Here Comes the Yogiman 111
accusations against his former friend and colleague. There is some speculation
that the accusations, which were quite inflammatory, were never meant to be
publicized but rather were intended to serve as a warning to Yogananda and were
only leaked to the press due to a mistake made by Chowdhury’s lawyer. In any
case, according to the Los Angeles Times, Chowdhury charged that Yogananda
“preferred the company of young women students to the practice of his religious
offices” and had “taken to holding himself up before his students as a sort of
deity and has advocated that they live on below- normal rations of food and sub-
mit to other self- denials while he himself ‘hypocritically’ lived a life of luxury.”
Even more damning were reports that young female disciples were placed closer
to Yogananda’s quarters at Mt. Washington while older women lived in more
distant spaces, and Yogananda himself “occupie[d] an apartment house wherein
girls are seen dashing in and out at all times of the day and night.”^46 Chowdhury
sued for $500,000 in damages, alleging that Yogananda had told him that he
considered him a partner in the SRF— which Yogananda had offhandedly val-
ued at one million dollars— after Chowdhury had saved Mt. Washington from
certain financial collapse.^47 One suspects that the sum was chiefly symbolic.
In later coverage of the trial, presumably once the initial flood of sensational
allegations was suppressed, Chowdhury’s claims became limited to accusing
Yogananda of “teaching doctrines diametrically opposed to those of the Hindu
self- realization philosophy” and “conducting his life in a manner ‘repugnant’
to the interests and objects of the partnership,” adding that “the swami ha[d]
attempted to gain control over his— Chowdhury’s— personal affairs and those of
his family in a manner which has destroyed the partnership’s harmony.”^48 In any
case, the suit was dismissed when Yogananda produced a written statement made
by Chowdhury in 1929 stating that he would be offering his labors to the SRF pro
bono. Presumably Yogananda had learned something from his earlier legal wran-
gling with Dhirananda.
Yogananda himself had consistently cautioned his disciples against unruly
sexuality. Kriyananda writes that the Swami would sometimes quote the follow-
ing statement, once told to him by a saint:
Woman leads a twofold existence. During the day, she is sweet and pleas-
ing to look at. Thus, she lures men into her trap. At night, however, she
becomes a tigress and drinks man’s blood!
Did you know that one seminal emission is equal to losing a quart of
blood? It saps your power. There is power in that fluid; there has to be. It
was given you to create new life.^49Whether or not Yogananda himself had ever created new life remains a deep con-
troversy. In 1995 a son of one of Yogananda’s devotees brought a lawsuit claiming