Yogananda, Paramahamsa

(b. Mukunda Lal Ghosh 1893–1952)
Modern Hindu teacher and founder of
the Self-Realization Fellowship. Yogananda was one of the earliest Hindu
missionaries to come to America. He
came to Boston in 1920, to address the
International Congress of Religious
Liberals in Boston and never returned
to India. He eventually settled outside
Los Angeles, where he established a
center and lived for the rest of his life. In
his early years in America he was considered something of a curiosity, and
there are photos of him taken with
President Calvin Coolidge. Yogananda’s
teachings were largely based in the ashtanga yoga of the classical Yoga Sutras,
but he also stressed the doctrine of kriya
(“active”) yoga, which is claimed to
accelerate spiritual attainment. Most of
Yogananda’s disciples and both his successors were Americans, and the SelfRealization Fellowship is essentially an
American organization with historical
roots in India. For further information
see Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, 1997.