The Autobiography of a Yogi

Paramahansa Yogananda (January 5, 1893–March 7, 1952), has been an Indian yogi and guru. He was instrumental in bringing Kriya Yoga to the West.

Yogananda was born Mukunda Lal Ghosh in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India into a devout Bengali family. From his earliest years, his awareness and experience of the spiritual was far beyond the ordinary. In his youth he sought out many of India's Hindu sages and saints, hoping to find an illuminated teacher to guide him in his spiritual quest.

Yogananda met his guru, Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, in 1910, at the age of 17. After passing his Intermediate Examination in Arts from the Scottish Church College, Calcutta, he did his graduation in religious studies from the Serampore College, a constituent college of the University of Calcutta and in 1915, he took formal vows into the monastic Swami Order and became Swami Yogananda. In 1917, Yogananda began his life's mission with the founding and running of a school for boys in a remote hamlet of Bengal, called Dihika, by the side of river Damodar, that combined modern educational techniques with yoga training and spiritual ideals. A year later, the school was shifted to Ranchi. This school would later become Yogoda Satsanga Society of India, the Indian branch of Paramahansaji's American Organization.

In 1920, he went to the United States as India's delegate to an International Congress of Religious Liberals convening in Boston. That same year he founded Self-Realization Fellowship to disseminate worldwide his teachings on India's ancient practices and philosophy of Yoga and its tradition of meditation. For the next several years, he lectured and taught on the East coast and in 1924 embarked on a cross-continental speaking tour. The following year, he established in Los Angeles an international headquarters for Self-Realization Fellowship, which became the spiritual and administrative heart of his growing work.

After fifteen years of his services in the West, Sri Yukteswar conferred upon him the title Paramahansa, which means "supreme swan."

In 1946, Yogananda published his life story, Autobiography of a Yogi, which was instrumental in introducing vedic philosophy to the West. It has since been translated into eighteen languages and remains a best seller.