172 Biography of a Yogi(ahaṃkāra), and mind (manas), to which Yogananda adds feeling. Below this
are the five instruments of knowledge (jñānendriyas), five instruments of action
(karmendriyas), and five instruments of lifeforce (most likely the prāṇas). The
five subtle elements (tanmātras) are excluded. The gross body, in turn, consists
not of the five gross elements (mahābhūtas) but of sixteen metallic and nonme-
tallic, or chemical, elements. It seems safe to assume that by these Yogananda
means existing elements drawn from the standard periodic table, although no
apparent explanation is given for their being sixteen in number.^41
Yogananda introduces this system primarily to explain the various modes of
embodiment available to the ascending levels of perfected beings. Even the gross
physical body does not exclude a certain level of perfection. Throughout his nar-
rative, Yogananda introduces the reader to a number of ordinary embodied Yogis
who are nevertheless in possession of some fairly extraordinary superpowers. For
instance, the body of Lahiri Mahasaya is said to exhibit superhuman features such
as breathlessness, sleeplessness, and the cessation of the heartbeat even in his gross
embodied state, and we meet a number of Yogis who are capable of multiplying
their bodies to simultaneously appear in at least two locations prior to formally
leaving their gross incarnations. Similarly, following his death and one day after
his subsequent cremation, Lahiri Mahasaya, the “resurrected master, in a real but
transfigured body”^42 is reported as appearing to three disciples in three differ-
ent cities. The distinction between this body and the multiplied bodies of still-
living Yogis is not made clear. However, we are told in no uncertain terms by
both Lahiri Mahasaya and Sri Yukteswar that the resurrected body of the Yogi is
a subtle astral body.
Astral bodies normally inhabit the astral universe, which is made up of many
astral planets and is in fact hundreds of times larger than the physical universe.
Yogananda compares the two to a hot air balloon, where the physical universe
is the solid basket beneath the much larger, lighter, and more vibrant balloon
of the astral universe. The causal universe in turn is not a manifest entity but
the ideas of the other two universes, just as the causal body is composed of the
thirty- five ideas that are reified into the elements of the astral and physical bodies.
The astral universe is inhabited by all types of subtle beings, such as fairies, mer-
maids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods, and spirits, who all reside in
different astral planes or planets “in accordance to their karmic qualifications.”^43
Yogananda even describes an adapted picture of the long- standing Vedic conflict
between the devas (gods) and the asuras (who are here called “fallen dark angels”)
as they wage constant war against each other with “lifetronic bombs or mental
mantric vibratory rays.”^44 On the whole Yogananda adapts and elaborates on the
basic Swedenborgian model of multiple celestial realms that had already become
popularized in America through iterations of the Spiritualist and Theosophical