Yogananda, Paramahansa
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'''Paramahansa Yogananda''' (''Pôromôhongsho Joganondo'', [[Hindi language|Hindi]]: परमहंस योगानन्द; (January 5, 1893–March 7, 1952), was an [[India]]n [[yoga|yogi]] and [[guru]]. He was instrumental in bringing the teachings of [[meditation]] and [[Kriya Yoga]] to [[Western world|the West]]. His book, ''Autobiography of a Yogi'', introduced several generations to the timeless [[wisdom]] of India. | '''Paramahansa Yogananda''' (''Pôromôhongsho Joganondo'', [[Hindi language|Hindi]]: परमहंस योगानन्द; (January 5, 1893–March 7, 1952), was an [[India]]n [[yoga|yogi]] and [[guru]]. He was instrumental in bringing the teachings of [[meditation]] and [[Kriya Yoga]] to [[Western world|the West]]. His book, ''Autobiography of a Yogi'', introduced several generations to the timeless [[wisdom]] of India. | ||
| − | He was instrumental in bringing a more spiritual and personal, as opposed to dogmatic, understanding of [[Jesus]] to Western [[Christianity]]. His understanding of the [[Bible]] was unique for someone raised in the [[Hinduism|Hindu]] tradition and he was a major catalyst in the move towards Eastern spirituality that young Christians made beginning as early as the 1950s | + | He was instrumental in bringing a more spiritual and personal, as opposed to dogmatic, understanding of [[Jesus]] to Western [[Christianity]]. His understanding of the [[Bible]] was unique for someone raised in the [[Hinduism|Hindu]] tradition and he was a major catalyst in the move towards Eastern spirituality that young Christians made beginning as early as the 1950s. |
==Life== | ==Life== | ||
Revision as of 17:09, 29 August 2007
| Paramhansa Yogananda |
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 {{{image_caption}}}
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| Born |
| 5 January 1893 Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India |
| Died |
| 7 March 1952 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Paramahansa Yogananda (Pôromôhongsho Joganondo, Hindi: परमहंस योगानन्द; (January 5, 1893–March 7, 1952), was an Indian yogi and guru. He was instrumental in bringing the teachings of meditation and Kriya Yoga to the West. His book, Autobiography of a Yogi, introduced several generations to the timeless wisdom of India.
He was instrumental in bringing a more spiritual and personal, as opposed to dogmatic, understanding of Jesus to Western Christianity. His understanding of the Bible was unique for someone raised in the Hindu tradition and he was a major catalyst in the move towards Eastern spirituality that young Christians made beginning as early as the 1950s.
Life
Youth
Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India into a devout Bengali family.[1] According to his younger brother, Sananda[1], from his earliest years young Mukunda's awareness and experience of the spiritual was far beyond the ordinary. In his youth he sought out many of India's Hindu sages and saints, hoping to find an illuminated teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.[2]
In Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, he relates numerous stories of saints, scientists, and miracle workers that he visited as a youth, including the renowned scientist Jagdish Chandra Bose, his personal tutor Mahendranath Gupta (biographer of Ramakrishna), the Nobel Prize winning Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, the 'Tiger Swami', the 'Perfume Saint', the 'Saint with Two Bodies', the 'Levitating Saint', and others.[2]
Yogananda's seeking after various saints mostly ended when he met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, in 1910, at the age of 17. 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![2]
After passing his Intermediate Examination in Arts from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta, he did his graduation in religious studies from the Serampore College, a constituent college of the University of Calcutta. This allowed him to spend time at Sri Yukteswar's ashram in Serampore. In 1915, he took formal vows into the monastic Swami Order and became 'Swami Yogananda Giri'.[2] In 1917, Yogananda began his life's mission with the founding and running of a school for boys in a remote hamlet of Bengal, called Dihika, by the side of river Damodar, that combined modern educational techniques with yoga training and spiritual ideals. A year later, the school relocated to Ranchi. This school would later become Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, the Indian branch of Yogananda's American organization.
Move to America
In 1920, he went to the United States as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston. That same 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. 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. [2] The following year, he established in Los Angeles an international headquarters for Self-Realization Fellowship, which became the spiritual and administrative heart of his growing work. Yogananda was the first Hindu teacher of yoga to make his permanent home in America, living there from 1920-1952.
