128 Biography of a Yogiyoga. He did regularly caution his disciples against tantra, his father’s warnings
after his youthful association with the red- eyed sādhu having apparently struck a
nerve. So too would Yogananda have certainly disapproved of Bernard’s advocacy
of sexual rituals, despite later being haunted by accusations nearly identical to
those that plagued the Omnipotent Oom at the height of his infamy. Still if, as
Joseph Laycock has argued, Pierre Bernard is to be credited with “reforming the
American perception of yoga from a scandalous practice associated with idolatry
and perverse sexuality into a wholesome system of fitness,”^8 such a claim must
be taken with a race- tinged grain of salt. After all, no matter how many times
Bernard got arrested for abducting and corrupting impressionable young ladies,
his whiteness allowed him a prestige with which even the most exotically alluring
Indian Swami was hard- pressed to contend. To his credit, Yogananda appeared
to take Bernard’s example to heart in more ways than one. He too recognized
that the best way to make a potentially scandalous practice appealing to white
American elites was to stage it in a country club.
Love’s claim regarding Yogananda’s disinterest in and disdain for haṭha yoga,
however, is simply untrue. In fact, for lack of explicit information regarding what
it was that Bernard in fact learned from his mysterious guru, Sylvais Hamati,
Yogananda might have been practicing a more “authentic”^9 form of haṭha yoga
than Bernard himself. On the other hand, given the working model with which
Yogananda arrived on American shores, it is not difficult to believe that his self-
presentation at Bernard’s club might have given the impression of a Vivekananda-
like disregard for physical practice. It is also not unlikely that it was at Bernard’s
oasis of alternative spirituality blended with physical culture that Yogananda
stumbled upon a far more current vision of what his prospective audience was
truly interested in.
Through the course of the next three decades, Yogananda would mold himself
and his message into a sleek modern system of holistic spirituality best described
by the title of the periodical through which he would disseminate it, beginning
in 1925: East- West. The wide- ranging yet practically topical scope of the rising
Swami’s agenda is aptly illustrated by the publication’s second issue,^10 the con-
tents of which feature a detailed exposé on the Tagua fern, dental care tips, a
blurb on the Sikh Guru Nanak, a list of distinguished vegetarians ranging from
Hesiod to General William Booth, an essay by Mohandas Gandhi on national-
ism, and an essay by Yogananda on issues of American citizenship legislation. The
latter essay treats specifically the case of Bhagat Singh Thind, whom Yogananda
erroneously identifies as Hindu, and goes so far as to name senators serving on
the federal Immigration Committee and encourages readers to write in protest of
the exclusionary law. Later issues continue in this eclectic style, featuring a brico-
lage of poetry, encyclopedia- like articles on Sufism and Zen Buddhism, socially