Yogananda was born in Bengal in 1893 as Mukunda Lal Ghosh. At age 17 he accepted Yukteswar as his spiritual master who gave him the name Yogananda; a name that indicates constant communion with God. At age 25 he traveled to America giving many lectures and extablishing the Self-Realization Fellowship which taught that the essence of any spiritual practice was the Love of God. Yogananda left his body and entered the great samadhi in 1952.

Yogananda's poetry

    One Friend
Many clouds do race to hide Thee 
Of friends and wealth and fame  
And yet through mist of tears I see
Appear Thy Golden Name.
Each time my father, mother, friends
Do loudly claim they did me tend,
I wake from sleep to sweetly hear
That Thou alone didst! 

     My Soul is Marching On
The shining stars are sunk in darkness deep,
The weary sun is dead at night,
The moon’s soft smile doth fade anon;
But still my soul is marching on!
The grinding wheel of time hath crushed
Full many a life of moon and star,
And many a brightly smiling morn;
But still my soul is marching on!
The flowers bloomed, then hid in gloom,
The bounty of the trees did cease;
Colossal men have come and gone,
But still my soul is marching on!
The eons one by one are flying,
My arrows one by one are gone;
Dimly, slowly, life is fading,
But still my soul is marching on!
Darkness, death, and failures vied;
To block my path they fiercely tried.
My fight with jealous Nature’s strong,
But still my soul is marching on!

      Samadhi
Vanished are the veils of light and shade,
Lifted the vapors of sorrow,
Sailed away the dawn of fleeting joy,
Gone the mirage of the senses.
Love, hate, health, disease, life and death –
Departed, these false shadows on the screen of duality.
Waves of laughter, scyllas of sarcasm, whirlpools of melancholy,
Melting in the vast sea of bliss.
Bestilled is the storm of maya
By the magic wand of intuition deep.
The universe, a forgotten dream, lurks subconsciously,
Ready to invade my newly wakened memory divine.
I exist without the cosmic shadow,
But it could not live bereft of me;
As the sea exists without the waves,
But they breathe not without the sea.
Dreams, waking, states of deep turiya sleep,
Present, past, future, no more for me, 
But the ever-present, all-flowing, I, I everywhere.
Consciously enjoyable,
Beyond the imagination of all expectancy,
Is this, my samadhi state.
Planets, stars, stardust, earth,
Volcanic bursts of doomsday cataclysms,
Creation’s moulding furnace,
Glaciers of silent X-rays,
Burning floods of electrons,
Thoughts of all men, past, present, future,
Every blade of grass, myself and all,
Each particle of creation’s dust,
Anger, greed, good, bad, salvation, lust,
I swallowed up – transmuted them
Into one vast ocean of blood of my own one Being!
Smoldering joy, oft-puffed by unceasing meditation,
Which blinded my tearful eyes,
Burst into eternal flames of bliss,
And consumed my tears, my peace, my frame,
my all.
Thou art I, I am Thou,
Knowing, Knower, Known, as One!
One tranquilled, unbroken thrill of eternal, living, ever-new peace!
Not an unconscious state
Or mental chloroform without wilful return,
Samadhi but extends my realm of consciousness
Beyond the limits of my mortal frame
To the boundaries of eternity,
Where I, the Cosmic Sea,
Watch the little ego floating in Me.
Not a sparrow, nor a grain of sand, falls
without my sight
All space floats like an iceberg in my mental sea.
I am the Colossal Container of all things made!
By deeper, longer, continuous, thirsty, 
guru – given meditation,
This celestial samadhi is attained.
All the mobile murmurs of atoms are heard;
The dark earth, mountains, seas are molten liquid!
This flowing sea changes into vapors of nebulae!
Aum blows o’er the vapors; they open their veils,
Revealing a sea of shining electrons,
Till, at the last sound of the cosmic drum,
Grosser light vanishes into eternal rays
Of all-pervading Cosmic Joy.
From Joy we come,
For Joy we live,
In the sacred Joy we melt.
I, the ocean of mind, drink all creation’s waves.
The four veils of solid, liquid, vapor, light,
Lift aright.
Myself, in everything,
Enters the Great Myself.
Gone forever,
The fitful, flickering shadows of a mortal memory.
Spotless is my mental sky,
Below, ahead, and high above.
Eternity and I, one united ray.
I, a tiny bubble of laughter,
Have become the Sea of Mirth Itself.