Biography of a Yogi Paramahansa Yogananda and the Origins of Modern Yoga

88 Biography of a Yogi

In our present context, however, it is worth noting that even as Yogananda
places the (realized) Yogi beyond the realm of materiality, even the highest of
perfected beings make their appearances through language permeated with the
terminolog y of material science. This is exemplified in following narration of an
immortal and fully liberated “avatar”:

There was a sudden flash; we witnessed the instantaneous dechemicaliza-

tion of the electronic elements of Babaji’s body into a spreading vaporous

light. The God- tuned will power of the master had loosened its grasp of

the ether atoms held together as his body; forthwith the trillions of tiny

lifetronic sparks faded into the infinite reservoir.^84

Even fully perfected Yogis are made of ether atoms.
Yogananda’s light- based quantum monism thus marks the shift to a new para-
digm. When Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret (2006)— perhaps the most mainstream
example of New Age exoteric esoterica to date— purports to guide its adherents
in living their lives “in accordance with the natural laws of the Universe,” this
language carries no small amount of literal meaning. For Byrne, the most fun-
damental cosmic law is the “Law of Attraction”— a phrase first coined in 1906
by New Thought author William Walter Atkinson (1862– 1932) in his Thought
Vibration or The Law of Attraction in the Thought World, but still alive and well
in the twenty- first century. In Byrne’s view, every human being— not just a per-
fected Yogi master, as Yogananda might have claimed— is capable of functioning
as a “perfect human radio.” After all, if both thoughts and material objects can be
broken down into a common substratum of energ y, then why should each person
not be able to calibrate her thoughts to the proper frequency for attracting the
desired object? This is perhaps in part what Yogananda meant when he advertised
his lectures with the tagline, “Your Super Powers Revealed!”^85