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Self-Realization Fellowship

Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) is a worldwide religious organization founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian guru who authored Autobiography of a Yogi. Before coming to the United States, Yogananda began his spiritual work in India in 1917 and named it Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS). He came to the West in 1920 and in 1925 established SRF's headquarters at Mount Washington, Los Angeles, California. Before his return visit to India in 1935, he legally incorporated SRF in the United States, designating it as the only organization to carry on his work – to care for and disseminate his teachings.^{: 154, 227}

Yogananda's teachings include meditation techniques intended to promote awareness of God and one's soul. SRF conveys these techniques through a home-study course, and they publish Yogananda's books and lectures. SRF also coordinates the Worldwide Prayer Circle, who pray for world peace and those in need.

Leadership

Paramahansa Yogananda founded SRF in 1920 and served as head until his death on 7 March 1952. In 1925, he established the international headquarters for SRF/YSS at Mount Washington in Los Angeles, California. The three-story building had originally been opened in 1909 as a hotel. SRF now calls it Mother Center. After Yogananda's death, SRF preserved his bedroom in the building as a shrine.

The first president and head of SRF/YSS after Yogananda was Rajarsi Janakananda, who was president until his death on 20 February 1955.

Daya Mata was the next head and president of Self Realization Fellowship/YSS from 1955 until 30 November 2010, the end of her life. American yoga scholar Linda Johnsen wrote that Daya Mata was an example of a new wave of women who acquired leadership positions in Hindu spirituality.

In 2010, Mrinalini Mata became the next president of SRF/YSS, with the official announcement being on 9 January 2011. She held this position until her passing on 3 August 2017. She had been chosen by Yogananda to oversee his publications after his death, and she had held the position of SRF/YSS vice-president from 1966 until she became president in 2011.

On 30 August 2017, Brother Chidananda was elected as the next and current president with a unanimous vote of the SRF Board of Directors.

Monastic order

SRF is run by members of its monastic order, established by Yogananda in the early 1930s. SRF's monks and nuns coordinate the organization's retreats, youth programs, temple services, and publishing and translation efforts. They also coordinate the Worldwide Prayer Circle, a network of groups and individuals who pray for world peace and those in need.

According to SRF's website, the daily life of an SRF renunciant includes meditation, prayer, service, spiritual study, introspection, exercise, and recreation. There are four stages of life in the SRF monastic order that represent a deepening commitment to the renunciant life: postulancy, novitiate, brahmacarya, and sannyas. Monks and nuns of the SRF Order who take their final renunciant vows are members of the Swami Order, which traces its spiritual lineage back to Adi Shankara.

Teachings

Yogananda first introduced his teachings to the West during an international congress of religious leaders held in Boston, MA in 1920 while giving a talk called The Science of Religion. Yogananda believed that his methods were testable. Yogananda's dissemination of his teachings continues through SRF, which he incorporated in 1935 as a nonprofit religious organization. According to author Lola Williamson in her book, Transcendent in America: Hindu-inspired Meditation Movements as New Religion, "He (Yogananda) made it clear that his teachings were to be shared through Self-Realization Fellowship and not through rogue organizations that taught in his name."^: 227

Yogananda's autobiography contains a list of aims and ideals for SRF, and the first of these is to disseminate "scientific techniques for attaining direct personal experience of God". Another is "to advocate cultural and spiritual understanding between East and West". SRF teaches methods of concentration and meditation, including a technique called kriya yoga, for the purpose of attaining what Yogananda called Self-realization. Yogananda used this term to signify the realization of one's true Self or soul. SRF presents Eastern and Western religious teachings as essentially one and the same by including passages from both the Bhagavad Gita and the New Testament in their services. SRF also publishes Yogananda's works, which include his home-study lessons, autobiography, lectures, and recorded talks.^: 187

SRF funded the 2014 documentary Awake: The Life of Yogananda, which was co-directed by Paola Di Florio and Lisa Leeman.

