The Goddess Pose

by Michelle Goldberg

  “blindly copying the West”: Ibid., p. 89.

  Bhante’s ideas about healing: Barbara Stewart, “Bellong Mahathera Is Dead; Cambodian Monk was 110,” New York Times, July 18, 1999; Michael York, Historical Dictionary of New Age Movements (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2004), p. 60.

  While in the city: Program for The Great Wall, presented by the China Welfare Fund Committee, and in the author’s possession.

  “[T]hose who have seen”: Quoted in the program for Aaron Avshalomov: New Expression to Chinese Music and Theater, in author’s possession.

  CHAPTER 11

  “no woman shall”: “Palatial Home Is Finished,” Los Angeles Times, November 15, 1914.

  She had six thousand dollars: Report by Roger S. C. Wolcott, FBI File 65-4944, obtained through FOIA request.

  “The only thing left to do”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 133.

  “I try to live in the eternal now”: Interview with David Lifar.

  “Aldous Huxley”: David King Dunway, Huxley in Hollywood (New York: Anchor Books, 1991), p. 14.

  “when they are not”: William Tindall, “The Trouble with Aldous Huxley,” The American Scholar 11, no. 4 (Autumn 1942).

  “The ideal man”: Strakaty, Yoga: The Technique of Health and Happiness, p. 60.

  All that she recorded: Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, pp. 52–53.

  “How can you expect”: Aldous Huxley, Eyeless in Gaza (New York: Harper Perennial, 1995), pp. 422–24.

  “a mind reader”: Robert Love, The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 12.

  “advanced physical culture”: Ibid., p. 13.

  Bernard first used his skills: Ibid., p. 20.

  “a band of dashing gypsy”: Ibid., p. 30.

  “ ‘Hindoo Priest’ Lures Girls”: Chicago Daily Tribune, May 4, 1910.

  “Wild Orgies”: “Wild Orgies in the Temple of ‘Om,’ ” San Francisco Chronicle, May 5, 1910.

  “Coroner Holds ‘Hindu Yogi’ ”: New York Tribune, June 19, 1910.

  “the Hindu with the”: “Massaging Too Much for Her: Woman Causes Hindu Hypnotist’s Downfall,” Los Angeles Times, May 14, 1910.

  “A Hindu Apple”: “A Hindu Apple for the Modern Eve,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 1911.

  Unlike most other tabloid: Love, The Great Oom, p. 113.

  “Lawyers and teachers”: Ibid., p. 114.

  In 1920 he set up: Catherine Albanese, “Sacred (and Secular) Self-Fashioning: Esalen and the American Transformation of Yoga,” in Jeffrey John Kripal and Glenn W. Shuck, eds., On the Edge of the Future: Esalen and the Transformation of American Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), p. 65.

  “Mahatma”: Edith Wharton, Twilight Sleep (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 23.

  Indeed, when Devi gave: Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, p. 23.

  It’s not clear if: Avshalomov and Avshalomov, Avshalomov’s Winding Way, p. 275.

  He was not, however: Ibid., p. 291.

  for which she received $4,500: Report by Roger S. Wolcott, Los Angeles, July 3, 1950, FBI File 65-4944, obtained through FOIA request.

  “[P]robably when I am”: Avshalomov and Avshalomov, Avshalomov’s Winding Way, p. 277.

  “I felt that underlying”: Ibid., p. 295.

  “No matter what I do”: Ibid., p. 296.

  “Before this war”: Report from Shanghai, China, April 20, 1948, National Archives.

  “philosophical concepts of yoga”: Report by Mr. D. L. Nicholson to J. Edgar Hoover, October 19, 1950, obtained through FOIA request.

  Colonel M. B. DePass: Report by Woodrow P. Lipscomb, September 15, 1950, FBI File 65-1671, obtained through FOIA request.

  “sufficiently intelligent”: Report by Roger S. C. Wolcott, July 31, 1950, FBI File 65-4944, obtained through FOIA request.

  “In view of the original allegations”: Memo from the FBI director to SAC, Los Angeles, March 16, 1950, FBI File 65-58839-8, obtained through FOIA request.

  Being under investigation: Report by Roger S. C. Wolcott, July 31, 1950, FBI File 65-4944, obtained through FOIA request.

  CHAPTER 12

  “sumptuous starvation”: “Billions of Dollars for Prettiness: Big Industry Thrives on Woman’s Struggle to Stay Young,” Life, December 24, 1956.

