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Paramahansa Yogananda Biography
Paramahansa YoganandaOn January 5, 1893, Mukunda Lal Ghosh was born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, to a Hindu family of Bengali kshatriya caste. His father was a Vice-President of the Bengal-Nagpur Railway and with his wife, were disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya, an Indian yogi, guru and a disciple of the Kriya Yoga master Mahavatar Babaji.
Upon his birth, Mukunda was presented by his mother to Lahiri Mahasaya for blessings. He said: “Little mother, thy son will be a yogi. As a spiritual engine, he will carry many souls to God's kingdom.” Mukunda grew up with the image of Lahiri Mahasya and “prayed to him in moments of trial or confusion,” finding within himself the solacing direction of the saint.
When Mukunda was eleven years old, his mother passed away, just before the betrothal of his eldest brother Ananta. She left him an amulet received in a magical way from a sādhu1, that she was told will help Mukunda on his spiritual path: "I proffered alms to the saint and bowed before him in great reverence. Not taking the offering, he departed with a blessing. The next evening, as I sat with folded hands in meditation, a silver amulet materialized between my palms, even as the sādhu had promised. It made itself known by a cold, smooth touch. I have jealously guarded it for more than two years, and now leave it in Ananta's keeping. Do not grieve for me, as I shall have been ushered by my great guru into the arms of the Infinite. Farewell, my child; the Cosmic Mother will protect you."
Before finishing high school, Mukunda and two of his friends ran away from home to the Himalayas to search for a guru. But their quest was quickly cut short near Rishikesh by Ananta, Mukunda’s eldest brother.
His father requested him to postpone this endeavor until finishing school and arranged for Swami Kebalananda (Ashutosh Chatterji) to come regularly to their home and teach Sanskrit to his son. However, unknown to his father, the Swami was a disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya. Instead of Sanskrit, many hours of their time together were spent in meditation. Mukunda’s heart was even more yearning for the guru.
He met Bhaduri Mahasaya, “the Levitating Saint.” After school he attended Mahasaya’s evening teachings and spent time with him in meditation. Later he said: “With silent zeal he aided me to attain anubhava.” 2
After finishing high school, Mukunda formally left home and joined a Mahamandal Hermitage in Varanasi. Once, when food was delayed and Mukunda went hungry, he complained to the hermitage head swami: "Swamiji, I am puzzled. Following your instruction, suppose I never asked for food, and nobody gives me any. I should starve to death." The swami’s reply made a deep impression on him, and later, the lesson served him well many times: "Die then! Die if you must Mukunda! Never admit that you live by the power of food and not by the power of God! He who has created every form of nourishment, He who has bestowed appetite, will certainly see that His devotee is sustained! Do not imagine that rice maintains you, or that money or men support you! Could they aid if the Lord withdraws your life-breath? They are His indirect instruments merely. Is it by any skill of yours that food digests in your stomach? Use the sword of your discrimination, Mukunda! Cut through the chains of agency and perceive the Single Cause!"
Soon after that event, the silver amulet he received through his mother had vanished in accordance with the sādhu’s prediction and the relationship with the head swami’s followers became gradually worse. He was dissatisfied with the insistence on organizational work instead of meditation practice.
On an errand trip to the market, he had a glance of “a Christlike man in the robes of a swami” standing “motionless at the end of the road. Instantly and anciently familiar he seemed.” Moments later Mukunda was at his feet and his guru said: “O my own, you have come to me! How many years I have waited for you!"
Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri His first meeting with Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri was 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. […] 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. […] This was not the first sun to find me at these holy feet!”
Mukunda returned to his family in Calcutta and visited his master at this ashram in Serampore. There he was told to enroll in college, which will be of help when later he will go to the West. He replied: “Gratefully I accept your authority in every detail of my life-on one condition. That you promise to reveal God to me!” Swami replied: "Let your wish be my wish."
Next morning Mukunda was granted Kriyā Yoga initiation. The same that he had received previously from two disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya-Father and his tutor, Swami Kebalananda. But this time, in the Master’s presence he felt the transforming power.
Mukunda experienced many times “the flattening treatment” of his Guru “disciplinary treatment.” He was told: “If you don't like my words, you are at liberty to leave at any time, I want nothing from you but your own improvement. Stay only if you feel benefited. I am hard on those who come for my training. That is my way; take it or leave it. I will never compromise.”
After six months of being with Sri Yukteswar, somewhat tired of hermitage duties and college work, Mukunda asked to be allowed to go to the Himalayas “to achieve continuous divine communion.” His teacher hinted that is better to seek wisdom from someone having realization than from a mountain, but the young disciple did not understand the suggestion and assumed consent.
From his Sanskrit professor, Mukunda obtained the address of another disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya, Ram Gopal Muzumdar, also called the “sleepless saint,” living in Tarakeshwar, 58 kilometers from Calcutta.
