Books: Here Comes the Yogiman

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI (498 pp.) —Paramhansa Yogananda—Philosophical Library ($3.50).

Some of the most literate practitioners of the English language have written about yoga. Several of them have even sweetened their message with some of their best sex-novel tricks. But despite the literary followers of Indian philosophy —Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, John (Voice of the Turtle) Van Druten and Gerald Heard—yoga is still as mystifying as Sanskrit to the average American.

One trouble is that there are. no bar associations or synods to set standards among swamis (holy men, monks)—almost anyone in the U.S....