Yogananda

(b. Jan. 5, 1893, Gorakhpur, India; d. Mar. 7, 1952, Los Angeles, California) Yogananda was an Indian saint and mystic; founder of Yogoda Satsanga Society in India (1917) and the Self-Realization Fellowship in America; author of Autobiography of a Yogi.

Life and teaching

Yogananda was devoted to God at an early age. When he was a babe in arms his mother’s guru prophesied, “As a spiritual engine, he will carry many souls to God’s kingdom.” In 1920 he traveled to America at the request of his guru and later established the American headquarters of the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles.

Yogananda revealed the harmony of science and religion and the basic oneness of the original Christianity taught by Jesus Christ and the original Yoga taught by Bhagavan Krishna. He taught the way of the Christ and the Buddha and initiated many into the science of Kriya Yoga. Yogananda’s book Autobiography of a Yogi gives an understanding of the Guru-chela relationship as well as profound teaching on the love of the Divine Mother.

Legacy

Yogananda and his masters, Sri Yukteswar and Lahiri Mahasaya, Babaji and Mataji, are counted among the unascended Gurus of the Great White Brotherhood. They are the Bodhisattvas. Although Yogananda was able to preserve his body temple after death, he did not elect to take his ascension. Rather, he abides at the etheric plane in the etheric retreats of the Great White Brotherhood with other masters of the Himalayas, training and tutoring souls who are walking in the way of the Christ and the Buddha to attain that reunion.

It is the desire of Yogananda to bring his disciples into the awareness of the teachings of the ascended masters, even as it is the desire of the ascended masters to teach their disciples the way of the unascended adepts of the Himalayas.

Sources

Jesus and Kuthumi, Prayer and Meditation.

Holy Days Calendar, January 1994.

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 28, no. 4, January 27, 1985.