World Brotherhood Colonies

Paramahansa Yogananda

World Brotherhood Colonies are communities based on an idea envisioned by Paramahansa Yogananda, the Indian-American yogi who authored Autobiography of a Yogi and founded Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) / Yogoda Satsanga Society of India (YSS). During the Great Depression in the United States, he encouraged readers of his East-West magazine to pool money to buy land where they could practice meditation and simple living in self-sufficient communities.

Yogananda established a World Brotherhood Colony at his SRF Encinitas center in Southern California as a model for these colonies, but according to SRF, he found that organizing spiritual communities for families along the lines he envisioned would take more time than he then had available. After his death in the 1950s, the Encinitas center became mainly a monastic community.

Separately from Yogananda's organization of SRF, a disciple of Yogananda named Kriyananda started several World Brotherhood Colonies, the first and most notable of them being Ananda Village in Nevada City, California.

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