Also known as Swami Yogananda, Paramhansa Yogananda was the first yoga master from India to make his permanent home in the West.
He was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, India, in January 1893. From early childhood, he felt a powerful longing for God, and as described in Autobiography of a Yogi, much of his youth was devoted to seeking out saints and spiritual guidance.
He met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, in Varanasi around 1912 and often visited Yukteswar’s hermitage in Serampore, Bengal while studying for his A.B. degree at Calcutta University through Serampore College. Shortly after graduating in July 1914, Sri Yukteswar initiated Mukunda into the ancient Swami order, and he took the monastic name Swami Yogananda, more precisely Yogananda of the Giri branch of the order.
Before beginning his mission in the West, Yogananda received this instruction from his teacher: the West excelled in material achievement but lacked spiritual understanding, and he was to help teach humanity the importance of balancing outer success with an inner spiritual life.
He arrived in America in 1920 as Swami Yogananda and spent the next four years traveling across the United States on what he called his spiritual campaigns. During this period, hundreds of thousands gathered in major American cities to hear him speak, and his message crossed cultural, social, and religious lines.
In 1925, he established his headquarters on Mount Washington in Los Angeles, California, which later became the center of a worldwide work. There he gathered disciples and trained many of them as teachers and ministers, including Ananda’s founder, Swami Kriyananda. In 1927, he received an invitation to the White House and was welcomed by President Calvin Coolidge.
During a return visit to India from 1935 to 1936, Sri Yukteswar conferred on him the higher monastic title of Paramhansa, meaning “supreme swan,” symbolizing the ability to choose the highest. From that point forward, Swami Yogananda became known as Paramhansa Yogananda. At Mahatma Gandhi’s request, he also initiated Gandhi into Kriya Yoga, the highest technique on Yogananda’s path of Self-realization.
After returning to America in 1936, he continued lecturing and writing until his passing in 1952. His influence on Western culture was significant during his lifetime, but his spiritual legacy has been even more enduring. Autobiography of a Yogi, first published in 1946, helped spark a spiritual awakening in the West and has been translated into more than 50 languages.
Yogananda’s lasting contribution to the West was a universal, non-sectarian path of Self-realization. He taught direct inner experience of God and presented spiritual awakening in a practical, accessible way.
He defined Self-realization as knowing, in every part of body, mind, and soul, that one already possesses the kingdom of God; that God’s omnipresence is one’s own omnipresence; and that the task is simply to deepen that knowing.
According to Yogananda, Kriya Yoga is the fastest path to Self-realization. He taught that this technique had been kept secret for many centuries until it was revived in 1861, when Mahavatar Babaji gave it to Lahiri Mahasaya. Lahiri then passed it to Sri Yukteswar, who taught it to his disciples, including Paramhansa Yogananda, who brought it to the West.
Autobiography of a Yogi offers a firsthand account of Yogananda’s life and is regarded as one of the best-selling spiritual classics of all time. Read by millions around the world and appreciated across religious traditions, it presents the spiritual path with clarity, warmth, humor, and practical insight. In 1999, HarperCollins Publishers named it one of the 100 most important spiritual works of the 20th century.
Yogananda also authored Whispers from Eternity, a collection of spiritualized poems and prayer demands, and Yogananda’s Cosmic Chants. In the West, he introduced a distinctive form of chanting based on repeated meaningful phrases rather than traditional repetitions of divine names, with the aim of focusing the heart and lifting it toward superconsciousness.