Desmond Dunne's “Yogism” of the 1960s: Psychologization and Secularisation of Yoga

Desmond Dunne (James Lee Richardson, b. 1913­) was an important player of yoga in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s and its popularisation and secularisation. His “Insight School of Yoga” disseminating his teachings had a profound influence on yoga practitioners in Britain and the US before yoga's big rise in the 1970ies. Offering his variety of “Yogism” in various books and home study courses, Dunne – just like his contemporary Indra Devi (1899–2002) – can be situated at the divide between secularism and occultism. His early teachings are profoundly influenced by the ones of Vivekananda, the Theosophical Societies, New Thought yogi William Walker Atkinson/Yogi Ramacharaka, and the Neo-Vedanta-cum-Transcendentalism of Paul Brunton (1898­–1981) – all of them being “occult” in nature to some extent. His courses always address diet, postures, dynamic breathing, relaxation, and mental disciplines, aiming for a thoroughly healthy body and mind. Some advanced lessons and home study courses also help to develop “psychic” capacities such as clairvoyance and higher states of mind including the attainment of the “Overself”, or “super-consciousness”, yet these teachings are far less accessible than his more secular ones. His last book Yoga Made Easy (1961) sold very well in many European and American countries, and it mainly aimed for the psychologization of yoga as opposed to featuring its occult side. This paper deals with Dunne's transition from occultism to secularisation via a kind of yoga-psychology to explain yoga's efficacy. While his early concept of “Yogism” focussed on India as the cradle of Wisdom for “hidden” and “higher teachings”, the success of his late works, as this paper argues, lies in the carefully crafted ideas of his yoga-psychology.