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.

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.

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.

[4][7][2]: 86  According to history professor Eileen Luhr, complaints of anxiety and stress were common among accomplished white-collar workers such as Lynn during the 20th century.

Yogananda's letters and recollections of devotees portray an extraordinary relationship that, at different times, resembled a deep friendship between peers, a father-son or brother-brother devotion, or a traditional guru-disciple dynamic.Yogananda's religious organization, Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), teaches that it is possible to attain union with God through meditation.

[8] Yogananda sought a cultural exchange between "spiritual" India and "industrial" America, and he advocated a balanced approach to life, remarking that while business was important, so was meditation.

SRF's magazine often published photographs of Lynn and Yogananda, representing their relationship as a harmonious convergence between the West and East and their respective material and spiritual principles.

In 1946, he entrusted his business to a nephew,[5] and he began to live in an apartment at the Encinitas hermitage for months at a time, returning to Kansas City on occasion.

[9][4][a] After Yogananda's death in March 1952, Janakananda became the president of Self-Realization Fellowship and Yogoda Satsanga Society of India,[6][7] but he did not claim to be the new guru of the movement.

[5] According to a biography written by his assistant, Durga Mata,[2] 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.