10 IntroductionThe above also begins to hint at another crucial thing that happened when
actual flesh- and- blood Yogis began spreading their teachings internationally.
They were forced to encounter, in its many arrangements and contexts, what
historian Catherine L. Albanese has termed “metaphysical religion,” a particu-
lar manifestation to the complex of ideas and practices that other scholars have
identified more broadly as “occultism” or “Western esotericism.”^14 This phenom-
enon— which forms a particularly pervasive current on the American religious
landscape and is best exemplified in movements such as Spiritualism, Theosophy,
Christian Science, New Thought, and most recently New Age— comprises four
fundamental features: (1) the power of the mind, broadly conceived; (2) a cosmic
correspondence between the mind and the world; (3) the movement of energ y;
and (4) salvation understood as solace, comfort, therapy, and healing.^15 As Yogis,
who made their living primarily as spiritual teachers, had to interact with and
accommodate the metaphysical inclinations of their audiences, their models of
yoga increasingly took on a therapeutic slant insomuch as psychosomatic health
was seen to be in itself salvific. Thus, as yoga was progressively portrayed as a sci-
ence of health and bodily perfection that was accessible to everyone, the Yogi
increasingly became a reflection of the Everyman and the Other gradually became
the Self. At the hard core of yoga as religious practice, this meant that the Yogi’s
superhuman identity, together with his cosmic mental powers, was available to
every human being. At the softer and more secular mainstream level, this resulted
in a vision of yoga as a therapeutic practice targeted at the less superhuman ver-
sion of the perfected body we see today.
Yet the cultural tropes that had historically identified the Yogi in the popular
imagination were slow to fade away. For this reason, even Yogis who were portray-
ing themselves as teachers of a universal spiritual system often made use of these
tropes as a source of authority or even simply as marketing tactics. The image
of the Yogi as mystic was the most amenable to universalization, partly because
it had been constructed that way from the start. Nevertheless, elements of the
ascetic and the magician continued to weave themselves into the identities of
human Yogis as they navigated their new cultural landscape. In this way, the Yogi
retained elements of his identity even as his powers were increasingly domesti-
cated and rationalized.
The broader argument of this study thus traces the ways in which the essential
identity of the Yogi as the man with superpowers has survived throughout his-
tory and successfully projected itself into the West through a complex process of
mimesis, even as it also suggests that the mechanics of modern postural practice
are a direct extension of this phenomenon. To a large extent, when individuals
made the decision to aspire to be or to portray themselves as Yogis, they did so in
accordance with the cultural templates that were available to them. Some of these