12 Introductionhis highest potential. Man turned up to eleven, so to say. Just so, the supernat-
ural is not herein treated as being somehow exterior to or even, strictly speak-
ing, beyond the natural. It is nature in its highest form or degree. Thus, when
these terms appear in the present study (outside of quoted passages) they are to
be understood precisely in this way. To a large extent, this is because the (meta)
scientific ruminations of Yogis such as Vivekananda and Yogananda necessitate
such a reading. It is also, however, because the Yogi’s humanity is integral to his
ultimate superhumanity. The Yogi is not a god, or at least not any more so than
the rest of us.
The reader will have noticed by now that I have been both rather liberal and
rather ambiguous in my use of the term “Yogi.” This is on many levels intentional.
In part, it reflects the multivalence of Sanskrit terms that is representative of the
tradition itself, which will be discussed in chapter 1. More important, however,
I employ the term as a typological tool. Throughout this study, “Yogi” is used in
its capitalized form specifically to signal an amalgamated category or archetype
rather than to refer to any one technical use of the term (in such cases, the Sanskrit
yogin is typically employed). Acting as a placeholder referent, it subsumes the vast
multitude of historical characters— actual, fictional, and theoretical— that have
lent some measure of tenuous coherence to the concept, in form even when not
necessarily in name.
For instance, although Yogananda is often referred to as “Swami” due to his
monastic affiliation as a renunciant, if the title of his Autobiography is any indica-
tion, he considered himself to be first and foremost a Yogi. In agreement with
this, “Yogi” is the title almost uniformly adopted by those who sought affiliation
with an aspect of its authority, from an American New Thought writer looking
to establish an Oriental mystique of credibility (Yogi Ramacharaka), to a Sikh
Punjabi immigrant with no formal religious training who saw a career opportu-
nity on the metaphysical lecture circuit (Yogi Wassan), to a Borsht Belt comedian
looking to distinguish himself from the pack (Mashuganishi Yogi), to a Major
League Baseball player who was described by a childhood friend as sharing some
mannerisms with a Indian snake charmer he had once seen on the television (Yogi
Berra). The Yogi title was also adopted by two of Yogananda’s more colorful asso-
ciates, Yogi Hamid Bey and Yogi Roman Ostoja (both of whom we will meet in
chapter 3) despite the two being, respectively, of Eg yptian and Polish descent.
This study mostly concerns itself with the pre– World War II period and there-
fore largely does not take into account the second wave of Indian Yogis. Their
teachings, and occasionally their actual persons, made their way to American
shores prompted by the lifting of immigration restrictions in 1965 and the con-
current interest in Indian teachings by the international countercultural move-
ment of the same period. In this context, “guru” becomes the term of choice and