184 Epiloguetantric guru ritually possesses the neophyte sādhaka as a mechanism of initia-
tion, Choudhury infuses the minds of his teacher- trainees with his own trans-
mission of clan knowledge.
If this seems farfetched, one need only spend a few months practicing Bikram
Yoga. Choudhury’s dialogue is recited by his teachers with remarkable consis-
tency. After a while it creeps into your brain, unheeded, until you find yourself
repeating it like yet another Bikram simulacrum, with its awkward grammar and
its idiosyncratic phrasing— “Like a natural human traction ... go back ... way
back... more back ... fall back... change!” Seemingly opaque physical cues are
internalized through embodied practice until they come to make perfect sense.
Some reveal their foreign origins through references that the parroting teachers
have no way of understanding as anything other than a turn of phrase. “L like
Linda,” Choudhury instructs his students, in a pose where they balance on one
leg while forcefully kicking the other out in front of them. Linda was one of
Choudhury’s earliest students and one of his closest friends. They attended each
other’s weddings and raised their children together until things got “out of con-
trol” and she had to distance herself.^15 “L like Linda,” say the teachers. To them
Linda has become the right angle formed by the legs.
Through this practice, Choudhury has achieved as much immortality as may
be possible without entering entirely into the realm of the superhuman. Every
time a Bikram Yoga class is enacted, he is there. Of course, one wonders what will
happen, as it does with many such communities, when his charismatic presence is
no longer there to sustain the ritual. From a Weberian standpoint, the Yogi is the
embodiment of charisma. Not the watered- down version used in daily conversa-
tion, but that electrifying preternatural kind. The kind that underlies conversion,
or śaktipat, or makes people pass out in ecstatic sobs at music concerts.
Yet no matter how superhuman the Yogi becomes— or is believed by him-
self and by others to have become— the human encroaches. Great power brings
great responsibility and the awesome can easily become the awful. We do not have
access to premodern Indian sādhakas, or to Vivekananda, or to Yogananda, but
we do have access to Bikram. The accusations that we saw played out in the trials
of Pierre Bernard, both in the courtroom and the popular media, the allegations
that dogged Yogananda’s separations with two close friends and partners— these
are now emerging in the enhanced access of the Internet age in the sexual assault
charges leveled against Choudhury. To date several women have come forward
alleging that Choudhury sexually assaulted them, often repeatedly, in the context
of a power dynamic that can only be characterized as severely imbalanced. As I am
putting the finishing touches on this manuscript, Choudhury has announced—
mirroring Yogananda’s post- Dhirananda- scandal move— that he will be return-
ing to India.