Here Comes the Yogiman 101
Sri Yukteswar appears to have acknowledged from an early point in their rela-
tionship Yogananda’s destiny— likely grounded in the latter’s restless desire— to
travel West. The teacher consequently attempted to groom his disciple to the
best of his ability. He instructed Yogananda to read Vivekananda’s works. Sri
Yukteswar himself had been a fan of Vivekananda as well as Ramakrishna. He
had once traveled to Dakshineswar to meet Ramakrishna, but for unspecified
reasons the latter was not on site at the time and the meeting did not occur.
Later, however, Sri Yukteswar would occasionally mingle with Ramakrishna’s
disciples, Swamis Vivekananda, Brahmananda, and Sivananda. He especially
praised Vivekananda’s spirit of nationalism. At one time, there was even a plan
to integrate his organization as a department of the Ramakrishna Mission.
Satyeswarananda recounts:
He [Sri Yukteswar] had an idea that Sat Sanga Sova could become one
department of the Sri Ramakrisna Mission, especially propagating yoga,
since the Sri Ramakrisna Mission did not teach yoga. He met with Swami
Brahmananda, the first president, to discuss the idea, but it did not
materialize.^25Besides his concern to fill the Ramakrishna Mission’s apparent lacuna, Sri
Yukteswar’s attempted merger was also motivated by a desire to prevent any
future competition between Vivekananda’s legacy and Yogananda. Sri Yukteswar
“was aware that Yogananda might be envious of the image of Swami Vivekananda,
because of Yogananda’s ambition of wanting to be great,”^26 and he wished that his
disciple might instead benefit from the other Yogi’s teachings. The long shadow
of Vivekananda would indeed become a particular point of inspiration for
Yogananda, never quite amounting to outright rivalry but occasionally betraying
a tinge of ambitious one- upmanship.
After transferring to the Serampore branch of the College of Calcutta in order
to be closer to Sri Yukteswar’s ashram, Yogananda finally received his degree in
1915 and entered the monastic order immediately thereafter. During this time,
he had begun to express a restlessness with his native country. One imagines it
was this same restlessness that caused him, in 1916, to enroll in an agricultural
program in Japan that was aimed at educating young Bengalis abroad. With the
exception of his brief and unproductive stint at the Sabour Agricultural College,
Yogananda had never expressed any overwhelming passion for agriculture. In all
likelihood, he had been hoping that Japan would serve as a launching pad to fur-
ther adventures, just as it had for others in the past like Rama Tirtha and would
again in the future for his own brother Bishnu Ghosh, as well as the latter’s dis-
ciple, Bikram Choudhury.