Paramahansa Yogananda
Photo: 1920 · public domain
A disciple of Sri Yukteswar, sent West by his teacher at twenty-seven for the congress of religions in Boston in 1920. He never went back: for thirty years he lectured across America to halls of thousands and founded the Self-Realization Fellowship with its centre in Los Angeles. He taught kriya yoga — a breathing practice he presented as a technique rather than a creed, which is why Christians listened too. The “Autobiography of a Yogi” (1946), with its accounts of his teachers, sold in the millions and for many in the West was the first book about India written from the inside. He died in Los Angeles in 1952, having just finished speaking at a reception for the Indian ambassador.
He was born in Gorakhpur on 5 January 1893 at 20:38 local mean time: India had no single time zone until 1906. The hour comes from the horoscope cast at his birth.