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Ānandamayī Mā as Saint

Lisa Lassell Hallstrom

in Mother of Bliss: Anandamayi Ma (1896–1982)

Westerners have come to know Ānandamayī Mā as a saint because of Paramahamsa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, which is why some Westerners had wanted to seek her darshan in India. In spite of how ... More

Westerners have come to know Ānandamayī Mā as a saint because of Paramahamsa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi, which is why some Westerners had wanted to seek her darshan in India. In spite of how Ānandamayī Mā' devotees are not exactly at ease with referring to Mā as a saint, since they believe that Mā is a personification of God instead of a mere human being, several Westerners and Hindus recognize her as an extraordinary human being or “an exalted woman saint”. Significant figures in the context of spirituality in India are thus continuously evaluated and positioned by spiritual seekers and publicly recognized saints. This chapter investigates the complexities of sainthood evident in various Hindu traditions through identifying the qualities that saints supposedly possess and comparing these with the claims of Ānandamayī Mā's devotees.Less

Tales of Sinister Yogis

in Sinister Yogis

Bhairavānand Yogī, a Hindi-language chapbook written by Mahadevprasad Singh and first published sometime between 1940 and 1970, is a story in which a number of standard fixtures of the South Asian ... More

Bhairavānand Yogī, a Hindi-language chapbook written by Mahadevprasad Singh and first published sometime between 1940 and 1970, is a story in which a number of standard fixtures of the South Asian fantasy and adventure genre are readily recognizable: talking parrots; a brave, resourceful, and solitary king; a bevy of evil queens; skulls or skeletons that laugh and talk; the power to change bodies; and a sinister yogi. Bhairavānand Yogī follows the contours of a body of stories known as the Vikrama Cycle as attested in a dozen sources, many of which were studied at length by Maurice Bloomfield in an article published in 1917. One of the most popular stories in all of south India is that of “The Little Devotee,” which comprises a chapter in a twelfth-century Tamil scripture, the Periya Purānam, and also appears in two Telugu stories from the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, in medieval sculpture, and in modern-day oral traditions. These medieval south Indian stories take as given the assumption that wandering Saiva ascetics, called Bhairavas or yogis, were inclined to eat children.Less

Transcendental Meditation: From Malnak v. Yogi to Quiet Time

Candy Gunther Brown

in Debating Yoga and Mindfulness in Public Schools: Reforming Secular Education or Reestablishing Religion?

Chapter 2 examines Malnak v. Yogi(1979), the first federal appellate case to scrutinize under the Establishment Clause meditation practices from a religion other than Christianity. Malnak found that ... More

Chapter 2 examines Malnak v. Yogi(1979), the first federal appellate case to scrutinize under the Establishment Clause meditation practices from a religion other than Christianity. Malnak found that a New Jersey elective high-school course in the Science of Creative Intelligence/Transcendental Meditation (SCI/TM) was “religious” despite being marketed as “science.” A concurring opinion by Judge Arlin Adams articulated criteria for identifying “religion.” Malnak analyzed the textbook written by Indian-born Hindu Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (c. 1918–2008) and chants used in the pūjā ceremony—which involves prayers for aid from deities, bowing, and offerings to the deified Guru Dev—where students received a secret Sanskritmantra, identified by Maharishi as “mantras of personal gods.” Following Malnak, TM was rebranded as “TM/Quiet Time” and, although students still receive secret Sanskrit mantras in a pūjā, TM continues to be taught in public schools with funding from the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace. Because Malnak identified “religion” through belief statements, subtracting the textbook and adding scientific studies deflected attention from how the practice of mantra meditation might encourage acceptance of metaphysical beliefs. The chapter argues that secularly framed programs may be more efficacious than overtly religious programs in promoting religion.Less

Jokes and quotes

Steve Selvin

in The Joy of Statistics: A Treasury of Elementary Statistical Tools and their Applications

Essentially presents what the title indicates. Also included are a variety of jokes about statistics and statisticians as well as a bit of statistical history describing the important contributions ... More