Kriya Yoga

SRF initiates prepared students in a technique called kriya yoga that they say hastens the process of spiritual awakening.^: 183 Through deep and regular practice, the technique is supposed to withdraw one's energy and attention from distracting thoughts, emotions, and stimuli, so that one may experience peace and attunement with God in the resulting stillness. SRF requires aspiring disciples to first undertake a home-study course called the SRF Lessons, compiled from Yogananda's teachings. In keeping with Upanishadic tradition, recipients of SRF's lessons pledge not to share the contents with others. In SRF, receiving the kriya yoga technique is seen as diksha (initiation) by the guru, Yogananda, and it involves an initiation rite conducted by an authorized representative. SRF sends disciples printed kriya yoga lessons even if they cannot attend the rite.^: 183

Temples, retreats, and other facilities

Self-Realization Fellowship has over 600 temples and meditation centers located in 62 countries. Of the temples, there are eight in the United States – seven in California and one in Arizona:

Bay Area Temple, Walnut Creek
Encinitas Temple
Fullerton Temple
Glendale Temple
Hollywood Temple
Lake Shrine Temple, Pacific Palisades
San Diego Temple
Phoenix Temple

SRF also runs retreat centers:

Lake Shrine in Pacific Palisades, CA
Hidden Valley Ashram (for men) in Escondido, CA
Greenfield Retreat (for women) in Front Royal, Virginia
Bermersbach Retreat in Germany
Armação Retreat in Santa Catarina, Brazil.

SRF has a sister organization in India called Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS), founded by Yogananda in 1917 and headquartered in Dakshineswar (near Calcutta). YSS oversees 200 kendras, mandalis, retreats, and ashrams throughout India and Nepal, along with more than 20 educational and medical facilities.

Encinitas Hermitage

After his return from India in 1936, Yogananda took up residence at the SRF hermitage in Encinitas, California, which was a surprise gift from his disciple Rajarsi Janakananda. It was while at this hermitage that Yogananda wrote Autobiography of a Yogi and other writings, creating a permanent foundation for the humanitarian and spiritual work of SRF/YSS. This property includes an ashram.

Hollywood Temple

On 30 August 1942, Yogananda opened the SRF Hollywood Temple on Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, California. It is the oldest SRF temple in the US. According to Phil Goldberg, Yogananda dedicated it to "the ideal of human brotherhood and the definite realization of God as the One Father of all mankind." Meghan Markle's parents, Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle Sr. were married by Brother Bhaktananda at Hollywood Temple on 23 December 1979.

Lake Shrine

The Self-Realization Fellowship Lake Shrine is located on Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades, California. It was dedicated by Yogananda, on 20 August 1950, as a 10-acre spiritual center honoring the five major world religions. It is set in a hillside amphitheater with gardens and a spring-fed lake, and it is home to swans, ducks, koi, water turtles, lotus flowers, a Dutch windmill, and a golden lotus archway that is painted white and topped with gold lotus blossoms. The archway frames the Mahatma Gandhi World Peace Memorial, an outdoor shrine where a 1,000-year-old Chinese sarcophagus holds a portion of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes.

San Diego Temple

Yogananda established San Diego Temple in Bankers Hill, San Diego, on 5 September 1943, during World War II. The front walkway of the temple is lined with cypress trees planted by Yogananda. In 1945, Mrinilini Mata, then fourteen-year-old Merna Brown, first met Yogananda at this temple and a year later entered the ashram in Encinitas.

Twentynine Palms

Yogananda spent most of the last four years of his life in seclusion at his desert ashram in Twentynine Palms, California, with some of his closest disciples. There he completed his writings, including the revisions of his books, articles and lessons written previously.