Visit to India, 1935-6
In 1935, he returned to India to visit Sri Yukteswar and to help establish his Yogoda Satsanga work in India. During this visit, as told in his autobiography, he met with Mahatma Gandhi, the Bengali saint Sri Anandamoyi Ma, Nobel winning physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, and several disciples of Sri Yukteswar's Guru Lahiri Mahasaya.[2] While in India, Sri Yukteswar conferred upon him the title Paramhansa, which means "supreme swan."[2] In 1936, while visiting Calcutta, Yogananda lost his Guru, Sri Yukteswar, who died in the town of Puri.
Back in America
After returning to America, he continued to lecture, write, and establish churches in Southern California. On March 7, 1952, he attained mahasamadhi while attending a dinner for the visiting Indian Ambassador at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.
Teachings
Yogananda taught his students the need for direct experience of truth, as opposed to blind belief. He said that “The true basis of religion is not belief, but intuitive experience. Intuition is the soul’s power of knowing God. To know what religion is really all about, one must know God.” [3]
Echoing traditional Hindu teachings, he taught that the entire universe is God's cosmic "movie show", and that individuals are merely actors in the "divine play" who change "roles" through reincarnation. Any harm that would befall an innocent person would therefore be the result of karma from a past life. Yogananda advised against taking this "divine delusion" any more seriously than a movie theater or television presentation because life is secondary to our own understanding. He taught that mankind's deep suffering is rooted in identifying too closely with one's current 'role', rather than with the movie's 'director', or God. This could also be a result of karma and therefore not identifying with the 'director.'
To that end, he taught certain yoga techniques that help people achieve self-realization. He said that “self-realization is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, and soul that you are now in possession of the kingdom of God; that you do not have to pray that it come to you; that God’s omnipresence is your omnipresence; and that all that you need to do is improve your knowing.” [3] Therefore knowing yourself is the key to understanding God because God is within.
Yogananda's work is continued by several of his disciples and organizations. self-realization Fellowship, which he founded, is headquartered in Los Angeles and has meditation centers and temples across the world. The current head is Sri Daya Mata, a direct disciple of Yogananda.
Ananda, near Nevada City, California, was founded by Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Yogananda. Ananda is unique in that it expresses an aspect of Yogananda's vision for World Brotherhood Colonies, an idea for spiritual intentional communities that Yogananda often recommended to his students. Ananda Village is located in Nevada City, California, with six other Ananda World Brotherhood Colonies worldwide. Ananda also has centers and meditation groups throughout the world.
Song of the Morning Retreat Center, near Vanderbilt, Michigan, was founded by Yogacharya Oliver Black, a direct disciple of Yogananda. As of September 2004 work is continuing on building the Clear Light Community on the 800 acre (3 km²) retreat property. The retreat center offers classes on yoga and meditation and hosts programs featuring visiting spiritual teachers.
The Center for Spiritual Awareness, located in Lakemont, Georgia, was founded by Roy Eugene Davis, a direct disciple of Yogananda. The CSA publishes books and audio cassettes, and offers meditation seminars at its retreat center headquarters on a voluntary donation basis.
The Puri, India, ashram of Yogananda's guru Sri Yukteswar Giri continues to this day.
George Harrison of the Beatles was a devotee of Yogananda[citation needed], and Yogananda's image appears on the cover of the album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and Swami Sri Yukteswar, other gurus in Yogananda's lineage, are also on the album cover.
