Rajarsi Janakananda

Rajarsi Janakananda, born James Jesse Lynn (May 5, 1892 – February 20, 1955), was a wealthy American businessman who became the closest disciple of the yogi Paramahansa Yogananda after they met in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1932. Janakananda was the main financial contributor to Yogananda's religious organization, Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), and he helped ensure its long-term success. Within SRF, he is considered a saint who attained union with God through meditation. SRF presented him as an object lesson in the benefits of its teachings, and it represented his relationship with Yogananda as an example of the cultural exchange they advocated between "spiritual" India and "industrial" America. Janakananda succeeded Yogananda as its president from 1952 until 1955, when Janakananda died at the age of 62. He left an endowment of approximately three million dollars to SRF, along with donations to the University of Missouri–Kansas City and Swope Park.

Early life and career James Jesse Lynn was born into relative poverty His simple education began in a small log schoolhouse.

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. He became a millionaire. 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, my guru. Yogananda asserted that anyone could experience God directly by practicing the yoga techniques of meditation and concentration that he taught. He believed that his methods were testable, and he called them "the science of religion". – biographer Philip Goldberg writes: and he dubbed him "Saint Lynn", celebrating him as one of the "potential saints" in America for whom he had come to the West. 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, 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 generated publicity that gave his secret away a year before his death. He had also made donations to the University of Missouri–Kansas City and a donation of land to Swope Park.