Mukunda at age 16.After two days of wandering through villages and farmland, when almost collapsing due to heat, he was approached by a short man with piercing eyes. Was Ram Gopal, and he scolded Mukunda for coming unannounced and said: “Young yogi, I see you are running away from your master. He has everything you need; you must return to him. Mountains cannot be your guru. The Himalayas in India and Tibet have no monopoly on saints. What one does not trouble to find within, will not be discovered by transporting the body hither and yon. As soon as the devotee is willing to go even to the ends of the earth for spiritual enlightenment, his guru appears near-by.”
Next day, Ram Gopal granted Mukunda a gift by healing his back pain he had for years and sent him back to his Guru. He arrived back at the ashram and was surprised to find that his Master had no hard feelings. Few days later, with a gentle touch from his Teacher, he was granted the samadhi he was yearning for. For a while he remained in ineffable rapture and vision. Sri Yukteswar taught him how to have the experience at will, and how to transmit it to others who were prepared and fit to receive it.
In 1914, after graduating from college, his father wanted him to take a job with the Bengal-Nagpur Railway, but Mukunda refused. Instead, he asked his Teacher to make him a monk of the Swami Order. He took formal vows and Sri Yukteswar allowed him to choose his own name: Swami Yogananda Giri. 3
Shortly after Yogananda entering the Swami Order, Ananta, his oldest brother died. His younger sister, Nalini, got typhoid fever, and when doctors gave up all hope she was healed with help from Sri Yukteswar and her brother.
In 1917 advised by his Guru, Yogananda founded a school for boys in Dihika, West Bengal, that combined modern educational techniques with yoga training and spiritual ideals. It started with seven students. A year later, through the generosity of Sir Manindra Chandra Nandy, the Maharaja of Kasimbazar, the school relocated to Kasimbazar Palace in Ranchi, Bihar, accommodating one hundred students. Yogananda youngest brother, Bishnu Charan Ghosh, was among the first students to enroll. He learned yoga asanas there and in turn taught asanas to Bikram Choudhury.
This school would later become the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, the Indian branch of Yogananda's American organization, Self-Realization Fellowship. Swami Pranabananda visited the school and was impressed: "Joy comes to my heart to see that Lahiri Mahasaya's ideals for the proper training of youth are being carried on in this institution. My guru's blessings be on it."
In 1920, while in meditation one day at his Ranchi school, Yogananda had a vision of faces of a multitude of Americans passing 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 (and eventually to his brother disciple Swami Satyananda), he left for Calcutta; 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.
Concerned that he wasn’t familiar with public speaking and lack of English command, he sought out his guru's advice; Sri Yukteswar advised him to go; later, while in deep prayer in his room, he received a surprise visit from Mahavatar Babaji, the Great Guru of his lineage, who told him directly that he was the one he chose to spread Kriyā 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.
In August 1920, at age 27, 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.
During the voyage he was requested to give a lecture on “The Battle of Life and How to Fight It.” When time arrived, he found himself speechless before the audience and after few minutes they started to laugh. He silently implored his Master for help, and he found his words. The talk lasted over 45 minutes and he received invitations to lecture for various groups in America. Later he was unable to remember a single word from his lecture, but received feedback stating that his lecture was inspiring and with correct English.
He spoke at the International Congress on October 6th and was well received. Due to his father financial support he was able to remain in America after the congress was over.
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 several celebrity followers, including soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, tenor Vladimir Rosing and Clara Clemens Gabrilowitsch, the daughter of Mark Twain.
In 1925, with help of his students, he established an international center for Self-Realization Fellowship in Mount Washington Estates, Los Angeles, California, to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient practices and philosophy of Yoga and its tradition of meditation. This center became the spiritual and administrative heart of his growing work.
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.
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 in 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.”
Sri Yukteswar Giri and Swami Yogananda.On June 9, 1935, Yogananda sailed from the USA back to India. On his way, he spent time in Europe, visiting several countries, in Israel for pilgrimage to Jesus’ places, and in Egypt to visit ancient pyramids.
In August he arrived in Bombay where he was greeted by friends and reporters. At home in Calcutta his aging father embraced him as like returning from the dead. Brothers and sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins, students and friends of years long past came to see him.
His assistant noted about the meeting with Yogananda’s Guru at his ashram in Serampore: “Before us, near the head of the stairs, quietly appeared the Great One, Swami Sri Yukteswarji, standing in the noble pose of a sage. […] Tears blurred my eager sight when Yoganandaji dropped to his knees, and with bowed head offered his soul's gratitude and greeting, touching with his hand his guru's feet and then, in humble obeisance, his own head. He rose then and was embraced on both sides of the bosom by Sri Yukteswarji.”
In late December 1935, Yogananda received from his Guru the monastic title of Paramahaṃsā 4, formally superseding his former title of swami, and told him: “My task on earth is now finished; you must carry on.”
Yogananda met Mahatma Gandhi, whom he initiated into Kriyā Yoga, woman-saint Anandamoyi Ma, Giri Bala, an elderly yogi woman who survived without eating, renowned physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, and several disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya.
On March 9, 1936, at age 81, Swami Sri Yukteswar entered Mahāsamādhi.5. Next day Yogananda performed the ancient rites of the swamis and his Guru was buried6 in the garden of Puri ashram. Before passing away, Swami Yukteswar nominated Swami Yogananda his successor as the president of Sādhu Sabha (Society of Saints).
