Authenticity, Authority and Adaptation: Yoga, bhakti and the Radhsoami tradition

This paper studies questions of authority and adaptation of yoga and bhakti in the tradition of Radhasoami of the 19th- and 20th-century in North America, which challenges and transcends traditional Hinduism in multiple ways. I analyse Radhasoami ritual practice, which involves elaborate meditational practice known as surat śabda yoga (yoga of the sound of the inner current). In my paper, I focus on the annual pilgrimage to India of Radhasoami members who live in North America in order to practice surat śabda yoga together with the fellow satsangis in India and have darśan of their guru. Thus, I seek to explore the complex links between yoga, bhakti and the importance of the pilgrimage to India and to discuss embodied yogic/meditational and devotional practices, like the practice of collective meditation during the satsaṅg, which represents at the same time the manifestation of the devotee's guru-bhakti. For this purpose, I study elements of Radhasoami religiosity, which invite the devotee to long for a darśana of the guru and encourage followers to mediate on him. I also discuss the concept of āratī in Radhasoami, which represents an internalization of ritual worship. In the process of this internalized āratī the devotee might offer to his guru the parts of his inner body. Thus, this paper explores issues of yoga, bhakti and pilgrimage to India in the Radhasoami tradition by means of analysis of ritual practice, and based upon extensive fieldwork in the Radhasoami community.