Born in the village of Ghurni in Bengal in 1828, he grew up to work as an accountant for a government engineering office — an ordinary householder's job he kept for the rest of his working life.

In 1861 his office transferred him to Ranikhet in the Himalayan foothills. As Yogananda later told the story, it was there he met a master called Babaji, who taught him the meditation technique that would carry his name forward.

He returned to his clerk's post in Varanasi and began teaching what he had learned, for years without leaving his job, his marriage, or his household — becoming known, as the tradition tells it, as the guru who never renounced ordinary life.

He died in Varanasi in 1895, a householder to the end, having initiated disciples — among them Sri Yukteswar — who would carry the practice on to a wider world he never traveled to see.