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Paramahansa Yogananda was an important spiritual teacher and author of the 20th century. He brought the ancient wisdom of India to the West and continues to inspire people of all backgrounds, cultures, and faiths to this day.

If you would like more information about Paramahansa Yogananda, his teachings, and the Self-Realization Fellowship, or to order his correspondence courses, please click

Born on January 5, 1893, in India, Paramahansa Yogananda showed a strong interest in spirituality from an early age. In his youth, he visited many saints and sages in the hope of finding an enlightened master who could guide him on his spiritual path. At the age of seventeen, after a long search, he met his guru, the venerable Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri, and became his disciple.

Over the next ten years, Paramahansa Yogananda spent most of his time at his guru's hermitage, where he was instructed in the spiritual science of yoga.

In 1915, Paramahansa Yogananda successfully completed his studies at the University of Calcutta. Far more significant for him, however, was his subsequent official ordination as a monk, through which he was accepted into the venerable Swami Order. He also received his spiritual name, “Yogananda,” which means “bliss (Ananda) through union with the Divine (Yoga).”

In 1917, Paramahansa Yogananda founded a boys' school in Ranchi that promoted a holistic approach to life. The curriculum combined modern teaching methods with yoga and spiritual teachings to impart both spiritual and practical wisdom to the students. While meditating at this school, Yogananda had a divine vision: to spread spiritual wisdom and Kriya Yoga in the West.

Paramahansa Yogananda subsequently received an invitation to participate as the Indian delegate in an international congress of leading religious figures, which was to take place in Boston that same year. In 1920, he traveled to the United States to attend this meeting. That same year, he founded the Self-Realization Fellowship with the aim of helping people recognize their true divine nature.

In the early years, Paramahansa Yogananda gave lectures and taught on the East Coast of the United States. Beginning in 1924, he undertook extensive lecture tours across America, always speaking to sold-out auditoriums. He emphasized the unity underlying all the world's great religions and taught universally applicable methods that lead to direct personal experience of God.

In the 1930s, Paramahansa Yogananda began to withdraw from his lecture tours and concentrated on writing down the teachings of India's venerable science and philosophy of yoga and its time-honored tradition of meditation in order to preserve this knowledge for future generations. He summarized his personal guidance and teachings, which he had previously imparted to his students in courses, in teaching letters so that all people would have the opportunity to delve into the depths of yoga and meditation and experience God personally.

On March 7, 1952, the great guru Paramahansa Yogananda left his physical body and entered Mahasamadhi. His legacy lives on not only in his „Autobiography of a Yogi, his teaching letters, and other writings, but also in the ongoing work of the Self-Realization Fellowship, which preserves and transmits his teachings.

Yoga: Union With Bliss Through Meditation

Paramahansa Yogananda was chosen by his venerable line of gurus to bring the Kriya Yoga to the West and disseminate it worldwide. For this purpose he established Self-Realization Fellowship in 1920.

 Central to the Kriya Yoga path is the daily practice of the meditation techniques taught by Paramahansa Yogananda in the Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons.

The sacred science of Kriya Yoga contains the distilled essence of Raja Yoga.

“Divine Joy outlasts everything,” Paramahansaji said. “It is enduring. When all else melts away, that Joy remains.” As we start to discover this everlasting joy by practicing the techniques of meditation, we also learn to hold onto that joy during daily life, so that it enlivens and animates all our other activities.

Paramahansa Yogananda, at the Lake Shrine, Pacific Palasades, CA.

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Give your love to all, feel God's love, see Him in every person, and wish for nothing else than that He constantly dwells in the temple of your consciousness – this is the right way to live in this world.

When you meditate, you will find doors everywhere that lead to the LORD. And when you are connected with Him, all the devastations of the world cannot take away your joy and peace.

Everything that the LORD has created is meant to test us and bring forth the buried immortal soul within us. This is the adventure of life – the only purpose of existence.

invites the spiritual seeker to journey together on a life-transforming discovery of the soul.

Paramahansa Yogananda gründete 1920 die Self-Realization Fellowship, um den Menschen die universale Lehre des Kriya-Yoga zugänglich zu machen.

The teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda are made available, today as during his lifetime, through the printed Self-Realization Fellowship Lessons. This comprehensive home-study series gives instruction in all the meditation techniques of the Kriya Yoga science, as well as in the many other aspects of balanced spiritual living taught by Yogananda.

Today, Self-Realization Fellowship has grown to include more than 600 temples and centers around the world and has members in over 175 countries. In India and surrounding countries, Paramahansa Yogananda’s work is known as Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS), which has more than 200 centers, retreats, and ashrams.

In accord with its founder’s wishes, the work of Self-Realization Fellowship is guided by the monastic order that Paramahansa Yogananda established along the lines of the ancient swami tradition of India. 

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is composed of members and friends of Self-Realization Fellowship, a worldwide non-profit, religious organization, founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda.

Through it’s world wide service and teachings, SRF seeks to awaken greater understanding of the harmony underlying all religions, and fuller expression of the love that unites all people when they realize their oneness in God

By the practice of meditation, you will find that you are carrying within your heart a portable paradise

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