Reception, views and controversies

As of 1992, SRF had several hundred thousand members. It has enjoyed widespread influence through its publications, but it has struggled to preserve the confidentiality of the lessons from its home-study course – similar lessons have been shared by unaffiliated sources. SRF has responded by including in its publications a copyright statement and a certification that SRF is the society founded by Yogananda to convey his teachings.^{: 186–187}

Celebrity involvement

George Harrison frequently cited SRF's founder, Yogananda, as an important spiritual influence. On visits to Los Angeles, George Harrison would spend time at the SRF retreat in Encinitas. The SRF organization strictly honored its members' privacy, which Harrison appreciated. According to Straight Arrow Press, in the United States the "proceeds from the January 14, 2002, reissue of George Harrison's 1970 song My Sweet Lord will go to the Self-Realization Fellowship". His funeral was held at SRF's Lake Shrine.

Ravi Shankar had met Yogananda in the 1930s and gave his first U.S. concert at the SRF Encinitas Retreat, Encinitas, California in 1957.

Elvis Presley often visited SRF in the late 1960s. According to Louis Sahagun of the LA Times, Brother Paramananda, "who left a promising acting career to devote his life to the fellowship", claimed Elvis had once said to him: "Man, you made the right choice. People don't know my life or that I sometimes cry myself to sleep because I don't know God."

Lawsuit with Kriyananda

In 1990, SRF filed suit against James Donald Walters (aka Kriyananda) and his organization, Ananda Church of Self-Realization, regarding Ananda's use of Self-Realization in their name and their use of specific writings, photographs and recordings of Paramahansa Yogananda. According to Louis Sahagún of the Los Angeles Times, SRF wanted "to secure exclusive rights to Yogananda's teachings, name, likeness, voice and use of the term 'self-realization'." The litigation lasted for around twelve years (1990–2002) and in 2002 the final jury trial was held in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California. Jurors ultimately agreed with Self-Realization Fellowship's argument that Yogananda had repeatedly made his intentions clear before dying – he wanted the Fellowship to maintain copyrights to his works. The court ordered Ananda to pay about $29,000 to SRF for its earnings from SRF's sound recordings, and a judge suggested that Ananda not remove Ananda from its name, to which it agreed. However, the court did not require Ananda to pay damages for using written works for educational or religious purposes. It also determined that the terms Paramahansa Yogananda and self-realization could not be trademarked.

Paternity claim

Ben Erskine accused Yogananda of having an illicit affair with his mother, Adelaide, a disciple and photographer of Yogananda's in the late 1920s. According to Erskine, his mother never told him who his father was but he assumed it was Yogananda because his skin was darker than his siblings. In 1995 Erskine's daughter, Peggy, took it a step further and gave SRF paternity claims along with financial demands. The attorneys for SRF initiated DNA testing with hair samples and then a second round of testing using blood samples which concluded there was no relationship. Erskine and his attorney, Shane Reed, rejected the results as biased because a monk in the order oversaw it. To settle the claims, SRF established an independent testing process. They hired a San Diego former criminal prosecutor, G. Michael Still, to compare the DNA from Yogananda's three male relatives in India to Erskine's DNA. The lab work was done in two separate labs, one in Missouri and one in Louisiana. The results from both labs were identical, showing no relationship between Yogananda and Erskine.

SRF expansion project

SRF submitted a draft of their expansion project for its headquarters atop Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, CA. According to the Los Angeles Times, the permit allowed, over a 30-year period, the construction of a "museum, additional office space, classrooms, counseling facilities, underground parking and more living quarters for cloistered monks and nuns…" and a site to reinter Yogananda's remains, which would have been removed from Forest Lawn Memorial-Park. This plan caused disagreement in the local hillside community. The Los Angeles Times reported that "Supporters say that the church is a good neighbor and that its expansion would not harm the community's character. Opponents say the expansion project would be too big for a hilltop area of only 8,000 residents. As emotions have risen, some neighbors have even stopped talking to one another." SRF withdrew the plan when it realized it did not have widespread support from the local residents.^: 73 According to the Los Angeles Times, church spokesman Brother Brahmananda said "We hope that this is a catalyst to promote greater harmony within the community."