2 Introductionestate they take up on America’s urban street corners, the Yogi remains an elusive
figure.
The apprehension expressed in Time’s review of Yogananda’s text is not an
isolated incident. Early twentieth- century America was home to a flourishing
lecture circuit populated by Yogis of all types. New Thought groups were a
receptive audience for the recycled metaphysical teachings of career Yogis, and
stage magic and “ironman” demonstrations were an equally comfortable home
for Yogis and Yogi types. More important, the line between “authentic” Yogis
and self- styled “imposters” was uniquely vague due to the sheer lack of informa-
tion on the part of the general population. Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-
century Yogis existed in a society that was simultaneously fascinated by their
Oriental mystique and thoroughly ignorant of the actual details thereof. As
our Time reviewer observes, there was no official Yogi certification program—
“almost anyone in the U.S. can set up shop as a swami if he can find any follow-
ers”— which made distinguishing the genuine article, if there was such a thing,
a rather murky enterprise.
On a single page of a 1930 edition of the Los Angeles Times, scattered in clus-
ters among advertisements for lectures in various flavors of Christianity, we find
talks by Yogananda, his recently estranged associate Swami Dhirananda, Swami
Paramananda of the Vedanta Society, Bhagat Singh Thind, and Rishi Singh
Gherwal. Suffice it to say, a Southern Californian with tastes more exotic than
could be fulfilled by the domestic metaphysics of Christian Science and New
Thought would have had no shortage of options. As Los Angeles was one of the
hotbeds for Yogi activity in the pre– World War II period, one might assume that
its residents would have a more cultivated palate when it came to discerning the
character of these various teachers.
However, things appear to have been ambiguous enough to prompt the same
Los Angeles Times to run an editorial titled “Who are the Swamis?” on Christmas
day in 1932, the opening of which read as follows:
Who and what is a swami? According to the idea of the average person
(whose information on any particular subject usually is not complete) a
swami is a Hindu who wears a turban, adorns himself in colored robes,
charms snakes, tells fortunes, worships idols, preaches a strange philoso-
phy and keeps a harem.
The average person is partly right. A swami is a Hindu (Hinduism
being a religion) who, when he conducts religious services, usually wears
a yellow robe, which denotes spirituality and the color of his order.
However, he is not interested in snake charming nor fortune telling, does
not worship idols, is a believer in God, teaches the art of living and the