Jnanavatar – Swami Sri Yukteswarji

R.K. Datta

Adept-ship is achieved by purification of man’s three bodies (physical, astral, & causal). It is also attainable through the grace of the guru.
Sri Yukteswarji was a forerunner of the current explosion of interest in healing of the physical body through yoga precepts of natural living. The great Guru goes on to say that harmonizing the astral body – the energetic forces governing our emotions, attitudes, & behaviour – comes through cultivating “patience in all circumstances”. Purification of man’s consciousness (causal body), Sri Yukteswarji states, is accomplished by yoga techniques of pranayana and communion with Aum.
Swami Sri Yukteswar, an ideal exemplar of India’s ancient heritage of illumined rishis, is venerated as a Jnanavtar (“incarnation of wisdom”) by people all over the world who have been inspired by his life and teachings. He manifested the self-mastery and divine attainment that have been the highest goal of truth seekers through out the ages.
A saint of truly universal outlook, Sri Yukteswarji recognized that a synthesis of the spiritual heritage of the East with science and technology of the West would do much to alleviate the material, psychological, and spiritual suffering of the modern world. His deep conviction that tremendous advances could be made, both individually and internationally, by an exchange of the finest positive features of each culture was crystallized by his remarkable meeting with Mahavatar Babaji – his param guru – the guru of Lahari Mahasaya. Perceiving Sri Yukteshwarji’s great interest in furthering spiritual harmony among all nations, Babaji requested him to write The Holy Science to show the underlying unity of Hinduism and Christianity.
Born Priya Nath Karar in Serampore (near calcutta), on 10th of May 1855, Swami Sri Yukteswarji was the only son of Sh. Kshetra Nath & Smt. Kadambari Karar. His father, Sh. Kshetra Nath, was a wealthy business man, and the family owned several large estates in the area.
Sh. Kshetra Nath Karar died when his son was still a boy. Consequently, at very young age, Priya Nath had to assume the responsibility of managing the family land holdings. In early manhood he was married, but his wife died just a few years later; and their only child, a daughter, passed away as a young woman not long after her marriage.
Swami Sri Yukteswar’s pursuit of Truth led him to the great sage Lahari Mahasaya, who extolled the sacred science of Kriya Yoga meditation as the most effective means of attaining God-realization, and who was the first to teach openly that ancient science in modern times. Through the guidance of Lahari Mahasaya and his own practice of Kriya Yoga, Sri Yukteswar attained spiritual illumination. His strength of principle, boundless compassion, and profound understanding were not the result of intellectual study but of direct perception of reality.
Swami Sri Yukteswarji achieved the supreme spiritual state, in which, as he describes in The Holy Science, “(one) abandons altogether the vain idea of the separate existence of his Self and becomes unified with Him, the eternal Spirit, God the Father. This unification with God is Kaivalya, the ultimate goal of man.”
As the years went by, Swami Sri Yukteshwarji began accepting disciples for spiritual training. His anscestral house in Serampore became his hermitage; later he constructed an additional ashram by the sea at Puri.
It was in 1910 that Sri Yukteswarji met the disciple whom Mahavtar Babaji had promised to send him for disseminating. Yoga in the West: Mukunda Lal Ghosh, on whom Sri Yukteswarji later bestowed the monastic name of Sri Paramahansa Yogananda.
‘All creation is governed by law’, Sri Yukteswarji said. ‘The principles that operate in the outer universe, discoverable by scientists, are called natural laws. But there are subtler laws that rule the hidden spiritual planes and the inner realm of consciousness; these principles are knowable through the science of yoga. It is not the physicist but the Self-realized master who comprehends the true nature of matter’ ”
In 1920 Swami Sri Yukteswarji sent Sri Paramahansa Yogananda to America to carry out the mission spoken of many years earlier by Mahavatar Babaji – to make available to Truth-seekers throughout the world a knowledge of the liberating science of Kriya Yoga. For this purpose Sri Paramahansa Yoganandaji founded Yogoda Satsanga Society of India in India and Self-Realization Fellowship, an international society with headquarters in Los Angeles. During his three decades in the West, he lectured to capacity audiences in most of America’s principal cities; wrote numerous books and prepared a comprehensive series of Yoga lessons (Hindi & English) for home study; and trained monastic disciples to perpetuate the spiritual and humanitarian work entrusted to him by Mahavatar Babaji and Swami Sri Yukteswarji.
In Jammu – The city of Temples – Yogoda Satsanga Dhyana Kendra is rendering Sunday Meditation Service from more than last three decades presently at Muthi- Udeywala.

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