  After a stint in Arizona: Report by Roger S. C. Wolcott, July 31, 1950, FBI file 65-4944, obtained through FOIA request.

  “The two women would”: Kohle Yohannan, Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity (New York: Rizzoli, 2009), p. 160.

  “standing on her head”: Christopher Challis, Are They Really So Awful? A Cameraman’s Chronicles (London: Janus Publishing Co., 1995), p. 89.

  “During one yoga lesson”: Marion Mill Preminger, All I Want Is Everything (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., 1957), p. 178.

  “had taken on”: Robert Balzer, Beyond Conflict (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1963), p. 170.

  The film made use: Sam Kashner and Jennifer MacNair, The Bad and the Beautiful: Hollywood in the Fifties (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), p. 337.

  “that were awful imitations”: Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson (New York: Pocket Books, 1980), p. 506.

  In 1976: Kashner and MacNair, The Bad and the Beautiful, p. 347.

  how to sleep better: Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy,” p. 25.

  “I shall not”: Ibid., p. 31.

  “about someone’s ‘uncle’ ”: Ibid., p. 64.

  “Your hips perhaps?”: Ibid., p. 118.

  By today’s standards: Ibid., p. 119.

  “by the route of male achievement”: Marynia Farnham and Ferdinand Lundberg book quoted in Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), pp. 119–20.

  “It is a well known fact”: Devi, Forever Young, Forever Healthy, p. 107.

  “very important”: Ibid., p. 111.

  “more beautifully”: Ibid., p. 116.

  At the last minute: Letter from Gloria Swanson to Indra Devi, June 6, 1953, Gloria Swanson Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  “Gloria Swanson’s latest”: Walter Winchell, “Of New York,” Washington Post, November 25, 1953.

  “Among the ‘sideline’ ”: Aline Mosby, “Hollywood Yoga Teacher Puts Stars through Paces,” Spokane Chronicle, January 2, 1954.

  “What are you doing?”: Jack Zaiman, “The Needle’s Eye: They Call Me Yoga,” Hartford Courant, October 27, 1953.

  Swanson cabled Devi: Telegraph from Swanson to Devi, February 15, 1954, Gloria Swanson Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  At the end of a four-page letter to Swanson: Letter from Indra Devi to Gloria Swanson, August 14 (year not given), Gloria Swanson Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  CHAPTER 13

  In her autobiography: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 136; Letter from Sigfrid Knauer to the House of Representatives, April 4, 1956, United States Congressional Serial Set, House Reports, vol. 6 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1957).

  “Man is what he is”: Rudolf Steiner and Ida Wegman, Extending Practical Medicine: Fundamental Principles Based on the Science of the Spirit (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 2000), pp. 11–12.

  So, for example: “Anthroposophic Medicines: Their Origin, Production and Application,” pamphlet published by the Medical Section of the School of Spiritual Science, Dornach, Switzerland.

  “Illness is a part”: Sigfrid Knauer, “The Wisdom in Human Illness,” article date unknown; obtained from the files of the Rudolf Steiner Library, Ghent, NY.

  “He would have a shelf”: Interview with John Brousseau.

  “He was a very sharp wit”: Ibid.

  In her memoir: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 136; Letter from Sigfrid Knauer to the House of Representatives, April 4, 1956.

  “one of history’s”: Jeff Burbank, Las Vegas Babylon: True Tales of Gli
tter, Glamour, and Greed (London: Robson Books, 2006), p. 100.

  As a wedding gift: William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp: 1587–1968 (New York: Bantam Books, 1981), p. 783.

  Devi insisted: Roberto Díaz Herrera, Mataji Indra Devi: La dama del yoga en Occidente (Panama City, Panama: Editorial Portobelo, Colección Pequeño Formato, Superación Personal, 1994).

  Avshalomov was blindsided: Avshalomov and Avshalomov, Avshalomov’s Winding Way, p. 334.

  “I begged him to leave her”: Ibid.

  “Knauer, together”: Robert Craft, Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994), p. 189.

  “homeopathic prescriptions”: Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), p. 299.

  “When you got an injection”: Interview with Brenda Barnetson.

  “His other patients”: Henry Barnes, Into the Heart’s Land (Great Barrington, MA: SteinerBooks, 2005), p. 274.

  It quickly came to replace: Anne Harrington, The Cure Within: A History of Mind-Body Medicine (New York: W. W. Norton, 2009), pp. 143–51.

  Men, toiling in increasingly: Ibid., p. 159.

  “The other-directed”: David Riesman with Nathan Glazer and Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 25.

