Mukunda Lal Ghosh was born in Gorakhpur, India, in 1893. At the age of 17, the spiritually restive Indian became a devoted student of the renowned spiritual leader Swami Sri Yukteswar Giri. A few years later, he took his vows as a monk of the Swami Order and received the name Paramahansa Yogananda (“bliss of spiritual discipline”).

Yogananda made an impression on India's religious community almost immediately. In 1917, he started a school for boys where he taught yoga and spiritual principles, in addition to the standard curriculum. His successful school drew praise from many religious quarters, and in 1920 he was asked to travel to Boston as a delegate to a world convention of religious leaders. Also in 1920, Yogananda founded the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), an organization designed to spread his teachings. Yogananda clearly enjoyed his trip to America. From late 1920 to 1924, he crisscrossed the United States speaking and teaching. In 1925, the peripatetic Yogananda settled in Los Angeles. There, he bought the dilapidated Mount Washington Hotel, which rested on a pastoral hillside a few minutes from downtown Los Angeles, and established the worldwide headquarters for SRF. In the years that followed, Yogananda continued spreading the word, and he was even invited to the White House in 1927, where he got a warm reception from President Calvin Coolidge. From his home on Mount Washington, Yogananda continued to teach, travel, meditate, and write until his “exit from the body” (death) in 1952.