Paramahansa Yogananda, a beloved world-renowned Guru, brought the ancient wisdom of India to the West. In 1920 he was invited to serve as India’s delegate for the International Congress of Religious Leaders that was meeting in Boston. After arriving in Boston, he remained in America traveling and lecturing across the country to thousands of enthusiastic seekers in the largest auditoriums in the country; from New York’s Carnegie Hall to the Los Angeles Philharmonic. These auditoriums were filled to capacity and thousands of hopeful people had to be turned away. Paramahansa Yogananda went on to found Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) in America and the Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS) in India in 1920 for the purpose of disseminating Kriya Yoga, a sacred spiritual science that originated millenniums ago in India, for attaining direct personal experience of God.

Paramahansa Yogananda was the first major Indian Guru to remain in America. He settled in Los Angeles, California in 1925 and founded the International Headquarters known as Mother Center on Mt Washington. For the next two and a half decades, he gained fame as he expanded his influence worldwide. He went on teaching-tours, created a monastic order, bought properties for his organization in various California locales, and initiated thousands into Kriya Yoga. Yogananda taught the unity of all great religions in his Self-Realization Fellowships Lessons on Ancient science and philosophy of Yoga and meditation methods for attaining direct personal experience of God. He introduced and spread the teaching of Kriya Yoga, a sacred and spiritual science originating millennium ago in India. Kriya is a soul-awakening technique that had been lost in the Dark Ages and revived by Yogananda’s linage of gurus; Mahavatar Babaji, Lahiri Mahasaya, Swami Sri Yukteswar, who was Yogananda’s Guru Precepter. He was the first prominent Indian to be seen and hosted by a President, as he visited President Calvin Coolidge in the White House in 1927. Due to his renown he was labeled "the 20th century's first superstar guru," by the LA Times. Many prominent figures in the arts, sciences, and business became his followers such as; Mahatma Gandhi, Luther Burbank, Elvis Presley, Ravi Shankar, George Harrison, actor Dennis Weaver, Muriel Hemmingway, and Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who ordered 500 copies of Yogananda’s "Autobiography of a Yogi” to be given to the attendees at his memorial service with the message “Get Realized".

Paramahansa Yogananda lived in the U.S. from 1920 until his passing in 1952, and only visited his native India once, from 1935 to 1936 for twelve-months. While there, he traveled and lectured throughout the subcontinent and helped established a firm foundation for his spiritual work in his native land. He firmly established the Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS), SRF’s sister organization in India, which now has over 200 meditation centers in all parts of India, in Nepal and in Sri Lanka. YSS also operates schools, provides medical services to the needy on a free basis, and performs emergency relief work. Learn more about YSS at Yogoda Satsanga Society of India.