  By 1957: Andrea Tone, The Age of Anxiety: A History of America’s Turbulent Affair with Tranquilizers (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. xvi.

  “Attention physicians”: Ibid., p. 56.

  “Before a new student”: Devi, Yoga for Americans (New York: Signet, 1968), p. 109.

  “a propensity for weight gain”: William J. Broad, The Science of Yoga (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012), pp. 96–97.

  Even the most vigorous: Ibid., pp. 61–73.

  “those involving”: Ibid., p. 73.

  Then, in Bombay: Humphrey Burton, Yehudi Menuhin (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000), pp. 327, 331.

  “Freedom had come”: B. K. S. Iyengar, Astadala Yogamala, vol. 1 (New Delhi, India: Allied Publishers Private Ltd., 2007), p. 29.

  “I felt that”: Ibid.

  “In recent years there has”: Burton, Yehudi Menuhin, p. 336.

  “makes his eyes”: “Yehudi’s Yoga,” Life, February 9, 1953, p. 94.

  In 1954: Burton, Yehudi Menuhin, p. 346.

  “A New Twist”: “A New Twist for Society,” Life, August 20, 1956, pp. 53–54.

  “I saw Americans”: Kofia Busia, ed., Iyengar: The Yoga Master (Boston: Shambala Publications, 2007), p. 5.

  “Many were”: Devi, Yoga for Americans, p. x.

  “Yoga is of great value”: Ibid., p. xii.

  “This welcome book”: Ibid., p. vii.

  One reader of: Devi, Yoga for Americans, p. 192.

  “The Yoga exercises”: Ibid., p. 193.

  “Red Heads Turn”: “Red Heads Turn for Yankee Yogi,” UPI, Miami News, June 19, 1960.

  “The prospect of being”: Indra Devi, Renew Your Life through Yoga (New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1972), p. 71.

  “They weren’t interested”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 154.

  “Numerous Western researchers”: Anita Gregory, “Crackdown on Parapsychology,” New Scientist, February 13, 1975.

  Some of Romen’s subjects: Stanley Krippner, Human Possibilities: A First-Person Account of Mind Exploration—Including Psychic Healing, Kirlian Photography, and Suggestology—in the USSR and Eastern Europe (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), pp. 244–47.

  No, Devi assured him”: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 253; Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 157.

  “Tolstoy is a spiritual giant!”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 157.

  This seems to have: Ibid.

  Foreign Minister Gromkyo: “Red Heads Turn for Yankee Yogi.”

  “Yoga Exercise Fad”: Theodore Shabad, “Yoga Exercise Fad in Soviet Union Is Vigorously Attacked,” New York Times, January 26, 1973.

  “was of the opinion”: FBI memo from SAC, Los Angeles, to the FBI director, June 18, 1962, obtained through FOIA request.

  “Mrs. HOLLENBECK said”: Ibid.

  “No further investigation”: FBI memo from SAC, Los Angeles, to the FBI director, August 31, 1962, obtained through FOIA request.

  It seemed to Devi: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, pp. 143–44.

  53“Soon, word got out” Rancho La Puerta website, accessed April 15, 2013.

  CHAPTER 14

  In her writings and interviews: Indra Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga (Delhi, India: Macmillan Company of India, 1975), p. 8.

  “[Y]oga break starts”: Kay Goldman, Dressing Modern Maternity: The Frankfurt Sisters of Dallas and the Page Boy Label, e-book (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2013), n.p.

  “The elevators are motionless”: Eugenia Sheppard, “To Be in Fashion, Hang by Your Heels,” New York Herald Tribune, syndicated in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, Sunday, November 3, 1963.

  “Problem of Our Age”: Devi, Renew Your Life through Yoga, pp. 11–17.

  When she realized: Narayana Kasturi, Sathyam-Shivam-Sundaram, Part II (Prashanti Nilayam, India: Sri Sathya Sai Baba Publication and Education Foundation, 1984), p. 257; Goldman, Dressing Modern Maternity, n.p.

  “attempt to stir”: “Madame Indra Devi: Crusade for Light in Darkness Has Cloak and Dagger Start,” New Cosmic Star, March 1967.

  “On May 12”: Letter from the Gloria Swanson Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  Dallas artist Dmitri Vail: Glenna Whitley, “The Art of the Con,” D Magazine, April 1992.

  On the recording: Indra Devi, Indra Devi Presents Concentration & Meditation, MACE Records, 1965.

