Union With God

Paramhansa Yogananda’s unshakeable and sincere message of devotion and prayer is best stated in his own words, “Your greatest necessity is God.” Forming a bridge between the two hemispheres, East and West, his life and teachings exemplify the universality of spirit that transcends all barriers.

The most outstanding quality of Paramhansa Yogananda’s message is his urgent and poignant plea to all mankind to center life on realizing God. The purpose of life is to find God, and to find Him now.

There is utter simplicity in the path he recommends. He urges God-seekers to follow both the outer and inner way to reach God realization—do right activity centered on God-consciousness and by deep meditation realize the divine consciousness within. In his words, to strive toward God is to “taste the wine of spiritual ecstasy.”

Mukunda Lal Ghosh, later to be known as Paramahansa Yogananda, was born on January 5, 1893. He was the second son of eight children in a well-to-do Bengali family. Both his parents were devout Hindus who became disciples of the Kriya yoga master, Sri Lahiri Mayasaya. The swami left his physical body shortly after Mukunda’s birth , but in the following years he often came in astral form to join Mukunda during his meditations in the family shrine room. At a very young age, Mukunda was drawn toward spirituality. His earliest memory was of a previous incarnation as a yogi in the Himalayas.

At the age of eight Mukunda was stricken by Asiatic cholera, which at the time was often  fatal. As he lay close to death, his mother, Gurru, urged him to kneel mentally to the photo of Lahiri Mayasaya to show his devotion. As he did so, a luminous blue light enveloped his body and filled the room.  Suddenly he was well, and strong enough to bend and touch his mother’s feet in respect and gratitude.

 So began Mukunda’s life, dedicated to the universal science of yoga, which literally means union with God. He embarked on many pilgrimages around India seeking darshan of saints and sages in order to learn more about God-realization. At seventeen, while visiting Benares, he finally met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar, whose face he had seen many times before during meditation. Sri Yukteswar encouraged him to attend  Calcutta University and its affiliate, Serampore College. At the same time, Sri Yukteswar intensified Mukunda’s spiritual instruction at his hermitage in Serampore, near Calcutta. Mukunda’s guru had been a disciple of the deceased Sri Lahiri Mahasaya and was now a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. He often took Mukunda to see Ramakrishna at Dakineshwar, a short distance from Calcutta.

After Mukunda’s graduation from the university, Sri Yukteswar formally initiated him into the Swami Order and gave him the name Yogananda, meaning bliss (ananda) through divine union (yoga). From his guru Yogananda learned what he called the science of Kriya yoga, which utilizes prana (life force) gained through body and mind control to decarbonize the blood, recharge it with extra oxygen and transmute the oxygen into prana again, thereby rejuvenating the brain and energy centers of the body.

1920 was a momentous year for Paramahansa Yogananda. One day, while sitting in a storeroom at the Ranchi school, he had a vision of a crowd of American faces. Saying to an employee that he was going to America, he left within a few hours for Calcutta, where the following day he received an invitation to serve as delegate from India to the International Congress of Religious Liberals to be held in the US.

Seeking  a clear sign from God about his future mission in the United States, Yogananda prayed fervently all morning, longing to hear the voice of God. At noon, a young man dressed as a sadhu (a holy man) knocked on his door. When the man entered the house, Yogananda thought that he must be Babaji.  The sadhu answered, saying, “Yes, I am Babaji” and said that he had guided Yogananda to become a disciple of Sri Yukteswar and prepared him to spread the message of Kriya yoga to the Western world. Babaji promised protection of the Heavenly Father. Yogananda believed that his meeting with Babaji was the “most sacred of human experiences.”

With Babaji’s and Yukteswar’s blessings in mind, Yogananda departed for America, where in the space of a few years, he became a religious celebrity. During Yogananda’s first year in the United States, he established the Self-Realization Fellowship and started spiritual centers in a number of cities. He established schools in India and outside of India. In the final years of his life, he dedicated himself to building a strong foundation for the Self-Realization Fellowship in the United States.

Paramahansa Yogananda was asked to speak at a banquet in honor of the Ambassador of India on March 7, 1952. Shortly before the event he told a disciple that his life’s work was done; to another he said that there was nothing to hold him on this earth any longer. When his speech was over, Yogananda entered mahasamadhi  (a yogi’s conscious and final exit from the physical body). The funeral was held 20 days later. The mortician later wrote to the Self-Realization Fellowship that in all his experience he had never seen a body remain in perfect condition, with no deterioration of the flesh, over such an extended period of time.

In teaching the ancient practice of yoga to the West, Paramahansa relied on simple language to convey profound concepts and make them applicable to daily life. His principal message, in his own words is, “Self-realization is the knowing—in body, mind, and soul—that we are one with the omnipresence of God.”

Yogananda was particularly effective in the West, where he often compared the teachings of Christ and Krishna. While Christ showed the world the greatness of his loving sacrifice, Krishna, a king, showed us how to live in the world and yet be untouched by desires and temptation. They gave the world two of the greatest books of all time—the Bhagavad Gita and the Bible. Many of his lectures show the similarity in the teachings of Christ and Krishna: renunciation of sense objects, the acceptance of reincarnation in early Christianity, the Ten Commandments of the Bible, and the precepts of the Bhagavad Gita.

A cornerstone of Yogananda’s teaching is the emphasis on meditation which he says opens the doors to eternal bliss. He urges us to discover the soul’s power of intuition. The true practice of religion, according to his teachings, is to concentrate on God and talk to Him—intensively, constantly and with devotion. The more we do this, the more we will shed “the fog of ignorance.” He exhorts all God-seekers to tap their innate intuition through meditation. Meditate with such intensity, he says, that, “your soul burns with desire for God.”

Like Sathya Sai Baba, Yogananda also emphasizes healthy living through correct thoughts and eating habits. “When a man has destroyed the mental bacteria of intolerance, rage, and fear, and has freed his soul from ignorance, he is unlikely to suffer from physical disease or mental lack. Do not overeat.  Most persons die as a result of greediness and of ignorance of right dietary habits,” Baba says. “Eat in moderation and live long…This is the advice handed down through the ages from the seers of the past. But the advice is seldom heeded….Evil thoughts cause ill health; anxiety, fear, and tension also contribute their share. All this results from the greed to have more things, more power and more fame.”

Paramahamsa Yogananda makes an urgent and poignant plea to all humankind not to waste time and to focus on realizing God, who is within ourselves. He says, “So many years are gone from our lives already. And only so many years, weeks, days and hours are left. Do not waste time. In your heart, tell him night and day, ‘Lord, I want Thee.’…Never reason, ‘Tomorrow I will seek God. Today, let me have a good time.’ Always say, ‘Today, my Lord. Today I want Thee.’” Yogananda’s life and teachings exemplify this earnest pursuit.

~Tracy Trisko
Maryland, USA

Sources:Yogananda, Paramahansa. Where There is Light.
Los Angeles: Self Realization Fellowship, 1988.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Metaphysical Meditation.
Los Angeles: Self Realization Fellowship, 1994.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Autobiography of a Yogi.
Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, tenth edition, 1969.
Reddy, Dr. A. Adivi. Uniqueness of Swami and his Teachings.
Prasanthi Nilayam: Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publication Trust.
Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man’s Eternal Quest and Other Talks.
Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1975.