"Export of a Mystic": Representations of Yoga in Western Literature from Colonial Encounter to New Age Adoption

Abstract

This paper traces the evolution of the literary representation of yoga and the figure of the "yogi" in Western literature from the 19th century to the late 20th century. It argues that Western authors consistently refashioned yoga to serve their own cultural and philosophical needs, a process that facilitated its global popularity but simultaneously divorced it from its foundational contexts. Beginning with the Transcendentalists, who saw in yoga a confirmation of their own universalist spirituality, the depiction shifted towards a more complex Orientalist fantasy in the high colonial period. Modernist writers like T.S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley then appropriated yogic concepts as an antidote to Western spiritual decay, while the mid-century counterculture, epitomized by Hermann Hesse, embraced it as a path of rebellion and self-discovery. Finally, the paper examines how these cumulative literary representations, by privileging experiential and psychological aspects, paved the way for yoga’s contemporary incarnation as a mainstream wellness activity. Through close textual analysis, this study demonstrates how literature was not merely a reflector but an active agent in the "export of the mystic," shaping a globalized image of yoga that is often deeply intertwined with Western consumer culture and divorced from its philosophical and soteriological roots in South Asia.