THE RHETORIC
OF SCIENCE IN
PARAMAHANSA
YOGANANDA’S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF A YOGI
G. K. Sandhya
The man of self-realization knows a bliss that cannot be compared to anything in this
world. His joy is independent of any object of sensory experience. “It is an incomparable happiness that cannot be described in words. Such joy is known as Sattvikananda (Pure bliss)”. (Sananda Lal Ghosh 1980:311)
“Ascaryam” is the word employed in the Bhagavad Gita (verse 29, chapter 2) to convey the ineffability of the nature of the Atman. Verbal communication, according to scriptures and saints, breaks down when one attempts to explain the ultimate spiritual experience. Terms like “bliss” and “aparoksanubuti” are far from adequate. Nevertheless, saints and sages of all religions have down the ages resorted to various rhetorical devices like figurative speech, philosophical discourse, songs and commentaries to explain the process of “yoking” of the soul with God for the benefit of mankind and spiritual aspirants. Spiritual autobiographies deserve special mention in this context. The authenticity of spiritual experience, the personal touch in. terms of the author-God relationship that is conveyed to the reader through the narrative, often bring a reader closer to the realm of God communion than the other genres in spiritual literature. But even in spiritual autobiographies, the authors resort to the use of metaphors, images or songs to convey the experience of the divine intoxication. Among them, Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi (1946), one of the most popular spiritual autobiographies of times deserves special mention. Quite interestingly, the author makes use of the rhetoric of Science as a means of communicating the experience of “yoking” the soul with the Ultimate Reality. Here, an attempt is made to examine the significance of employing this device in the narrative in context and thereby the role of the author as a spiritual master in bridging the social and the spiritual. In this regard, three factors are to be taken into consideration. The age in which the autobiography was written, the audience that he addressed and the author’s own intentions in using the rhetoric of Science. First considering the age in which the autobiography was written, it is clear that the author was not merely catering to the spirit of the age to facilitate an understanding of the spiritual experience. The author’s own serious social concerns are reflected in the rhetoric. The first half of the present century, the age in which the text was written, was an age of Revivalism and Renaissance Spirit in India, caused by (1) the opening of India to the West through colonisation (2) the spread of English education in India (3) the development of Science and hence a growing appeal to reason. But with the advent of “modernity” through English education and Western Science in India, ambivalences and even growing skepticism towards Indian traditional values, ancient science and medicine and spiritual temper were also not uncommon among the natives.
Second, it is to be noted that by using a language and literacy form of the West, the author was also addressing the Western audience. The work serves as a fine reference point for an understanding of India’s spiritual strength, and it can be seen as a great force that presented India’s cultural values to the West at a time when values were perceived as disintegrating under colonialism. Through a subtle symbiosis of the Yogic vision, the Renaissance spirit and Scientific temper in his autobiography, Paramahanasa Yogananda attempts to dispel the stereotypical notion of the “spiritual” India in the West and contests the Widespread contention that India’s ancient wisdom and become effete.
Thirdly, one of the aims and ideals of the “Yogoda Satsanga Society of India” founded by the author reflects these contextual influences and provides sufficient explanation for the use of the rhetoric of Science in the autobiography., It says that one of the aims of the society is to “unite science and religion through realization of the unity of their underlying principles” (Yogananda Paramahansa 1975:x). Several instances can be quoted from the text that manifest this aim. For example, in chapters like “India’s Great Scientist J.C. Bose”, “The Science of Kriya Yoga” and “The Law of Miracles” in particular, the author projects the role of Science in interpreting the nature of the larger Cosmic Order.
J. C. Bose, according to the author, was a “sage-scientist” who could synthesize the spirit of the empirical procedure of the West with the gift for introspection of the East. Yogananda records the Scientist’s speech at the opening of the Bose Institute: “In time the leading scientific societies of the world accepted my theories and results, and recognised the importance of the Indian contribution to Science. Can anything small or circumscribed ever satisfy the mind of India? By a continuous living tradition and a vital power of rejuvenescence this land has readjusted itself through unnumbered transformations. Indians have always arisen who, discarding the immediate and absorbing prize of the hour, have sought for the realization of the highest ideals in life–not through passive renunciation but through active struggle” (67). Bose stresses the fact that the Indian mind is especially capable of pursuing “the truth with infinite patience”. Besides this, the fact that the author’s own response to J. C. Bose’s speech brims with patriotism is of additional interest: “Tears stood in my eyes at the scientist’s concluding words. Is “patience” not indeed a synonym of India, confounding Time and historians alike?” (69)
In the chapter, “the Law of Miracles”, those phenomena we hold as “supra-rational” are explained through rational means: “Masters who are able to materialise and dematerialise their bodies and other objects, and to move with the velocity of light, and to utilize the creative light rays in bringing into instant visibility and physical manifestation have fulfilled the lawful condition: their mass is infinite” (270). Yogananda points out that the law of miracles is” operable by any man who has realized that the essence of creation is light” (271). He derives this explanation from Einstein’s theory that “energy in any particle of matter is equal to its mass or weight multiplied by the square of the velocity of light” (270) The aura around the concept of “miracle” is dismantled when he strikes a balance between his Yogic vision and scientific temper: “Nothing may truly be said to be a miracle” except in the profound sense that everything is a miracle. That each of us is encased in an intricately organized body, and is set upon earth whirling through space among the stars-is anything more common place? or more miraculous? (276).
In the chapter, “The Science of Kriya Yoga”, Yogananda enters the realm of psychology and human physiology, Kriya Yoga, he points out, is an ancient Science and it is a simple “psycho physiological method by which human blood is decarbonized and recharged with oxygen. The atoms of this extra oxygen are transmuted into the life current to rejuvenate the brain and spinal centres. By stopping the accumulation of venuous blood, the yogi is able to lessen or prevent the decay of tissues. The advanced yogi transmutes his cells into energy” (235).
Yogananda regards creation as “a vast motion picture” to drive home the concept of “maya” or illusion and holds that ‘spiritual sight, x-ray like, penetrates into all matter...” Also terms like “mystic syringe”, “radium like lusture”, “microphone” of the spiritual eye, “concentration tuned, radio of my heart:, etc., help to facilitate a better understanding of the spiritual experience through things which are part of the day-to-day activities and of the cognitive capacities of the modern reader.
It is important to note that Yogananda’s narrative is not confined to a glorification of India’s past. Through the rhetoric of Science he provides a critique of both the Eastern and Western cultures, places the gems of the wisdom of ancient India on the lap of modernity to revive it and to put their essential principles into practice. In this manner; the autobiography not only provides an experience of the “Yoga” of the soul with the Spirit but also explores the possibility of yoking the apparently dichotomous religion and science, the suprarational and the rational, the East and the West and tradition and modernity.