18 Introductionmakes cameo appearances in a number of studies ranging from the impact of
New Thought^40 on early American yoga to anti- Asian immigration legislation,^41
there has yet to be a sustained study that addresses his impact on the landscape of
modern yoga. To date, the only scholarly work of which I am aware that engages
Yogananda and his legacy in a non- tangential way is Lola Williamson’s work on
the Self- Realization Fellowship as one among three groups that she classifies as
“Hindu- Inspired Meditation Movements” (HIMMs).^42 However, Yogananda is
not the sole focus of Williamson’s work, which is a historically situated ethnog-
raphy of three HIMMs. She draws largely on sanctioned biographical sources,
including Yogananda’s own Autobiography as well as those of his Self- Realization
Fellowship (SRF)- affiliated associates. As such, Yogananda’s biography, although
presented in a historical manner, appears in a heavily redacted and limited form.
Leaving aside Vivekananda, whose direct impact is mitigated by the fact that
he spent only about five years on American soil,^43 Yogananda is the only early Yogi
to withstand the test of time. Unlike other men whose legacies now survive only
in a couple of out- of- print publications and the genealogical probings of their
grandchildren, Yogananda has left behind a living legacy. His SRF organization
boasts five hundred centers and meditation groups worldwide. These figures do
not account for any persons affiliated with splinter groups, the most prominent
of which is the Ananda Church of Self Realization, led by Yogananda’s direct dis-
ciple, Swami Kriyananda.^44 In any case, these figures are fairly modest, as far as
popular influence is concerned. Yogananda’s real claim to fame is his celebrated
Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), which has sold over four million copies and been
translated into thirty- three languages.^45 I suspect that the actual number of read-
ers reaches far beyond this because it is the kind of book that people lend to others.
To put it simply, then, Yogananda survives in the public imagination for one
main reason: he told a good story. His Autobiography— which is really, to borrow
a term coined by Robin Rinehart, an auto- hagiography^46 — is a multifaceted por-
trait of the Yogi. In this sense, it is telling that the vast majority of the book takes
place in India and well more than half of it details events in which Yogananda has
no direct involvement. As such, the chief message of the Autobiography of a Yogi
is the Yogi’s categorical enmeshedness in the existences of other Yogis. The figure
of the Yogi is constructed out of a cacophony of individual plots that represent
particular human instantiations of one superhuman ideal.
More concretely, Yogananda is a crucial figure in the history of modern
yoga because he stands at the fascinating intersection of reimagined Indian
spirituality and Western metaphysical thought in a way that Vivekananda
never did, if only because of his sustained presence in the United States. The
end of Yogananda’s life also corresponds with two key developments on the
American metaphysical scene: first, the emergence of the New Age movement