Paramahansa Yogananda

Mukunda Lal Ghosh (January 5, 1893 - March 7, 1952), better known as Paramahansa Yogananda, was a Bengali yogi and guru. He is revered by his followers as a "Premavatar" or "Incarnation of Love".

He was born in Gorakhpur, India.

Ghosh met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri in 1910, at the age of 17. After graduating from Calcutta University in 1915, he took formal vows into the monastic Swami Order. Twenty years later his guru conferred upon him the title paramahansa which means "supreme swan". (In his lifetime, he used the spelling Paramhansa, but the traditional Sanskrit spelling has been preferred by SRF since shortly after his death. Their modifying his signature as signed to interpolate the extra A has drawn some criticism).

Harry T. Rowe, Los Angeles Mortuary Director, Forest Lawn Memorial-Park, stated in a notarized letter, "Autobiography of Yogi":

No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death. The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramahansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience. 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.

Sri Yukteswar was the disciple of Sri Lahiri Mahasaya, who in turn was the disciple of the guru Mahavatar Babaji. Kriya Yoga, the spiritual science of spiritual realization, was revived by Babaji and is spread to the world through his disciples. Yogananda was his messenger of Kriya Yoga to the West. After founding and running a school for boys in Ranchi, India, where modern educational techniques, yoga training and spiritual ideals were taught, Yogananda taught in the West from 1920 until his death in 1952, where he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

In 1946, he published his life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, which was instrumental in introducing vedic philosophy to the West. It has since been translated into 18 languages and remains a perennial best seller. Yogananda and his guru have attempted to explain some verses and events of the Bible, including the Garden of Eden story. Some of these are featured in this autobiography.

Yogananda has met many spiritual masters, including the Therese Neumann and the Hindu saint Sri Anandamoyi Ma. In his autobiography he describes his encounters with these and other notable persons such as Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize winning physicist Sir C. V. Raman and others.

Paramahansa Yogananda

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