Paramahansa Yogananda
Visit to India, 1935–1936

In 1935, he returned to India via ocean liner, along with two of his Western students, to visit his guru, Sri Yukteswar Giri, and to help establish his Yogoda Satsanga work in India. While enroute, his ship detoured in Europe and the Middle East; he undertook visits to other living Western saints like Therese Neumann, the Catholic Stigmatist of Konnersreuth, and places of spiritual significance: Assisi, Italy to honor St. Francis, the Athenian temples of Greece and prison cell of Socrates, the Holy Land of Palestine and the regions of the Ministry of Jesus, and Cairo, Egypt to view the ancient Pyramids.

In August 1935, he arrived in India at the port of Mumbai, then called Bombay, and due to his fame in America, many photographers and journalists came to meet him during his short stay at the Taj Mahal Hotel. Upon taking a train eastward and reaching the Howrah Station near Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), he was received by a huge crowd and a ceremonious procession led by his brother Bishnu Charan Ghosh and the Maharaja of Kasimbazar. Visiting Serampore, he had an emotional reunion with his guru, Sri Yukteswar – this meeting was noted in detail by his Western student C. Richard Wright. During his stay in India, he saw his Ranchi boys' school become legally incorporated, and took a touring group to visit various locales: the Taj Mahal in Agra, the Chamundeshwari Temple in Mysore, Allahabad for the Kumbh Mela of January 1936, and Brindaban to visit an exalted disciple of Lahiri Mahasaya, Swami Keshabananda.

He also met various people who caught his interest: Mahatma Gandhi, whom he initiated into Kriya Yoga; woman-saint Anandamoyi Ma; Giri Bala, an elderly yogi woman who survived without eating; renowned physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman; and several disciples of Sri Yukteswar's guru, Lahiri Mahasaya. While in India, Sri Yukteswar gave Yogananda the monastic title of Paramahansa, meaning "supreme swan" and indicating the highest spiritual attainment. This title formally superseded his previous title of "swami". In March 1936, upon Yogananda's return to Calcutta after visiting Brindaban, Sri Yukteswar died (or, in the yogic tradition, attained mahasamadhi) at his hermitage in Puri. After conducting his guru's funeral rites, Yogananda continued to teach, conduct interviews, and meet with friends for several months, before planning to return to the US in mid-1936.

According to his autobiography, in June 1936, after having a vision of Krishna, he had a supernatural encounter with the resurrected form of his guru, Sri Yukteswar, while in a room at the Regent Hotel in Mumbai. During the experience, in which Yogananda physically grasped and held onto his guru's solid form, Sri Yukteswar explained that he now served as a spiritual guide on a high-astral planet, and expounded truths in deep detail regarding: the astral realm, astral planets and the afterlife; the lifestyles, abilities and varying levels of freedoms of astral beings; the workings of karma; man's various superphysical bodies and how he works through them, and other metaphysical topics.

Yogananda and his two western students left India via ocean liner from Mumbai; staying for several weeks in England, they conducted several yoga classes in London and visited historical sites, before leaving for the US in October 1936.
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