  “carrying the fire”: Devi, Una mujer de tres siglos, p. 158.

  “taken all over”: Unknown newspaper clipping found in the Gloria Swanson Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin.

  “Was there, we wondered”: Howard Murphet, Sai Baba: Man of Miracles (York Beach, ME: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1971), p. 24.

  “He seemed to lift”: Ibid., p. 32.

  “He is the brightest star”: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 5.

  She told Natalia Apostolli: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 268.

  “Saigon swings”: Hugh A. Mulligan, “Vietnam: A Confused, Many-Sided War,” Associated Press, March 20, 1966.

  “He seldom answered”: Murphet, Sai Baba, p. 54.

  “This is too much!”: Ibid., p. 56.

  He lived in a dilapidated: Smriti Srinivas, In the Presence of Sai Baba: Body, City, and Memory in a Global Religious Movement (Leiden, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill, 2008), p. 35.

  “My devotees are calling”: Murphet, Sai Baba, p. 60.

  Sathya Sai Baba: Srinivas, In the Presence of Sai Baba, p. 55.

  “We’d sit there and talk”: Arnold Schulman, Baba (New York: Pocket Books, 1973), p. 94.

  “wish-fulfilling trees”: Murphet, Sai Baba, p. 71.

  “At picnics he”: Ibid.

  Beggars, some with maimed: Schulman, Baba, p. 34.

  There was a small: Apostolli, Indra Devi, p. 272; Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 11.

  Each time it ran out: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 12.

  Draped in a saffron-colored robe: Ibid.

  As she walked toward: Ibid.

  Sai Baba had an armchair: Ibid., p. 14; Apostolli, Indra Devi, pp. 273–74.

  “both the central communion”: Bill Aitken, Sai Baba: A Life (New Delhi, India: Penguin Books India, 2004), p. 26.

  “Away from Sai’s”: Ibid., p. 27.

  she found herself growing despondent: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 17.

  “cascade of brilliant light”: Ibid.

  Then, when the man: Ibid., pp. 21–22.

  “Practice Yoga, or the mastery of the mind”: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 23.

  There seemed to be pearls: Ibid., pp. 24–25.

  “Didn’t Christ feed”:
Ibid.

  “He caressed them”: Kasturi, Sathyam-Shivam-Sundaram, Part II, pp. 234–35.

  “The greed and selfishness”: Ibid., p. 237.

  “fairy tale”: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 33.

  “Be happy”: Ibid., p. 36.

  CHAPTER 15

  In the early 1970s: Samuel Sandweiss, Sai Baba: The Holy Man…and the Psychiatrist (San Diego: Birth Day Publishing, 1975), p. 52.

  “a psychology of pure consciousness”: Jeffrey J. Kripal, Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 157.

  approached “yogic or ‘spiritual’ practices”: Sandweiss, Sai Baba, p. 23.

  “I had the strange feeling”: Ibid.

  “I had the impression”: Ibid., p. 25.

  She told Sandweiss that Sai Baba had raised a man: Ibid.

  “You see people like Swami Satchidananda”: Sara Davidson, “The Rush for Instant Salvation,” Harper’s Magazine, July 1971.

  “I felt that observing Baba”: Sandweiss, Sai Baba, p. 27.

  He regularly oversaw her classes: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 38.

  “All the miracles”: Ibid.

  In 1967: “Hinduism in New York: A Growing Religion,” New York Times, November 2, 1967.

  “Chief Guru”: Barney Lefferts, “Chief Guru of the Western World,” New York Times, December 17, 1967.

  “citizens of Ozzie and Harriet’s America”: Philip Goldberg, American Veda: How Indian Spirituality Changed the West (New York: Harmony Books, 2010), p. 156.

  He was popular: Ibid.

  “shit and desire”: Deborah Baker, A Blue Hand: The Beats in India (New York: Penguin Press, 2008), p. 154.

  “It brings a state”: Quoted in James R. Sikes, “Swami’s Flock Chants in Park to Find Ecstasy,” New York Times, October 10, 1966.

  “And a second center”: Goldberg, American Veda, pp. 178–79.

  “are our best potential”: Quoted in Hayagriva dasa, The Hare Krishna Explosion (San Rafael, CA: Palace Press, 1985), p. 141.

  “a loose network of holy men”: Jane Howard, “Samadhi and Plaid Stamps on the Swami Circuit,” Life, February 9, 1968.

  He told Devi there were too many gurus in America: Devi, Sai Baba and Sai Yoga, p. 59.