Epilogue 179
and colonial representations, could hardly have entirely prepared him for the role
he would have to play as a South Asian immigrant- cum- exotic Oriental mystic
as he navigated the political, social, and spiritual currents of the pre– World War
II United States. Despite the many other reasons he might have had for largely
glossing over his three decades in the West when he sat down to write the story
of his life— from considerations of a popular audience thirsty for tales from the
“Land of Miracles” to his personal investment in his identity as a Yogi and the
concomitant relationship to his spiritual guru— one suspects that Yogananda
may have chosen to omit these years because he did not quite know how to make
sense of them.
There is something a bit sad about this aspect of the Autobiography. As daz-
zling as Yogananda’s accounts of India continue to appear even upon his return,
the all- too- brief homecoming leaves something unsaid. The death of his guru
during this time, though historically accurate, is also metaphorically fitting. The
American Yogi could not go home again. When Yogananda envisions the story of
himself as a Yogi, that story resides in the myth of a spiritual India rather than in
the considerable accomplishments of his work in the West.
All editions of the Autobiography, however, end with the same phrase: “Lord
... Thou hast given this monk a large family!” At the end of his life, Yogananda
envisioned himself as a “world citizen” just as the Yogi had become for him a
universal ideal. Although yogic superpowers might have properly resided for him
in mystic India, the science of yoga and the cosmic ideal of the superhuman Yogi
knew no geographic bounds.
*
Fast forward twenty- five years. In a late- 1970s American televi-
sion segment,^1 a young Bikram Choudhury, clad in a black Speedo, white tube
socks, and draped in a bright yellow polyester robe, drops an apple onto a bed
of nails— the same bed of nails that only minutes later will support his body
as another member of the “High Yogi Troupe of Calcutta” drives a motorcy-
cle over a wooden ramp resting on his chest. The camera zooms in as an assis-
tant guides Choudhury through a breathing exercise in preparation for what
the voiceover commentary describes as “a very dangerous test of yoga philoso-
phy.” To the amazement of all, “Yogi Bikram” emerges unscathed, having dem-
onstrated his perfect control over the “mental, physical, and spiritual forces”
involved. Choudhury’s senior students, who were either on the scene or wit-
nesses to the aftermath, tell a slightly different story. The force of the motorcycle
cracked Choudhury’s head against the pavement, rendering him unconscious.
He walked around with black holes dotting his back for weeks.^2 The television
audience, of course, sees none of this. The footage cuts directly to Choudhury
bounding up from his bed of nails like the superhuman Yogi he is touted to be.