Paramahansa Yogananda

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893-1952) was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakpur, near Calcutta, on January 5, 1893. He manifested psychic powers as a child. As a youth he was fascinated by the holy men of India and visited many of them. Shortly after graduating from high school, he was initiated by Swami Yukteswar in the spiritual lineage of Swami Babaji, a legendary Himalayan master. Yukteswar encouraged Yogananda to come to the West, and he traveled to Boston in 1920, ostensibly to speak at a conference, where he taught a system of yoga deriving basically from the classic text Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. He also developed his own variety of kriya yoga, involving withdrawal of life energy from outward affairs to inner spiritual centers (basically a form of kundalini yoga).

Yogananda remained in the United States after the 1920 conference and several years later founded the Yogoda Satsang, which became the Self-Realization Fellowship. He wrote books and a correspondence course that attracted many pupils to him. He laid great emphasis on the reconciliation of Hinduism with Christian teachings and established the "Church of All Religions."

Yogananda passed into mahasamadhi (died) in 1952, but his body is said to have remained free from decay for 20 years afterward. Among his last accomplishments was the writing of his Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), which was widely influential in attracting Americans to Eastern religion