[7] He gave a public demonstration of what he termed the "Kali mudra" (a simulated, so-called "death trance") in January 1898 to a group of physicians in San Francisco.

[8] Bernard claimed to have traveled to Kashmir and Bengal before founding the Tantrik Order of America in 1905 or 1906 [5][9] (variously reported as starting in San Francisco, Seattle, Tacoma, Washington, or Portland, Oregon); the New York Sanskrit College in 1910; and the Clarkstown Country Club[10] (originally called the Braeburn Country Club), a seventy-two acre estate with a thirty-room mansion[11] in Nyack, New York, a gift from a disciple, in 1918.

[12] He also played a critical role in establishing a greatly exaggerated association of tantra with the use of sex for mystical purposes in the American mindset.

[2] Historian of religion Robert C. Fuller has commented that Bernard's "sexual teachings generated such scandal that he was eventually forced to discontinue his public promulgation of Tantrism.

[16][17] Bernard was involved with more conventional businesses, including baseball stadiums, dog tracks, an airport, and became president of the State Bank of Pearl River in 1931.

[18] Scholars from across the United States visited Bernard's library; it was said to have been the best Sanskrit collection in the country and to contain some 7000 volumes of philosophy, ethics, psychology, education, metaphysics, and related material on physiology and medicine.

[3] He was uncle of Theos Bernard, an American scholar of religion, explorer and famous practitioner of Hatha Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism.

[20] His half-sister Ora Ray Baker (Ameena Begum) married Inayat Khan after they met in 1912 at Bernard's Sanskrit College.

Bernard adamantly opposed the match and Ora literally ran away from home to be with Inayat Khan, showing-up unannounced on his doorstep in London.