In early June Yogananda made a final trip to his Guru grave in Puri. Then, while awaiting in Bombay to sail back to America, for two hours he had a materialized vision of his Guru giving him new teachings; his sorrow of being separated from his Guru was gone and he was filled with new bliss.
From September to October 1936, Yogananda gave lectures in London and taught yoga to an ever-growing number of people. Then sailed to New York and by end of 1936 arrived at Mount Washington, California.
Rejoined with his American disciples, he continued to lecture, write, and establish churches in southern California. He took up residence at the SRF hermitage in Encinitas, California which was a surprise gift from his advanced disciple Rajarsi Janakananda. It was at this hermitage that Yogananda wrote his famous Autobiography of a Yogi and other writings.
Also, at this time he created an "enduring foundation for the spiritual and humanitarian work of Self‑Realization Fellowship/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India."
In 1946 Yogananda took advantage of a change in immigration laws and applied for citizenship. His application was approved in 1949 and he became a naturalized U.S. citizen.
In 1946, Yogananda published his main and most famous book, the “Autobiography of a Yogi.”
The last four years of his life were spent primarily in seclusion with some of his inner circle of disciples at his desert retreat in Twentynine Palms, California to finish his writings and to finish revising books, articles and lessons written previously over the years. During this period, he gave few interviews and public lectures. He told his close disciples, "I can do much more now to reach others with my pen."
In the days leading up to his death, Yogananda began hinting to his disciples that it was time for him to leave the world.
On March 7, 1952, he attended a dinner for the visiting Indian Ambassador to the US, Binay Ranjan Sen, and his wife at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles. At the conclusion of the banquet, Yogananda spoke of India and America, their contributions to world peace and human progress, and their future co-operation, expressing his hope for a "United World" that would combine the best qualities of "efficient America" and "spiritual India."
According to an eyewitness – Daya Mata, a direct disciple of Yogananda, who was head of the Self-Realization Fellowship from 1955 to 2010 – as Yogananda ended his speech, he read from his poem My India, concluding with the words "Where Ganges, woods, Himalayan caves, and men dream God—I am hallowed; my body touched that sod." As he uttered these words, he lifted his eyes to the Kutastha center (the Ajna Chakra or "spiritual eye"), and his body slumped to the floor." Followers and others say that he entered Mahāsamādhi.
The medical cause of death was heart failure. His funeral service, with hundreds attending, was held at the SRF headquarters atop Mt. Washington in Los Angeles. Rajarsi Janakananda, who Yogananda chose to succeed him as the new president of the Self-Realization Fellowship, "performed a sacred ritual releasing the body to God."
For three weeks afterwards, Yogananda's body did not decay. The morticians called it "the most extraordinary case in our experience… this state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one...a phenomenal state of immutability...no odor of decay emanated from his body at any time...for these reasons we state again that the case of Paramhansa Yogananda is unique in our experience." The Western world was amazed as it witnesses a “phenomenal state of Immutability,” which was described in TIME magazine.
Yogananda's remains are interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Great Mausoleum.
Works by Paramahansa Yogananda
Books
• Autobiography of a Yogi
Collected talks and essays
• Man’s Eternal Quest
• The Divine Romance
• Journey to Self-realization
Commentaries on scripture
• God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita
• The Second Coming of Christ
Mystical poetry
• Songs of the Soul
• Whispers from Eternity
• Scientific Healing Affirmations
• In the Sanctuary of the Soul: A Guide to Effective Prayer
Meditation and Kriyā Yoga
• The Science of Religion
• Metaphysical Meditations
Inspirational
• Where There Is Light: Insight and Inspiration for Meeting Life’s Challenges
• Sayings of Paramahansa Yogananda
Spiritual counsel
• Inner Peace: How to Be Calmly Active and Actively Calm
• The Law of Success
• How You Can Talk With God
Sources
• https://en.wikipedia.org
• Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda
Footnotes
1. sādhu (sk.): a religious ascetic, mendicant or any holy person in Hinduism and Jainism who has renounced the worldly life
2. anubhava (sk.): perception, experience, impression, cognition, comprehension; direct experience of the Absolute / God.
3. Yogananda means "Supreme bliss (ananda) through divine union (yoga). Swamis belong to the ancient monastic order, which was organized by Shankara, and consists of an unbroken line of saints. The title is received only from another swami; all monks thus trace their spiritual lineage to one common guru, Lord Shankara.
4. paramahaṃsā (sk.): one who has supreme discernment, title of spiritual accomplishment.
5. Mahāsamādhi, the great and final samādhi, is the act of consciously and intentionally leaving one's body at the moment of death.
6. Funeral customs in India require that swamis and monks are buried, not cremated; householders are cremated usually within 24 hours after death. The body of monks are symbolically considered to have undergone cremation in the fire of wisdom. The saints decide the day of Mahāsamādhi and then leave the body. Saints turns their body around in circle three times, face north and consciously leave their body sitting in lotus posture, entering Mahāsamādhi.
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