Yogis Without Borders 57
In the previous chapter, we encountered some early modern Yogis and
observed as their stories gradually filtered into the Western imagination. This
chapter concerns itself largely with the ideological mechanisms of this latter pro-
cess. Specifically, it explores the metaphysical and philosophical underpinnings
of the Yogi’s persona and power. In order for the Yogi to enter the Western imagi-
nation, his powers had to be comprehensible to the Western mindset. Here the
focus is less on popular conceptions of the Yogi as a wielder of superpowers but
rather on the elite metaphysical understandings, mainly by insiders of metaphysi-
cal thought, for the basis of these powers. In the popular arena, attributions of
psychic or hypnotic ability— however “mystical”— are ultimately inherited from
some basic understanding of this metaphysical schema.
Vivekananda’s message caught on in no small part because the particular phi-
losophy he was espousing picked up on the same flavor of metaphysical spiritual-
ity that was already well developed in the communities that received him. By the
1890s Spiritualism, with its sonic manifestations and ectoplasmic apparitions, had
swept over the parlors of American homes,^1 and mind cure ideolog y was evident
not only in the burgeoning traditions of New Thought and Christian Science but
also in the growing popularity of therapeutic psycholog y.^2 Vivekananda gener-
ally rebuked calls to “put up or shut up”^3 with respect to displays of superhu-
man power. However, that his authenticity and value should be judged by the
ability to produce “miracles” testifies to the fact that in the American popular
imagination— as in the Indian— the Yogi was first and foremost the man with
superpowers.
The previous chapter concerned itself for the most part with how American
audiences saw the Yogi. This chapter, on the other hand, will be concerned with
how they understood him. In other words, it examines the history of ideas by
means of which the Yogi’s superpowers could be rendered not only comprehen-
sible but justifiable in the face of modern scientific rationalism— a history that
resulted in the meeting of minds between an Indian Swami (Vivekananda) and
a Serbian- American engineer (Nikola Tesla) and that yielded the strikingly simi-
lar epigraphs that preface this section. The Yogi’s ability to be comprehensible
as anything other than a caricature required that the powers that lay at the root
of his identity be represented in manner that was intelligible to his audience.
For instance, as we have seen, when faced with the seemingly magical abilities of
exotic Yogis and fakirs, Western observers often appealed to the power of hypno-
tism, which rendered their performances more realistically palatable. After all, in
a culture enthusiastically beginning to discover the powers of the human mind,
believing that an audience was hypnotized into seeing a boy climbing a levitating
rope only to disappear into nothing required less of a mental stretch than believ-
ing that the rope really levitated and the boy really disappeared. However, even
hypnotism ultimately begged for an explanation, and stories of more physically