Kriya Yoga
Kriya Yoga is a set of yoga techniques that are the main discipline of Yogananda's meditation teachings. Kriya Yoga was passed down through Yogananda's guru lineage — Mahavatar Babaji taught Kriya Yoga to Lahiri Mahasaya, who taught it to his disciple Sri Yukteswar, Yogananda's Guru. Because of ancient yogic injunctions, the techniques of Kriya must be learned from a Kriya Yogi, according to Yogananda.[2] He gave a general description of Kriya Yoga in his Autobiography:
The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centers (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral, and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man. One-half minute of revolution of energy around the sensitive spinal cord of man effects subtle progress in his evolution; that half-minute of Kriya equals one year of natural spiritual unfoldment.[2]
Autobiography of a Yogi
In 1946, Yogananda published his life story, Autobiography of a Yogi [4], which was instrumental in introducing meditation and yoga to the West.[5]
It has since been translated into eighteen languages and remains a best seller. It includes Yogananda's and Sri Yukteswar's attempts to explain certain verses and events of the Bible such as the Garden of Eden story, and descriptions of Yogananda's encounters with leading spiritual figures such as Therese Neumann, the Indian saint Sri Anandamoyi Ma, Mohandas Gandhi, Nobel laureate in literature Rabindranath Tagore, noted plant scientist Luther Burbank (the book is 'Dedicated to the Memory of Luther Burbank, An American Saint'), famous Indian scientist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose and Nobel Prize winning physicist Sir C. V. Raman.
Claims of bodily incorruptibility
Some of Yogananda's followers have made claims of his bodily incorruptibility. As reported in Time Magazine on August 4, 1952, Harry T. Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary Director of the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California where he is interred, stated in a notarized letter:
The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramahansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience.... No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death.... No indication of mold was visible on his skin, and no visible drying up took place in the bodily tissues. This state of perfect preservation of a body is, so far as we know from mortuary annals, an unparalleled one.... No odor of decay emanated from his body at any time....
Skeptics point to Yogananda's death certificate, which indicates his body was embalmed.[6] They claim the full text of Rowe's letter, as included in a memorial booklet put out by the SRF, indicates his surprise that the described effect was based merely on the lack of use of special creams in addition to the embalming fluid.
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ghosh, Sananda Lal. Mejda: The Family and the Early Life of Paramahansa Yogananda. Self-Realization Fellowship Publishers, 1980, ISBN 978-0876122655
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi, 2005, ISBN 978-1565892125
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Kriyananda, Swami. The Essence of Self-Realization — The Wisdom of Paramhansa Yogananda. Crystal Clarity Publishers, 2003, ISBN 978-0916124298.
- ↑ http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Autobiography_of_a_Yogi
- ↑ The 1946 ed. of Autobiography of a Yogi is in the Public Domain and can be downloaded from: Gutenberg
- ↑ http://www.adam.com.au/bstett/PaIncorruptibility.htm
See also
- Autobiography of a Yogi
- Lahiri Mahasaya
- Mahavatar Babaji
- Rajarsi Janakananda
- Samadhi, poem by Yogananda
- Sri Daya Mata
- Sri Yukteswar
- Survey of Hindu organisations
- Swami Kriyananda
- World Brotherhood Colonies
External links
- "Self-Realization Fellowship", Self-Realization Fellowship. Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- "Pronam", Yoganda.es, Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- "Home page", Ananda Online, March 18, 2007.
- Home Page, Center for Spiritual Awareness, Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- Norman Paulsen, Solar Logos, 2000; "Solar Logos - Norman Paulsen - Yogananda disciple", Sunburst, Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- "Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS)", Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- "Has Self-Realization Fellowship Lost Its Way?", Yogananda Rediscovered. Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- "Ananda Sangha India", Retrieved March 18, 2007.
- "Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda", Project Gutenburg, Retrieved March 21, 2007.
- "Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi", Crystal Clarity, Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- Yogananda's Whispers from Eternity, Retrieved March 21, 2007.
- "Poems from Yogananda's Songs of The Soul", Poet Seers, Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- "Yogananda SRF Devotee Message Board", Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- "A Place for Paramahansa Yogananda Devotees", Yoganandaiji, Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- "Paramhansa Yogananda-A Different Light", Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- "Yogananda's interpretation of genesis", Retrieved March 20, 2007.
- "Rare and obscure works for free download from Yogananda's lineage", Retrieved March 20, 2007.
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Hindu writers: Aurobindo • A. Coomaraswamy • Bankim • Alain Daniélou • Dayananda • Sita Ram Goel • The Mother • Prabhupada • Sivananda • Ram Swarup • Tilak • Vivekananda • Yogananda
Jain writers: Satish Kumar • Claudia Pastorino • Yashodev Suri • Jayantsain Suri
Sikh writers: Bhai Vir Singh • Harjot Oberoi • G.S. Talib • Khushwant Singh
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