Essentially presents what the title indicates. Also included are a variety of jokes about statistics and statisticians as well as a bit of statistical history describing the important contributions of Francis Galton (1903).Less

Adaptations, Appropriations, and Aerobics

Anya P. Foxen

in Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga

Chapter 6 examines the effect of historical dynamics upon the development of modern yoga practice, in the United States and Europe as well as India. Indian yogis were intimately familiar not only ... More

Chapter 6 examines the effect of historical dynamics upon the development of modern yoga practice, in the United States and Europe as well as India. Indian yogis were intimately familiar not only with Western physical culture but also Western metaphysical traditions. For this reason, one finds a diffusion of Western harmonial language into the writings on Indian yogis, where such terms are used to express an entirely different school of metaphysical concepts. This is mirrored by the ways in which Sanskrit terms are being used in Euro-American sources to represent genealogically Western harmonial concepts. The chapter concludes by examining the multiple waves of synthesis affected by later teachers of this hybrid yoga, such as Indra Devi, who found themselves at pains to differentiate between the yogic teachings they brought from India and the naturalized content of the broader harmonial fitness movement.Less

Ceci N'est Pas Un Yogi

in Sinister Yogis

Surveying the history of both Indian and Western interpretations of yoga, one is struck by the absence of reflection on the cognitive dissonance that appears to be operative when the primary sense of ... More

Surveying the history of both Indian and Western interpretations of yoga, one is struck by the absence of reflection on the cognitive dissonance that appears to be operative when the primary sense of the term “yoga” itself—which means “union,” “joining,” “junction”—is interpreted to mean its opposite, viyoga, which means “separation,” “disunion,” “disjunction.” The prime sources for this reading are the 200–400 CE Bhagavad Gītā of the Mahābhārata and commentaries on the 350–450 CE Yoga Sūtras, the “Aphorisms on Yoga” attributed to Patañjali. This chapter deconstructs a number of the modernist assumptions that have undergirded the great majority of colonial and postcolonial accounts of the history of yoga. It has been the equation of yoga with meditation or contemplation that has been most responsible for the skewed interpretations that have dominated the historiography of yoga for much of the past 100 years. The cross-legged “lotus position,” one of the archetypical yoga poses, was also mark of royal sovereignty.Less

Embodied Ascent, Meditation, & Yogic Suicide

in Sinister Yogis

A set of actors, through their esoteric knowledge of the true nature of the self as well as of powerful spells, were empowered to reach the world of brahman (brahmaloka). These actors' ... More

A set of actors, through their esoteric knowledge of the true nature of the self as well as of powerful spells, were empowered to reach the world of brahman (brahmaloka). These actors' knowledge-based soteriology especially carried forward the legacy of the yoga of the vedic poets. Even as the old paradigm of “going” was yielding to one of “knowing,” the language of yoga was retained in a fossilized form, with early puranic soteriologies postulating that throngs of still-embodied beings—called “yogis,” “great yogis,” “masters,” or “great masters”—inhabited a sort of antechamber to the highest realm of fully liberated beings. This chapter first describes embodied ascent and liberation in the early Upanisads and then turns to journeys into inner and outer space according to the Maitri Upanisad. It also discusses visionary ascent in the Bhāgavata Purāna and in early Śaiva scriptures, two-tiered soteriologies and the Prakrtilayas, and “yogic suicide” in the Tantras.Less

Yogi Gods

in Sinister Yogis

A yogi's powers of omniscience entail extensions of his person that radiate far beyond the contours of his physical body, into the furthest reaches of the cosmos. In effect, a yogi's mind-body (or ... More

