Yogananda made the headlines in the Boston Globe the day after his arrival in 1920 - a fitting start to his Dwapara Yuga World Mission!The article was discovered by a member of the Waltham, MA SRF group, continuing a long tradition of research on Yogananda's early years in the state.
Massachusetts was the home of many early devotees and the first American ashram was established in Waltham on Indian Road at Hardy's Pond.
In the early years, Yogananda lived in a rented room at the YMCA and the Hardy's Pond Ashram was a very humble affair, sadly now demolished.
His legacy is not so much the later, palatial locations of Mount Washington, Encinitas, Lake Shrine and others, rather the explosion of study in meditation and Eastern thought he drove both inside and outside the Kriya Yoga tradition and a universal world wide following not limited to any one race, religion, or group. In his lifetime, his temples were deliberately named "temples of all religions" to signal openness rather than sectarianism.
When we consider the Hollywood stars and starlets of the time, despite having been seen by million around the world month in month out in an era before television, they have all faded yet interest in Yogananda and his Kriya Yoga goes from strength to strength with the myriad versions of the Autobiography of a Yogi still best-sellers, tens of books by direct disciples, CDs, DVDs, iTunes songs, podcasts, videos, apps, dedicated sites, forums and blogs.
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