Man remains engaged in an unceasing quest for that “something else” he hopes will bring him complete and unending happiness. This little sermon about how to live in this world was perhaps the essence of Yogananda’s teaching. Before his death in March 1952, Yogananda spent over thirty years in America, spreading the ancient science of Kriya Yoga and advocating the brotherhood of Man under the fatherhood of God. A century after the birth of Paramahansa Yogananda, he has come to be recognized as one of the pre-eminent spiritual figures of our time and the influence of his life and work continues to grow. Many of the religious and philosophical concepts and methods he introduced decades ago are now finding expression in education, psychology, medicine, business and other spheres of endeavour-contributing in far-reaching ways to a more integrated, humane and spiritual vision of human life.
His magnum opus, Autobiography of a Yogi is acclaimed as a spiritual classic, and those who read it claim they are transformed. Selected as one of the 100 best spiritual books of the last 100 years, it was published in 1946 and expanded in subsequent editions. Translated into 21 languages, it is widely regarded today as a modern spiritual masterpiece, one of the most important and readable works on yoga and Eastern thought. In one of the chapters on cosmic consciousness, the swami says: “After the mind has been cleared by Kriya Yoga of sensory obstacles, meditation furnished a twofold proof of God. Ever-new joy is evidence of His existence, convincing to our very atoms. Also in meditation, one finds His instant guidance, His adequate response to very difficulty.”
Mukunda Lal Ghosh, born on January 5, 1893 at Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh into a well-to-do devout family, showed early signs of being an advanced soul. To those around him, it was evident from his earliest years that the depth of his awareness and experience of the spiritual was far beyond the ordinary. As a youth, he sought out many of India’s great saints and philosophers and ultimately met the revered sage Swami Sri Yukteswar of Serampore in West Bengal, in whose ashram he spent about 10 years.
The Swami founded Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS) in Ranchi in 1917 and Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in Los Angeles, California, USA in 1920 to disseminate worldwide his Kriya Yoga teachings on India’s ancient science and philosophy of yoga and its time-honoured tradition of meditation. From these spiritual societies, his work continues to grow in 175 countries. The Society has more than 400 centres around the world. In India, Paramahansa’s main ashrams are located at Ranchi, Jharkhand and Dakshineswar, Kolkata. The Swami has disciples spread over six continents.
Highly impressed with the Ranchi ashram, Mahatma Gandhi remarked: “This institution has deeply impressed my mind.”
In 1920, Paramahansa was invited to serve as India’s delegate to an International Congress of Liberals in Boston. His address on The Science of Religion was enthusiastically received. Over the next decade, he travelled and lectured widely, speaking to capacity audiences in many of the largest auditoriums in that country-from New York’s Carnegie Hall to Los Angeles’ Philharmonic Auditorium.
Paramahansa returned to India in 1935 and stayed for over one year. While in India, he visited Gandhiji at his Wardha ashram. On Gandhi’s request he taught him and some of his followers the spiritual technique of Kriya Yoga. Dr. Camile Honig, Literary Editor of The California Jewish Voice wrote: “I remember the Mahatma once talked to me about Yogananda with great admiration. It is spiritual men like Yogananda, (he explained), who brought a message of real hope for a deeper understanding between India and West more than all politicians put together.”
“Through gradual and regular increase of the simple and foolproof methods of Kriya,” Paramahansa explains in his autobiography, “man’s body becomes astrally transformed day by day, and is finally fitted to express the infinite potentials of cosmic energy, which constitutes the first materially active expressions of the Spirit.”
“In the course of world travel, I have sadly observed much suffering,” he continues. “In the Orient, suffering chiefly on the material plane; in the Occident, misery chiefly on the mental or the spiritual plane. All nations feel the painful effects of unbalanced civilisations. India and many other eastern lands can greatly benefit from emulation of the practical grasp of affairs, the material efficiency, of Western nations like America. The Occidental peoples, on the other hand, require a deeper understanding of the spiritual basis of life, and particularly of scientific techniques that India anciently developed for man’s conscious communion with God.”
To those who were personally acquainted with Paramahansaji, his own life and being were convincing testimony to the power and authenticity of the ancient wisdom he presented to the world. Over the past half century, countless readers of his autobiography have attested to the presence in its pages of that same light of spiritual authority that radiated from his person. Sri Daya Mata, one of his earliest and closest disciples, recalls: “When I came to Mount Washington in 1931, Paramahansaji had already begun to work on the autobiography. Once when I was in his study, attending to some secretarial duties, I was privileged to see one of the first chapters he wrote-it was on ‘The Tiger Swami.’ He asked me to save it, and explained that it would be going into a book he was writing. Most of the book was composed later, and it turned out to be a masterpiece.
On the 25th anniversary of Paramahansa Yogananda’ passing, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp in his honour.
Paramahansa Yogananda proved himself a Yogi in life as well as in death. On March 7, 1952 he breathed his last at a banquet held in honour of the Indian ambassador to the US. Here he made a tribute to his beloved God and country. Weeks after his departure, his unchanged face shone with the divine lustre of incorruptibility, to the amazement of the mortuary staff in Los Angeles, U.S.A. This great saint’s love for God and service to humanity is now embossed in the history of India and of the world.
(Courtesy: Yogoda Satsanga Society of India)
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