I have always wondered what the I.Q. of Paramhansa Yogananda was? Do we have this kind of information? Do we know about any other yoga masters?
—James, US
I don’t know that Paramhansa Yogananda ever took an IQ test, nor do I think it would be particularly informative if he did. When a person is one with all that is — as he was and is, and as other great masters have been and are — IQ tests become utterly irrelevant. Omnisciense trumps IQ.
Swami Kriyananda tells of Yoganandaji conversing in Spanish with someone, yet he never studied Spanish. He also tells of Yoganandaji able to discuss details of modern medicine with physicians, though he had never studied medicine. Anandamayee Ma (about whom Yogananda wrote in his autobiography) was sought out by scholars for answers to abstruse philosophical questions, yet she was barely literate in the commonly accepted sense. What, then can one say about IQ in such cases?
No doubt there have been masters whose IQs were measured, but I’m not aware of any specifics.
