152 Biography of a Yogiuse “Super Electrons” for everything from achieving the aforementioned immor-
tality to solving his or her business and marital problems.
Yogananda’s goal, like that of his predecessors, is to universalize the figure of
the Yogi. In his Autobiography, he remarks:
A swami, formally a monk by virtue of his connection with the ancient
order, is not always a yogi. Anyone who practices a scientific technique
of God- contact is a yogi; he may be either married or unmarried, either
a worldly man or one of formal religious ties. A swami may conceivably
follow only the path of dry reasoning, of cold renunciation; but a yogi
engages himself in a definite, step- by- step procedure by which the body
and mind are disciplined, and the soul liberated. Taking nothing for
granted on emotional grounds, or by faith, a yogi practices a thoroughly
tested series of exercises which were first mapped out by the early rishis.
Yoga has produced, in every age of India, men who became truly free, truly
Yogi- Christs.^64He further notes, “there are a number of great souls, living in American or
European or other non- Hindu bodies today who, though they may never have
heard the words yogi and swami, are yet true exemplars of those terms.”^65 Building
on the existing trope of the Theosophical Mahatmas, more commonly called sim-
ply “Great Masters” or “Perfected Masters” by the metaphysically minded indi-
viduals that circulated in Yogananda’s company,^66 Yogananda declared that yogic
attainment was universal, though the term itself might be particular. The use of
the science of “yoga” then was simply to provide a more efficient means by accel-
erating a natural human inclination toward spiritual evolution.
Relying on this principle of universality and the primacy of intentional prac-
tice over tradition and formal ritual, Yogananda effectively takes up the “house-
holder Yogi” motif that had been used by his predecessors and contemporaries
from Vivekananda to Yogendra and had been embodied in his own lineage by
Lahiri Mahasaya, and he invokes this motif as a marketing tactic for his target
demographic of educated urban disciples. He goes so far as to actually redefine
rāja yoga as follows:
Yoga means uniting Mind- Power with Cosmic Power. Raja Yoga consists
of those principles of concentration which were easily practiced even by
the Rajas or royalists of India who were engrossed with the multifarious
duties of their states.
These methods of concentration, or Raja Yoga, which bring power
over one's own destiny and which can turn failure— material, moral,