Self Mastery

This edition is the only one that has been prepared and updated at Swami Paramananda’s own center, the Vedanta Centre in Cohasset, Massachusetts, by those carrying on his work.

Self-Mastery was written by Swami Paramananda, a Vedanta spiritual teacher. It includes practical guidelines for spiritual aspirants of all faiths. Topics include control of body and mind, the lower nature and how to conserve energy. It also features important chapters dealing with the mind which often serves as our own greatest enemy, when it can be transformed into a friend, as well clarifying the, apparent contradiction between the dual imperatives of self-effort and self-surrender.
Swami Paramananda was a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order of India who served in the United States for 34 years. He was Swami Vivekananda’s youngest monastic disciple. Swami Vivekananda brought Hinduism to the West at the World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893. Swami Paramananda, as a young monk, served as an assistant to Swami Abhedananda at the first Vedanta center founded in New York City. He went on to establish major Vedanta centers in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, along with large Vedanta study groups in Ohio, Kentucky, Germany and Switzerland. He also founded two ashrams which continue to this day; the first in La Crescenta, California (Ananda Ashrama) and the second in Cohasset, Massachusetts (now called the Vedanta Centre). In addition, he established an ashram and school for girls in Dacca, East Bengal which re-located to Kolkata, India and now has two expanded branches. Swami Paramananda taught Vedanta all over the world. He and Sister Devamata founded a women’s religious order and Sister Devamata, an American, became the first woman ordained to teach Vedanta in 1910. Swami Paramananda was a dedicated Swami, spiritual teacher, lecturer, writer and poet.