A yogi's powers of omniscience entail extensions of his person that radiate far beyond the contours of his physical body, into the furthest reaches of the cosmos. In effect, a yogi's mind-body (or more properly speaking his consciousness-body) complex becomes virtually coterminus with the limits of the universe. This chapter follows the ways in which the implications of this extension of the person or self came to be applied to the theology, anthropology, cosmology, and soteriology of the Hindu Purānas and Tantras, as well as the scriptures of Buddhist Mahāyāna and Tantra. These new developments appear to follow parallel tracks, with the bodies and powers of yogis and gods being magnified in homologous ways in coeval sources. The four-verse “coda” of the Mahābhārata's yoga chapter offers a novel expansion on the theories of perception and the science of entering foreign bodies. This chapter also examines yogic displays by gods and Buddhas and the deification of yogis.Less

Mughal, Modern, and Postmodern Yogis

in Sinister Yogis

“Die, yogi, die! Dying is sweet, when you die the death by which the dying Gorakh had his vision.” This poem, written by a yogi (Gorakhnāth was the founder of the Nāth Yogīs) for the edification of ... More

“Die, yogi, die! Dying is sweet, when you die the death by which the dying Gorakh had his vision.” This poem, written by a yogi (Gorakhnāth was the founder of the Nāth Yogīs) for the edification of yogis, dates from no later than the fourteenth century and is an early example of Indic vernacular poetry. This is the same period in which literary references to yogis suddenly appear in half a dozen other non-Sanskrit languages, but in this case, the languages are those of foreigners to the subcontinent: the Perso-Arabic languages of India's Muslim conquerors and the Romance and Germanic languages of travelers and traders from Europe. This chapter focuses on yogis in travel narratives, as well as accounts of yogis as alchemists, healers, poisoners, soldiers, spies, long-distance traders, power brokers, princes, and purveyors of aphrodisiacs in these narratives. It also considers yogis in the Indian peasantry and modern and postmodern yogis.Less

The Later Institution of Renunciation

Sondra L. Hausner

in The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Practice

Renunciation plays a particular cultural role in the social worlds of both historical and contemporary South Asia. As the practical manifestation of a philosophical legacy that in its many schools ... More

Renunciation plays a particular cultural role in the social worlds of both historical and contemporary South Asia. As the practical manifestation of a philosophical legacy that in its many schools emphasizes the importance of cosmic unity and transcendental knowledge—the capacity to overcome human emotion and physical shortcomings—as the way to achieve it, the rejection of worldly pursuits through renunciation has become a core tactical and symbolic solution to religious attainment. The person who embodies that goal—he (or, more rarely, she) who ably renounces the otherwise assumed life course of marriage, parenthood, ritual action, and community involvement—thus occupies a special place in the religious life of the sub-continent. A textual renouncer lives the philosophical dictum to renounce society, pursuing full-time the religious attempt to transcend earthly limitations, in a worldly body all the while. This chapter examines these developments.Less

On Holy Ground

Paul G. Hackett

in Theos Bernard, the White Lama: Tibet, Yoga, and American Religious Life

This chapter focuses on Glen Agassiz Bernard's life in India as a yoga practitioner. On June 13, 1935, Glen walked out into the streets of Bombay. It had been close to ten years since he had last set ... More

This chapter focuses on Glen Agassiz Bernard's life in India as a yoga practitioner. On June 13, 1935, Glen walked out into the streets of Bombay. It had been close to ten years since he had last set foot on the holy ground of India, and Bombay was the last known home of his friend Sukumar Chatterji. While in Bombay, he made contact with Raj Bahadur Singh, a local publisher of Sanskrit texts at the Shri Venkatesh Steam Press. He also managed to locate Swami Kuvalayānanda, founder of the Kaivalyadhāma Yogic Institute in Lonavla. Spending the next several months in Bombay, Glen alerted Atal Behari Ghosh of his arrival and followed up on their previous correspondence, inquiring about swamis and yogis he had met in America and might meet and seek instruction from while in Bombay. While in Calcutta, he looked for “Tantrik Yogis” with whom he could study. Glen was finally able to meet up with Walter Evans-Wentz even as he continued his yoga retreat with Trivikram Swami.Less

“Strong as Steel, Steady as Stone”: Skirting Pitfalls in 3HO/Sikh Dharma

Constance Elsberg

in Violence and New Religious Movements

Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO group can briefly be described as a blend of Kundalini yoga and Sikhism. Due to the strongly martial dimension of Sikhism, the group is thus heir to a militant tradition, which, one ... More

Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO group can briefly be described as a blend of Kundalini yoga and Sikhism. Due to the strongly martial dimension of Sikhism, the group is thus heir to a militant tradition, which, one might suppose, could easily be used to justify violence. Also, particularly in the first decades of its existence, 3HO contained all of the key ideological and organizational characteristics that have been associated with violent new religions. However, the group has never been involved in violence, either external or internal. This chapter surveys the various factors that have mitigated against violence in 3HO.Less

Introduction: Paramahansa Yogananda, the Father of Yoga in the West

David J. Neumann

in Finding God through Yoga: Paramahansa Yogananda and Modern American Religion in a Global Age

This book explores Paramahansa Yogananda’s ministry as an Indian, an American, and the founder of a global religious organization. As a figure often associated with the origins of yoga in the United ... More

This book explores Paramahansa Yogananda’s ministry as an Indian, an American, and the founder of a global religious organization. As a figure often associated with the origins of yoga in the United States, he has been curiously neglected in the scholarly literature. Yogananda’s ministry was fueled by a religious nationalism that led him to conclude that Hinduism could uniquely fill the spiritual void in “the West.” Rejecting both exclusivism and pluralism, he embraced an inclusivism that viewed Hinduism as the ultimate expression of truth. He illuminates the nature of religious entrepreneurialism as he invented a variety of products to keep his ministry financially viable. His ministry reveals how missionary Hinduism’s success hinged on a deep understanding of Christian belief and practice; apart from his famed Autobiography, Yogananda’s longest text was a commentary on the New Testament Gospels, which explained how Jesus was a yogi. Yogananda’s life story demonstrates the connectedness of spirituality and place. He began to gain traction in his ministry only after he found Southern California. Yogananda “reenchanted” the modern world through his instruction and his claims to divine authority.Less

The Apotheosis of a Global Guru: Paramahansa Yogananda and His Autobiography, 1933–1946

David J. Neumann

in Finding God through Yoga: Paramahansa Yogananda and Modern American Religion in a Global Age

This chapter explores Yogananda’s growing status as a global spiritual authority and a divine figure. The chapter begins by placing Yogananda in the context of religious internationalism, a subset of ... More

This chapter explores Yogananda’s growing status as a global spiritual authority and a divine figure. The chapter begins by placing Yogananda in the context of religious internationalism, a subset of interwar cultural internationalism driven by concerns for world peace. It details his use of East-West as a vehicle for a cosmopolitan spiritual vision. An extravagant worldwide journey in 1935-36 from California to England, the Continent, the Middle East, and ultimately to his home city of Calcutta solidified his reputation as a “global guru.” The chapter also explores his syncretism, through his lengthy exegesis of New Testament gospel narratives that transformed the story of Jesus and his teachings into a revelation of yogic truth that hinted at Yogananda’s own divine identity. But it was the 1946 Autobiography of a Yogi that firmly established Yogananda’s reputation as a guru to the world. An analysis of this text’s structural features reveals it to be a new scripture, designed to inculcate belief in the spiritual world Yogananda evoked and a hagiography of the yogi who wrote it.Less

Epilogue

David J. Neumann

in Finding God through Yoga: Paramahansa Yogananda and Modern American Religion in a Global Age

The epilogue narrates the developments and impact of Self-Realization Fellowship and Yogananda’s writings since his death in 1952, assessing his influence in the United States and around the world. A ... More

The epilogue narrates the developments and impact of Self-Realization Fellowship and Yogananda’s writings since his death in 1952, assessing his influence in the United States and around the world. A century after Yogananda came to the U.S. with his message of Kriya Yoga, and three quarters of a century after the Autobiography of a Yogi was released, yoga has become ubiquitous, while Hindu beliefs have become an integral part of the spiritual landscape. Yogananda ultimately succeeded in converting thousands of Americans during his lifetime. When he died in 1952, he was revered and worshipped—overwhelmingly by non-Indian Americans—as the very incarnation of deity. Since his departure, he has influenced many others around the world through his successor organization, the Self-Realization Fellowship, and other independent organizations—such as Ananda, founded by Kriyananda—that trace their lineage to him, as well through Autobiography of a Yogi and his other teachings. The Father of Yoga in the West nurtured religious offspring. Yogananda’s story is thus an indispensable element of the emergence of both contemporary yoga and modern American HinduismLess

A Nautch Girl to Teach Us Delsarte

Anya P. Foxen

in Inhaling Spirit: Harmonialism, Orientalism, and the Western Roots of Modern Yoga

Chapter 5 grapples with the dynamics of Orientalism, specifically as enacted by white women with regard to India and its two central personas: the yogi and the dancing girl. It first addresses how ... More

Chapter 5 grapples with the dynamics of Orientalism, specifically as enacted by white women with regard to India and its two central personas: the yogi and the dancing girl. It first addresses how the ambiguous gendering of yogis as Oriental men allowed white women to inhabit this persona as a specific way of legitimating their spiritual authority. As a complement to this masculine model, St. Denis’s popularity represents the rise of the “nautch girl” as the symbol of a specifically feminine Orientalism. The appropriated image of the nautch girl reflects broader trends not only within the dance world but within popular culture, as Oriental imagery increasingly becomes co-opted by white women at the turn of the century to express their lingering fantasies and their newfound freedoms. Women’s physical culture quickly begins to mirror this trend as “Oriental dance” exercises are increasingly diffused through the preexisting practice of light calisthenics.Less

Of Gods and Gurus

Prashant Reddy T. and Sumathi Chandrashekaran

in Create, Copy, Disrupt: India's Intellectual Property Dilemmas

As religions become commercialized, gurus who proclaim themselves to be the messengers of gods leave behind fortunes in the form of intellectual property, either as books, or audio and video ... More

As religions become commercialized, gurus who proclaim themselves to be the messengers of gods leave behind fortunes in the form of intellectual property, either as books, or audio and video recordings. Temples too claim trademark rights in symbols representing various deities. Where people are quick to take umbrage at being offended due to religious sentiments, it is not surprising that the Trade Mark Act dealt with issue of trademarks that offended religious sentiments. This chapter discusses related questions such as who has the right to use the names of religious figures in trademarks. Or to whom does the intellectual estate of a spiritual leader belong? Or when does an authority decide that a combination of yoga postures or healing techniques can be legally protected? This chapter discusses issues that represent the challenges that intellectual property law faces in the new age.Less

Politics, Culture, and the Political Economy of Everyday Communalism in Eastern Uttar Pradesh

Sudha Pai and Sajjan Kumar

in Everyday Communalism: Riots in Contemporary Uttar Pradesh

Chapter 2 describes the beginnings of everyday communalism in eastern UP since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Two developments underlie the renewed incidents of communal violence in the 2000s: emergence ... More

Chapter 2 describes the beginnings of everyday communalism in eastern UP since the late 1990s/early 2000s. Two developments underlie the renewed incidents of communal violence in the 2000s: emergence of new patterns of communal mobilization by the BJP–RSS and the HYV; significant changes in the economy of the region, especially in Mau. Four significant, political strands underlie resulting communal tension and riots: shift from class-based mobilization by left/socialist parties to identity politics, and to criminalization and rise of mafia dons in the Mau-Azamgarh area; the emergence of the backward Muslims movement, leading to rise in political consciousness, fragmented Muslim identity, and autonomous politics; changes following globalization in the weaving industry that have affected the Muslim-Ansari community causing confrontation with Hindu traders. These have provided fertile ground for aggressive everyday communal mobilization by an independent power centre under Yogi Adityanath; the activities of the Gorakhnath Math are also examined.Less