A kriya yogi in life and death

Guru Purnima signifies the pure and perfect love of God, expressed in its full effulgence through the perfect channel of one’s guru. It was this divine love that was expressed and manifested in Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurudeva and founder of the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in this country and the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles, writes Shantananda Giri

GURU Purnima, the full-moon day dedicated to one’s guru, honours both the form of the guru and his hidden power of grace. On Guru Purnima, which falls on July 16 this year, the guru's benediction is especially abundant. It is said that meditation on one's guru on this day draws the accumulated grace of all true masters anywhere. Guru Purnima also signifies the pure and perfect love of God, expressed in its full effulgence through the perfect channel of the guru.

It was this divine love that was expressed and manifested in Paramahansa Yogananda, Gurudeva and founder of the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in this country and the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles.

As the last of a line of great spiritual masters (Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya and Swami Sri Yukteswar), Paramahansa Yogananda spread the Yogoda Satsanga message of God-communion as a divine dispensation to the world.

Paramahansa Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh on January 5, 1893, in Gorakhpur into a well-to-do and devout Bengali family. He had a remarkable childhood and it was evident to those around him 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, hoping to find an illumined teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.

Yogananda's search for a Guru ended at the feet of Swami Sri Yukteswar of Serampore, who was one of the foremost disciples of Lahiri Mahasaya. After 10 years of spiritual training at Sri Yukteswar's ashram, Yogananda took the formal vows of the Swami Order in 1915. In the same year, he also received his B.A. degree from Calcutta University. When Yogananda was an infant in his mother's arms, Lahiri Mahasaya had blessed him and foretold: "Little Mother thy son will be a yogi. As a spiritual engine, he will carry many souls to God's kingdom."

Yoganandaji began his life's work with the founding, in 1917, of a "how-to-live" school for boys — the Yogoda Satsanga Ashram and Brahmacharya Vidyalya at Ranchi in Bihar — where modern educational methods were combined with yoga training and instruction in spiritual ideals. Visiting the school a few years later, Mahatma Gandhi wrote: "This institution has deeply impressed my mind."

In1920, Paramahansa Yogananda was invited to serve as India's delegate to the International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston. His address to the congress on "The Science of Religion" was enthusiastically received. That same year he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient science and philosophy of yoga and its time-honoured tradition of meditation.

Over the next decade he travelled and lectured widely, speaking to audiences in many of the largest auditoriums in the USA — from New York's Carnegie Hall to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 1925, he took up residence in Los Angeles and established there an international headquarters for his Self-Realization Fellowship.

Among those who became his students were many prominent figures in science, business and the arts, including horticulturist Luther Burbank, operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, George Eastman (inventor of the Kodak camera), poet Edwin Markham and symphony conductor Leopold Stokewski. In 1927, he was officially received at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge, who had read about him in newspaper reports.

Paramahansaji made a return visit to India in 1935-36, after first touring parts of Europe and the Middle East. News of his coming had preceded him; the swami who had been virtually unknown when he left his native country 15 years earlier was welcomed home, and crowds thronged to hear him wherever he spoke.

While in India, Yogananda met Mahatma Gandhi and at the latter’s request instructed him and several of his followers in Kriya Yoga, a spiritual technique of life-force control. Some years later, Dr Camille 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 who brought a message of real hope for a deeper understanding between India and the West (more) than all politicians put together, he said."

During the 1930s, Yoganandaji began to withdraw somewhat from extensive public lecturing, in order to devote himself more to his writings, to establish Self-Realization Fellowship temples and meditation centres, and to build a firm foundation for the future of his spiritual and humanitarian work. Under his direction, the guidance and instruction he had given to students of his classes were arranged into a comprehensive series of lessons — the Yogoda Satsanga Lessons — for home study.

Irrespective of religious affiliation, these non-sectarian and scientific instructions are founded on the original technique of Raja Yoga of Lord Krishna and ancient sage Patanjali. In the lessons are explained the essential laws of life. The lessons offer practical wisdom for everyday living, guidance on attaining balance in life in a world of uncertainties and how to find increasing joy and fulfilment in one's spiritual efforts.

Paramahansa Yogananda's life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, was first published in 1946 and expanded by him in subsequent editions. A bestseller, it has been in continuous publication since it first appeared and has been translated into 18 languages. Widely regarded today as a modern spiritual classic, the book remains one of the most readable works on yoga and spirituality,.

Paramahansa Yogananda entered mahasamadhi on March 7, 1952, in Los Angles, after he had delivered a speech honouring Dr Binay Ranjan Sen, the new Indian Ambassador to the USA. A notarised statement signed by an official of Forest Lawn Memorial-Park testified: "No physical disintegration was visible in Paramahansa Yogananda's 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 . . . Paramahansa Yogananda's body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability."

Paramahansa Yogananda's worldwide spiritual and humanitarian work is being carried on by the Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (headquarters in Ranchi) and the Self-Realization Fellowship under the guidance of the President, Sri Sri Daya Mata. The Self-Realization Fellowship, with international headquarters at Los Angeles, now has more than 400 centres around the world. In India, there are over 20 Yogoda educational and medical institutions, including a degree college.

In 1977, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of his passing, the Government of India issued a commemorative stamp in Yogananda's honour, and paid a tribute in the following words to this beloved world teacher: "The ideal of love for God and service to humanity found full expression in the life of Paramahansa Yogananda . . . Though the major part of his life was spent outside India, still he takes his place among our great saints. His work continues to grow and shine evermore brightly, drawing people everywhere on the path of the pilgrimage of the Spirit."