84 Biography of a YogiUpton Sinclair’s Mental Radio, published in 1930, painstakingly catalogs his
wife’s experiments and relative success with the practice of telepathy. Sinclair, who
generally abstained from either scientific or metaphysical speculation as to the
basis of his wife’s mental powers nevertheless noted: “The human brain is a storage
battery, capable of sending impulses over the nerves. Why may it not be capable
of sending impulses by means of some other medium, known or unknown? Why
may there not be such a thing as brain radio?”^71 The analog y to nerve impulses
should be familiar as it takes us directly back to Vivekananda’s work— which, it
must be noted, Sinclair might well have been familiar with— however, the differ-
ence is that Sinclair’s “brain radio” existed in a time when remote transmission
of electric impulse was no longer science fiction but quotidian reality. While the
general population hardly knew how the voice of a person speaking from forty
miles away was filtering into devices in their parlors, no one could deny that this
seemingly magical phenomenon was happening. The electromagnetic waves of
radio transmissions thus became the perfect analog y for telepathic and even tele-
kinetic phenomena. The concurrent advent of motion picture technolog y added
yet another layer. Although the old material aspects of ether were slowly fad-
ing from metaphysical discourse, they were only making room for a new more
dynamic form of subtle materiality— a materiality that was hardly material at all
but, like light, largely energetic.
Taking this into account, one can approach Yogananda’s work as a moment in
the transition between these two registers. An examination of his Autobiography,
which is both the latest and the most thorough representation of his metaphysics,
yields a conflicting vision. On the one hand, the language of ether is fairly promi-
nent, not only as a figurative descriptor of subtle materiality, but in references to
actual phenomena. When objects or people materialize or dematerialize, they do
so from and into the ether. On the other hand, he makes use of the language of
“mental radio,” referring to his guru, Sri Yukteswar, not only as a “perfect human
radio” but also as a “human broadcasting station” capable of transmitting his
thoughts and will over great distances to effect desired phenomena.^72
Indeed, when Yogananda evoked the language of magnetism, it would mani-
fest as a kind of vibrational current, which he would at times describe as being
analogous to a subtle form of electricity. Explicitly building on Mesmer’s ani-
mal magnetism, he maintained that these energies were emitted by every body
but became especially perceptible when coupled with conscious will. However,
such magnetic vibrations were not quite as value- neutral as common notions of
electricity. They could be good or bad and can constitute a kind of mana, which
Yogananda illustrated with the common example of why people like to shake
hands with the famous. Furthermore, he disclosed that it was possible to “steal”
magnetism (good vibrations) from saints simply by being in their presence. For