he noted, "the swami was in great danger of suffering bodily harm from the populace."