Yogananda giving a lecture at the Philharmonic Auditorum, Los Angeles, California.

From 1924–1935, Yogananda traveled and lectured widely, speaking to capacity audiences in many of the largest auditoriums in America — from New York’s Carnegie Hall to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Auditorium. The Los Angeles Times reported: “The Philharmonic Auditorium presents the extraordinary spectacle of thousands….being turned away an hour before the advertised opening of a lecture with the 3000-seat hall filled to its utmost capacity.”

Yogananda with Luthar Burbank in Santa Rosa.

Yogananda emphasized the underlying unity of the world’s great religions, and taught universally applicable methods for attaining direct personal experience of God. To serious students of his teachings he taught the soul-awakening techniques of Kriya Yoga, initiating more than 100,000 men and women during his thirty years in the West.

His Excellency Emilio Portes Gil, president of Mexico and Sri Yogananda.

Among those who became his students were many prominent figures in science, business, and the arts, including horticulturist Luther Burbank, operatic soprano Amelita Galli-Curci, George Eastman (inventor of the Kodak camera), poet Edwin Markham, and symphony conductor Leopold Stokowski. In 1927, he was officially received at the White House by President Calvin Coolidge, who had become interested in the newspaper reports of his activities.

In 1929, during a two-month trip to Mexico, he planted the seeds for future growth of his work in Latin America. He was welcomed by the president of Mexico, Dr. Emilio Portes Gil, who became a lifelong admirer of Yogananda’s teachings.

By the mid-1930s, Paramahansaji had also met quite a few of the early disciples who would help him build the Self-Realization Fellowship work and carry the Kriya Yoga mission forward after his own lifetime was over — including two whom he appointed to be his spiritual successors as president of Self-Realization Fellowship: Rajarsi Janakananda (James J. Lynn), who met the Guru in Kansas City in 1932; and Sri Daya Mata, who had attended his classes in Salt Lake City the previous year.

Guru (Paramahansa Yogananda) and Disciple (James J. Lynn) are meditating at YSS-SRF International Headquarters, Los Angeles.

Other disciples who attended his lecture programs during the 1920s and ‘30s and stepped forward to dedicate their lives to the SRF work were Dr. and Mrs. M. W. Lewis, who met him in Boston in 1920; Gyanamata (Seattle, 1924); Tara Mata (San Francisco, 1924); Durga Mata (Detroit, 1929); Ananda Mata (Salt Lake City, 1931); Sraddha Mata (Tacoma, 1933); and Sailasuta Mata (Santa Barbara, 1933).

Thus, for many years after Yogananda’s passing, and continuing to this day, Self-Realization Fellowship has been guided by disciples who received Paramahansa Yogananda’s personal spiritual training.

Paramahansa Yogananda and Faye Wright, now Sri Daya Mata at SRF Encinitas Hermitage.

Yogananda’s talks and classes in the earliest years of his ministry were recorded only intermit­tent­ly. However, when Sri Daya Mata (who later became president of his world­wide organization) joined his ashram in 1931, she undertook the sacred task of faithfully recording Yogananda’s hundreds of lectures, classes, and informal talks so that his wisdom and inspiration could be preserved in their original power and purity and published by Self-Realization Fellowship for generations to come.

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