Here Comes the Yogiman 119
At this point, Ostoja’s life story begins to mimic a Blavatskian trajectory—
an already exotic Slavic nobleman, steeped in the wisdom of the Orient and
charged with bringing the message to the Western masses. Particularly interest-
ing is Ostoja’s appropriation of the Yogi title, its use rationalized in the above
announcement as demonstrating the transferability and therefore universality
of yogic power. This was, of course, perfectly in tune with Yogananda’s message,
which sought to render the practice of yoga and the figure of the Yogi less foreign
and to show that his potential was equally accessible to the Western disciple. At
the time of his 1934 lectures, Ostoja was announced as the new head of the SRF’s
healing department. In subsequent years, Ostoja maintained some further affili-
ation with Yogananda, being listed as an ordained SRF minister in 1937. During
this time, he also founded the short- lived Infinite Science Institute through which
he propagated his own teachings.
Thus, in addition to occasional demonstrations of his own apparently super-
human abilities, Yogananda made an effort to surround himself with other exem-
plars of superpowerful human potential, who inevitably became billed as Yogis
even if they had had no prior association with the title. Like Yogananda’s own
demonstrations, however, their displays were brought into alignment with his
fundamental message that the Yogi’s abilities are not only scientific but ultimately
stem from a divine universal source. Bey’s esoteric mastery of glands and nerves—
which few of Yogananda’s SRF disciples could hope to achieve— was subordi-
nated in efficacy to love of God, which was stated to produce a superior version
of the same effect. Ostoja’s penchant for hypnotizing rabbits was swept under
the rug, and he became instead the Western Yogi who healed thousands at every
lecture. In what was perhaps a business- savvy fashion, Yogananda continuously
sought to portray the Yogi’s powers as formidable but not sinister, wondrous but
not inaccessible.
Yogis Incorporated and a Return to the Land of Miracles
If there is one matter that alienates Yogananda— and therefore the SRF as well
as its India- based branch, the Yogoda Satsanga Society (YSS)— from the other
instantiations of the Kriya Yoga monastic lineage that traces itself through Lahiri
Mahasaya’s revelation from Babaji, it is the organized, almost corporate nature
of Yogananda’s legacy. Indeed, Yogananda’s Indian biographers rarely miss an
opportunity to pad their treatment of Yogananda’s life’s work with at least a light
anti- organizational polemic. Satyananda’s and especially Satyeswarananda’s writ-
ings dwell much more extensively than Yogananda’s Autobiography on the effort
expended by Lahiri Mahasaya to convince Babaji to allow householders to be ini-
tiated into Kriya Yoga.