Paramahansa Yogananda is one of the greatest spiritual figures of the twentieth century, and also was one of the first Spiritual Masters to bring the Yoga of the East to the aspiring West.

Yogananda was born in Gorakhpur, Bengal in 1893. Originally his name was Mukunda Lal Ghosh. He was given the name of Yogananda after his initiation as an Indian Swami (monk).

Yogananda means “Bliss” through yoga (divine union with God) The title “Paramahansa” was given by his Guru Sri Yukteswar . Paramahansa means literally “Supreme Swan”. It is given to Swami’s who have established constant communion with God.

 From an early age Yogananda was fascinated with meeting spiritual Saints and seekers. His autobiography recounts many riveting occasions of meetings with different Saints, (including Master Mahasaya, who was the author of “The Gospel of Ramakrishna.” ) Even as a young child Yogananda spent many hours in meditation, aspiring to attain God-Consciousness.

At the age of 17 Yogananda became a disciple of Swami Sri Yukteswar who expertly guided him along the spiritual path. Sri Yukteswar was a direct disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya.  Lahiri Mahasaya is credited with reintroducing the ancient art of Kriya yoga into modern society. After several years of strict spiritual training in his Masters hermitage, Yogananda was inspired to travel to America. With the blessings of his Guru Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda travelled to the West,  in order to share the spiritual traditions of India and his own inner realisations.

In America, Yogananda founded the Self Realization Fellowship, which served as the organization committed to his teachings. Yogananda also  gave many lectures on spiritual themes throughout the country. Yogananda taught that although  outer customs of religion may be different, the underlying principles are the same. He also taught that the essence of any religion and spiritual practice was the Love of God and to realize the true nature of your own divine Self. Yogananda also did much to show the underlying unity between Hinduism and Christianity, in doing so he helped bridge the gap between East and West. 

During his life Yogananda was able to meet with many prominent spiritual, cultural and political figures. For example, during his period of running a school in India, he was able to meet the Bengali Nobel Prize winner Rabindranath Tagore. In the mid 1930s he was able to meet Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram in Wardha. His autobiography also tells of fascinating meetings with spiritual illuminaries such as Sri Anandaymoyi Ma and Sri Ramana Maharshi. Yogananda was also the first Indian Swami to meet with a US President (C.Coolidge in 1927)

Yogananda also wrote poetry, describing his experiences with cosmic consciousness. While observing the phenomenon of the aurora, he experienced a corresponding inner vision. In this poetic rendering, he makes a comparison between his external perception of the beauty of the aurora and the glory and expansion of his internal state of samadhi, or God-consciousness:  

To The Aurora Borealis
by Paramahansa Yogananda

From the heart of the northern horizon,
A dim, palpitating fountain of flame
Spread flickeringly
Through the dark, stray clouds and the milky way,
And across the space overhead
Softly glowing liquid fleecy lights
Rose, quivered, and flooded the southern land.
Aurora lit the sky,
Played with shadows within the deeps of the limpid lake—
Fluttered scintillating transparent lights o’er the stars
And the sky o’erhead, shone on the rippleless lake beneath—
Then floated like dream waves of light
In my mental sea.
Still thoughts, like stars, would flutter
Through the dim mental clouds;
My wisdom’s aurora light would rise from medulla’s horizon
And spread, tremblingly, lighting
The dark vapors of mind.
Thou matchless line imitator of all these—
O Aurora!

Spreader of light and joy o’er cloudy hearts,
Reminder, thou, of bursting, glowing light in my forehead!
From the left and right extreme, invisible lamps
threw sudden iridescent red or blue sky kissing searchlights,
Spouting ethereal mystic flames,
Which joyfully bounded and vanished in the eternal ray.
Ever-burning radium, thou Aurora !
My inner fountain of strange colors
Flooded my mental sky,
Illumining the opaque darkness
Behind which the Light of all lights hides.
It was a vision of ever-changing, rolling, molten light—
coaxing  the stars, trees, water, earth, and  matter, all
To melt their grossness
And become the Cosmic Light.
Aurora, there is hope,
For I shall liquefy in my samadhi’s fire
All grossness of my mortal being and all creation’s dust.
Matter shall change to light;
The darkness will burst into atoms of leaping fire;
The little soul will breathe with the eternal breath—

With the birth of each breath, new solar systems will be born;
And as each breath of eternity escapes from me,
Many a universe shall cease to breathe;
The feeling bounded by the body will fly free
To feel the universe.
No more shall I clasp but a little clod,
In my bosom I shall bear the burden
Of the twinkling atomic vapors of nebulae,
All shining stars, planets, and manifold living things.
For I am the life,
And my big body is the universe.
I am smaller than all little things made—
I can hide behind a speck of electron-
And  bigger am I than the sphere in which the cosmos breathes.
I am the life which shattered its confines of littleness
To become the infinite bigness of all things.
I am most subtle—the subtlest of forces is gross enough to hide me—
Yet everything speaks of me.
I wake with the dawn,
I exercise my vital muscular rays in the sun;
I sleep in the night—
or oft peep through the twinkling lights in the darkness..
I smile in the moon,
I heave in the ocean,
I paint, and wipe away the pictures on the canvas of the sky.
I make the dewdrop and conjure the flowers with my invisible wand;
I whistle in the canaries and sing in the nightingales;
I melt and sigh in human breasts;
I whisper through conscience I roar in the thunder;
I work in the noisy wheels of factories,
And I play hide and seek with the sky, stars, clouds and waters—
As the mystic light of the aurora.

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Paramahansa Yogananda welcoming students to his Self-Realization Institute (no audio)

Paramahansa Yogananda walking in New York City with friends 1933

Yogananda’s life story, “Autobiography of a Yogi”, was published in 1946 and expanded by him in subsequent editions. A perennial best seller, the book has been in continuous publication since it first appeared and has been translated into 18 languages. It is widely regarded as a modern spiritual classic.

On March 7, 1952, Paramahansa Yogananda entered mahasmadhi, a God-illumined master’s conscious exit from the body at the time of physical death. His passing was marked by an extraordinary phenomenon. A notarized statement signed by the Director of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park testified: “No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death….This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one….Yogananda’s body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability.”