Yogananda's Life With Sriyukteswar

One day, Swami Sriyukteswar saw his dear disciple’s (Mukundalal Ghosh’s, later Paramhansa Yogananda) providence. It happened when one day, Mukunda and his best friend Manamohan (later, Swami Satyananda, disciple of Sriyukteswar) were sitting near their Gurudev and Mukunda became inattentive. Sriyukteswar noticed this and then touched Mukunda’s mind at that given moment. He found out that Mukunda was using Khechari’s effect for daydreaming and seeing American people men and women with bare bodies wearing small swimming suits, playing on the beach and in ocean water at Encinitas, California. It was a prohibited act according to Vedic culture and thus Sriyukteswar scolded Mukunda not to be interested in daydreaming or these things could happen in life. Through this event, Sriyukteswar became aware of his dear disciple’s providence to be in Encinitas.

So he prepared Yogananda from his teenage years accordingly and helped him to discharge his providence, by selecting him as his messenger to the West. He kept Satyananda near him and appointed him leader of the East.

It was Sriyukteswar who sent Yogananda to the West, not Babaji. There is no factual evidence that Yogananda met Babaji.

The document says, “One day, Mukunda was sitting near Gurudev inattentively; Gurudev scolded him for that. During that period, actually in Mukunda’s mind several pictures appeared one after another. Sometimes he was walking on the surface of plain land, sometimes on the mountain, and again sometimes he was staying by the seashore. At that time, he did not understand the significance of this mental picture. In later days, Mukunda used to say that perhaps there was an indication of the future course of actions in life in the mental picture of that day [daydreaming]. In the beginning, his work started on the plains of Dihika, West Bengal; then with the starting of Brahmacharya Vidyalaya [School], he went to Ranchi; then in the West in 1925 [actually registered in March 29, 1935] he established his headquarters of Self Realization Fellowship Church (SRFC) in Los Angeles on Mount Washington and in 1936 he received a present of a sadhanasram on the seashore at Encinitas in the state of California.” P. 84 Yogananda Sanga by Swami Satyananda, (Disciple of Sriyukteswar, a boyhood best friend and brother disciple of Yogananda).

In 1937, in a letter to his colleague Nirod (Nirad Ranjan Choudhuri, also known as Sri Nerode), since he saw through his daydreaming in the young days, Yogananda himself characterized the Encinitas branch as “Dream Hermitage, Encinitas, Calif.” His own handwritten letter reveals it at the top of the right hand corner. Page 818, Reproduced from Babaji O Tnar Parampara (Bengali version of Babaji and His Legacy ISBN 1-877854-31-X) by Swami Satyeswarananda Vidyaranta Babaji.

The purpose of the letter was to request his colleague, Nirod, who was in charge of running his main center at Mount Washington, Los Angeles at that time, to clean, rearrange things, put up new pictures, relocate current residents elsewhere, and make available as many rooms and suites as possible to rent for $500.00 per month to the devotees as permanent guests who wanted to live at the center. For this purpose, already advertisements were put in the following newspapers:

• Times
• L.A. Examiner
• Herald of Hollywood and
• Miami Herald.
  

Swami Yogananda’s Handwritten Letter

English version of the previous letter: