Sinister Yogis. By David Gordon White. The University of Chicago Press, 2009.

376
pages. $42.00.

Popular understandings of yoga today emphasize meditation, exercise, and inner

peace. For those yoga groups that study Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the chapters on ethics

and contemplation are generally the most important ones, while the chapter of vibhutis or

supernatural powers is to be avoided, having only temptations for yogis on the spiritual

path. White’s Sinister Yogis shows the importance of that chapter, and the early

understandings of yoga that emphasized supernatural practices. These included

possession, shape-shifting, creation of multiple selves, and heavenly ascents. He shows

modern yoga to be a small offshoot of a larger system, in which yogis evoked respect,

terror, and sometimes worship.

White begins the book with his own encounters with two rather commercial

yogis, local magicians who ask him for money. But he is motivated to write the book by

a passage in the Mahabharata describing yogis who possess gods and sages, multiply

bodies, and can bind and release. He examines the origins of yoga in South Asia from

the Vedic period onwards, focusing on the yogic practitioner rather than yoga philosophy

(which he dates from about the fourth century CE, with the Yoga Sutras as a foundational

work). His emphasis is on imagery, and thus he refers to this book as the third in his

triptych (rather than trilogy), on alchemy, tantra, and now yogis. Working primarily with

Sanskrit and Hindi sources, he examines yogis before they became peaceful, flexible

enlightened people.

The book is structured around stories. The first chapter, “Tales of Sinister

Yogis,” begins with a recent tale of Bhairavanand, an evil and violent yogi, and discusses

the earlier origins of this image of the yogi. The second chapter, “Ceci ne’st pas un

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Yogi,” examines understandings of raja yoga and hatha yoga, and the role of asanas

(with the lotus posture as a mark of royal or divine status, not a meditation position). It

includes the links between yogis and warriors, heroes and kings. The third chapter,

“Embodied Ascent, Meditation and Yogic Suicide” discusses the rise of masters of yoga,

with stories of visionary ascents, liberated sages, and links between death and

enlightenment. The fourth chapter, “The Science of Entering Another Body,” examines

the links between multiple bodies and worlds, especially in terms of spiritual links or

“yokings;” while the fifth chapter, “Yogi Gods,” describes the application of yogic ideas

in the puranas and tantras, in which yogis are deified, and gods are described in terms of

their yogic powers. The final chapter, “Mughal, Modern and Postmodern Yogis,”

examines writings by travelers and foreigners about yogis, with Muslim and Chinese

writings, and images from European travel narratives. Yogis are linked with Sufi fakirs,

with healers and poisoners, warriors and spies. It ends with the decline of yogic power in

favor of theism, and the recreation of yoga in the twentieth century.

As White notes, early Sanskrit literature mentions the meditative and priestly

yogis whom he calls “the intelligentsia,” but it focuses more on heroic warriors, sorcerers

and magicians, yogis who could fly through the air and resurrect corpses. Yogis were

supernatural beings, and those who remained on earth meditating were “failed yogis.”

Some yogis became tutelary deities of kingdoms, legitimating dynasties and blessing or

cursing the land. Many were aggressive and demanding, with powers gained from

asceticism. The term “yogi” was often used interchangeably, with sannyasi, bairagi,

kapalika, naga, gosain, and later fakir. All of these were believed to have strange

practices and miraculous powers, and they sought supernatural powers rather than

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liberation from rebirth. By the thirteenth century CE, the term “yogi” came to refer to

Nath yogis, but it was still linked to cultural outsiders known to travelers by their matted

hair, ashes, rags, and iron implements. These yogis were not known for their quiet

meditation or postures, but rather for their extreme and often painful practices. They

were ambiguous figures: were their spiritual states similar to death, or a conquest of

death? Did they go to the gods and live in their heavens, or become gods themselves?

In ancient Sanskrit literature, yogic perception was true perception, knowing the

whole universe by pervading it. The earlier penetration of bodies, shown in the guru’s

glance at his disciple in initiation, appears in later concepts like darsana (the exchange of

glances with a deity) and pranapratistha (in which a deity is ritually placed in a statue,

and can observe and be observed). It also came to include entering all bodies, living or

dead, a union or yoking subject to the yogi’s will.

With the British domination of India, the “wild, naked, drug-crazed warrior

ascetic” was tamed into a meditative, spiritual renouncer. Yogis were criminalized,

portrayed as beggars and con-men, and they lost their reputation for miraculous powers

and their princely patrons. The focus of yoga began to change.

White notes that the Indian spiritual leader Vivekananda used yoga as a way of

unifying the Indian nation, rejecting the miracles and supernatural powers of earlier

practice. Yogis were romanticized in the writings of Yogananda and Sivananda, and

yoga was reinvented as “physical culture” in the 1930’s, with the addition of calisthenics

and gymnastics. In modern yoga philosophy, the Yoga Sutras came to be understood as

the capstone of a continuous yoga tradition, rather than as a new and relatively recent

development. The Bhagavad Gita came to be understood as a yogic text rather than a

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sectarian tract that incorporated many previous traditions- including yoga. Instead of a

long tradition of “classical yoga,” we have a new set of developments which reinterpret

yoga for a different audience.

White’s goal in this book was to show “real world instantiations” of early yoga

though the portrayal of yogis, and his translations do clearly show early popular

understandings of yogis and yoga. This is a very useful book for those with some

Sanskrit training, but it should be noted that knowledge of Sanskrit literary history and

philosophy is assumed, and Sanskrit terms which are used often remain undefined. There

are many debates about translation and interpretation of early texts which would require

some background to understand. As such, it could be difficult for the audience which

might make the most use of it- the modern practitioners of the “classical yoga” against

which this book argues.

We should also note that one reason ancient Sanskrit texts spoke more about

yogis as sorcerers and miracle-workers than as silent priests in meditation is that they

made for better stories. Heroes and magicians and wild men captured the attention of

listeners better than people sitting quietly in caves, hoping for liberation. Virtually all of

these texts were narrated before they were written, and narrative requires drama. It can

be difficult to excite an audience with sages chanting stanzas and doing slow breathing

exercises. And, of course, the state of ultimate liberation is beyond words.

Most books on yoga are written on practice or philosophy, with a smaller number

of biographies of famous yogis and their teachings. This book shows a history of

religions approach in the use of Sanskrit texts, folklore, and themes. It also shows the

influence of tantric studies, especially in the contrast of yogic paths. These were perhaps

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best articulated by Alexis Sanderson, describing the practices of Saiva tantric yogis: one

path includes those whose chosen goal was liberation from the bondage of

transmigration, and the other elected to pursue supernatural powers and experience

rewards. These paths, the tantric “right path” and “left path,” work more broadly for

yoga as well. White’s book is clearly following the “left path” of yoga, as may be

implied from its title, Sinister Yogis.

This book gives an important alternative understanding of the yoga tradition,

moving the goal of ancient yoga from liberation from rebirth to supernatural power, from

stilling the mind to ascending into the sun. Its significance for the field is its description

of yogic religious experience through narrative rather than philosophy. It has long been a

challenge to describe the inner aspect of yogic experience, and most writing has

emphasized philosophical analysis rather than myth and story. This is an original

approach, and a valuable one.

June McDaniel

College of Charleston