Religion and Theology

Yoga is now a popular spiritual practice not only in the West but also in many other parts of the world.  It has helped millions improve not only their physical health but also their spiritual life.  Much of this has to be credited to Paramahansa Yogananda who introduced Yoga to the West in the early 20th century.  But Yoganandas practice would also not have been perfected if it were not for the influence of others.  These influential people include Sri Yukteswar Giri, Sri Anandamayi Ma, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, C. V. Raman and Luther Burbank.

First, Sri Yukteswar Giri was Yoganandas guru, and Yogananda called him Jnanavatar (Incarnation of Wisdom).  He was a yogi, a Vedic astrologer, an educator and an astronomer.  He not only believed in the Bhagavad Gita but also in the Western Bible.  He also followed the teachings of Lahiri Mahasaya of Varanasi, and he also became a member of the Swami orders Giri branch.  He only had a small number of disciples however because, as Yogananda thought, his training methods were strict and drastic.  He wrote many books on topics such as English, Hindi and astrology.  He also wrote the book Holy Science in 1894, whose aim was to show that all religions or faiths are true and that all scriptures point to the same thing.   He eventually passed away at his Puri ashram on March 9, 1936.

Second, Yogananda also met Sri Anandamayi Ma.  She is a spiritual Hindu teacher from Bengal.  She is also considered to be a saint or devi, a manifestation of God, by many people, and her state of divine bliss earned her the name Anandamayi (Joy Permeated Mother).  She is also known to her followers as a miracle healer gifted with precognition.  Her states of ecstasy were often quite serious to the point that some people thought that she was demon-possessed or mentally ill.  In fact, her husband, Bholanath, called an exorcist and a psychiatrist to help her since sometimes, after coming home from work, he would find her on the kitchen floor with the food burnt or half-cooked.  This prompted Bholanaths family to ask him to leave her.  Instead, he asked her to initiate him, which led him to a state of bliss.  Anandamayi would eventually experience three years of complete silence.  She later moved to Dhaka with her husband who became a gardener there.  She continued to perform household tasks but her states of ecstasy interfered with her work.  So she set up a Kali temple to devote herself into spiritual practices where she would undergo deep meditative states and hold difficult yogic positions while she formed complex tantric hand positions and gestures.  This was when people started to see her as divine, and her early followers included Jyotiscandra Ray, who gave Anandamayi her spiritual name, Mahamahopadhyay Gopinath Kaviraj, who was the principal of Kolkatas Sanskrit College, and Triguna Sen, who was a doctor.  She then traveled to Dehradun and began moving around India after that.  During this period, many others followed her, including the French spiritual film producer Arnaud Desjardins, the English author Dr. Colin Turnbull, the German novelist Melita Maschmann, and Kamala Nehru, the wife of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.  Mahatma Gandhi also came to know her.  And eventually, Paramahansa Yogananda also met her and described her in his autobiography.  She passed away in Dehradun on August 27, 1982, and a shrine was erected in her honor.

Third, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was also influential to Yogananda.  Gandhi is one the best-known spiritual and political leaders of India, and an award-winning biographical movie was produced to document his life.  It won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture.  Gandhi pioneered mass civil disobedience through non-violence in his quest for Indian independence from British colonial rule.  For this, he is officially honored in India and is called the Father of the Nation.  His birthday is also commemorated in India as a national holiday, and globally as the International Day of Non-Violence.  It all started when he was an expatriate lawyer in South Africa, where fought for Indian civil rights.  He later organized peasant protests when he returned to India.  When he joined the Indian National Congress he fought further for equality nationwide and most specially the independence of India from Britain.  He launched movements such as the non-cooperation movement and Quit-India civil disobedience movement. And because of his non-violent protests, he was jailed both in South Africa and India.  He also fasted for long periods as another way to protest against injustice.  In the end, on January 30, 1948, Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist and extremist who opposed Gandhis support for payments to Pakistan, shot him while attending a prayer meeting.  Later, Godse was convicted and executed, but he was still successful in assassinating Indias greatest hero.  Gandhis memorial bears the words He Ram (Oh God) which is believed to be the last words that he said just before he died.

Fourth, Rabindranath Tagore was also influential to Yogananda.  Tagore was a musician, poet, playwright and novelist from Bengal.  He was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913 for his work Gitanjali (Song Offerings).  Like Gandhi, he also supported Indian independence and called him Mahatma in reverence.  He wrote poems as early as eight and published his first serious set of poems at 16.  And his other popular works include Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World), Gora (Fair-Faced) and the national anthems of Bangladesh (Amar Shonar Bangla) and India (Jana Gana Mana).  He visited more than 30 countries and met many important people including Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, George Bernard Shaw, Robert Frost and H.G. Wells.  He was also later proclaimed as the greatest Indian poet, and his birth anniversary is even celebrated in Urbana, Illinois.

Fifth, C. V. Raman was also influential to Yogananda.  He was an Indian physicist and physics noble laureate. He was also the director of the Indian Institute of Science.  And through his experiments on the molecular scattering of light, he discovered the Raman Effect, which is named after him. He also worked on musical instrument acoustics.  Later, he started the Travancore Chemical and Manufacturing Co. Ltd. which produced four Indian factories.  And to commemorate the discovery of the Raman Effect, India celebrates National Science Day every year.

Lastly, Yogananda also admired his friend Luther Burbank.  Burbank is a pioneer in American agricultural science.  He is a botanist and horticulturist who developed at least 800 plant strains, some of which are used in food processing. He was also a spiritual mystic that influenced Yogananda, who had many kind words for him in his autobiography.

All in all, Paramahansa Yoganandas life would not have been complete without all the people that he met, admired and thought about.  Indeed, we are nothing without the influence of others.