| Rajarsi Janakananda | |
| Religion: | Self-Realization Fellowship |
| Birth Name: | James Jesse Lynn |
| Birth Date: | May 5, 1892 |
| Birth Place: | near Archibald, Louisiana |
| Death Place: | Borrego Springs, California |
| Order: | Self-Realization Fellowship |
| Guru: | Paramahansa Yogananda |
| Occupation: | Business executive |
| Philosophy: | Kriya Yoga |
| Signature: | Rajarsi-Janakananda-Signature-Transparent.png |
| Office1: | President of Self-Realization Fellowship and Yogoda Satsanga Society of India |
| Term Start1: | 1952 |
| Term End1: | 1955 |
| Predecessor1: | Paramahansa Yogananda |
| Successor1: | Daya Mata |
Rajarsi Janakananda, born James Jesse Lynn (May 5, 1892 – February 20, 1955) was the leading disciple of the yogi Paramahansa Yogananda and a prominent businessman in the Kansas City, Missouri area. A self-made millionaire when he met Yogananda in 1932, he later left a total endowment of approximately three million dollars to Yogananda's organization, Self-Realization Fellowship(SRF)/Yogoda Satsanga Society of India(YSS), helping ensure its long-term success. Yogananda also chose Janakananda to succeed him as president of SRF/YSS. Janakananda was second president of SRF/YSS from 1952 until 1955.
James Jesse Lynn was born into relative poverty to Jesse William Lynn, an itinerant farmer, and Salethia Archibald Lynn near Archibald, Louisiana, in the southern part of the United States. His early childhood was spent helping the family pick cotton, milk cows, churn butter, and doing other family chores. His simple education began in a small log schoolhouse.[1]
Leaving school at the age of fourteen, he began working for the Missouri Pacific Railroad, sweeping floors for $2 a month. He continued with various railroad jobs for a few years, quickly moving up to the position of chief clerk to the division manager in Kansas City, Missouri. In Kansas City, he took night classes to finish his high school education, at the same time that he took law and accounting classes.[1]
At 21, he began working at the Bell Telephone accounting division and, before even graduating from law school, he was admitted to the Missouri bar. In 1913, he was married to Freda Josephine Prill of Kansas City. At age 24, Lynn took and passed the Missouri certified public accountant exam, earning the highest score on that exam ever made. Soon after, he began working for the largest underwriting insurance company in the country, U.S. Epperson,[1] and he was named its general manager in 1917. Four years later, Lynn took out a significant and risky loan to buy the company, launching a successful business career that included insurance underwriting, oil well and orchard ownership, and large investments in the railroad business.[2] [3] [4] He became a millionaire and a prominent businessman in the Kansas City area as head of vast oil interests and as president of the world's largest reciprocal fire-insurance exchange.[5] [6] [7]
In spite of his material success, Lynn was unhappy, and he acknowledged that he had a short temper and nervous problems.[2] [8] In January 1932, Indian-American yogi Paramahansa Yogananda spoke for several nights at a venue in Kansas City, Missouri. His lectures on Indian spirituality had gained national attention by this time, and Lynn attended the program out of curiosity.[9] Lynn described his experience:
On the second night of the class, I became aware that I was sitting upright, my spine straight and I was absolutely motionless. I looked down at my hands, which were so restlessly moving before and which were now perfectly still… I knew I had found the path that gave me inner peace and satisfaction and that I had found that something tangible I was seeking, a guru.[2]
Following one of the lectures, Yogananda met Lynn privately. In that month, Yogananda initiated Lynn into Kriya Yoga, and Lynn became his disciple.[5] Because of bad publicity in the Kansas City area from Yogananda's friendship with a previous Hindu teacher, Lynn and Yogananda agreed to avoid publicity regarding their association.[2] Lynn became close friends with Yogananda, and one of his "greatest disciples", according to reporter Alex Smith.Lynn was a major financial contributor to Yogananda's organization, Self-Realization Fellowship, and he helped ensure its long-term success. In 1935, when Yogananda was planning his trip to India, Lynn made a generous donation for his travels. While Yogananda was gone, Lynn purchased an oceanside property in Encinitas, California and built a hermitage there as a surprise gift to Yogananda and SRF.[10] Lynn kept his business and spiritual responsibilities separate at first, but as he aged, he spent more time at SRF. In 1946, he entrusted his business to a nephew, and he eventually moved to an apartment at the Encinitas property. He and Yogananda spent long hours together over the years, meditating and discussing spiritual matters. Mr. Lynn said of his relationship with Yogananda:
"One of the blessings I have received in my friendship with Paramahansa Yogananda has been permanent relief from a state of nervousness, a state of strain, an inward state of uncertainty. I have gained calmness, peace, joy, and a sense of security that cannot come to anyone until he has found the true security of the soul."[11] and "How heavenly is the company of a saint! Of all the things that have come to me in life, I treasure most the blessings that Paramahansaji has bestowed on me."[5]
Within SRF, Lynn became known as "Saint Lynn" due to his devotion to God and his apparent success in meditation. Yogananda said, "Some people say the Western man can't meditate. That is not true. I initiated Lynn shortly after I first met him, and since then I have never seen him when he was not inwardly communing with God." On August 25, 1951, Yogananda gave him the monastic name Rajarsi Janakananda. SRF published a biography of Lynn called Rajarsi Janakananda, A Great Western Yogi, which states: "Rajarsi is a spiritual title meaning royal rishi; Janakananda means the bliss of Janaka. Janaka was a great king as well as a fully Self-realized master of ancient India." According to the book, Yogananda said: "For you, St. Lynn, I interpret this title as king of the saints."
Yogananda saw Janakananda as his most spiritually advanced disciple.[12] He wrote in his Autobiography of a Yogi: "An American businessman of endless responsibilities... Lynn nevertheless finds time daily for long and deep Kriya Yoga meditation. Leading thus a balanced life, he has attained in samadhi the grace of unshakable peace." According to SRF, Yogananda chose Janakananda to be the next president of the organization.[13]
After Yogananda's death in March 1952, Janakananda became the president of Self-Realization Fellowship and Yogoda Satsanga Society of India,[14] but he did not claim to be the new guru of the movement. Yogananda had declared that he (Yogananda) would be the last in SRF's parampara or lineage of gurus, and that his teachings would serve this role after his death, in a manner similar to the Guru Granth Sahib's status as the final guru of Sikhism. According to another SRF leader, Mrinalini Mata, Yogananda had also said that each future head of SRF/YSS would serve as his "spiritual successor and representative". She was quoted before Daya Mata's death: "In India there is the spiritual tradition called guru-parampara – that is, the custom wherein the guru bestows his mantle of spirituality and authority on his successor. In Self-Realization Fellowship this continuity is certainly there. We have seen its unmistakable evidence in our revered Rajarsi Janakananda and Sri Daya Mata."[11]
Janakananda died on February 20, 1955, in Borrego Springs, California. To SRF he bequeathed two million dollars,[15] along with railroad shares worth one million dollars. According to a biography written by his assistant, Durga Mata, Janakananda had kept his life as a yogi hidden from his disapproving wife, and this donation of railroad shares gave his secret away a year before his death.