Mircea Eliade YOGA IMMORTALITY AND ... - Brihaspati.net

"conscience" (or in some cases trans-consciousness ") 12 seeks wholeness and gain
freedom. For this discovery, unconscious, a new scheme iniciatieo not isolated: we know
that all the great mystical symbolism found in spontaneously suefios, in hallucinations
and even the ecstasy duck-Logic, indeed, there have been experiences and symbols of
ascension, of the March to the Center, "descent into hell, death and resurrecci6n, test
initiation, and even the sim-bolismos complex alchemy. In a way, one can speak of an
"apelike imitation" taking to the expression in its truest sense, imitation of behavior and
gestures, but without the integral experience of the content involved.
The mandala can be found inside the body-selves, and then the liturgy is "internalized,"
ie, becomes a series of meditations' on the various "centers" and subsidi-tiles.
We put 12 words in quotation marks to indicate that these are only taken in a
psychological sense.
PRAISE THE BODY. THE Hathayoga
The human body takes in Tantrism, which never reached significance in the spiritual
history of India. Certainly, the health and strength, interest in the Cosmos hbmologable
physiology and implicitly sanctified, are Vedic values, if not pre-Vedic. But the extreme
consequences trantrismo takes the concepts that holiness is only effective in a "divine
body". The pessimism and asceticism and postupanishadicos Upanishads are abolished.
The body is no longer a "source of pain," but the instrument track safer and that man has
to "con-cyst death." And since we can obtain the liberation in this life itself, the body
must be preserved as long as possible, and in perfect condition, precisely to facilitate
meditation (Gheranda Satnhita, I, 8). As we will see a continuation, Indian alchemy
proposed such a goal.
Hevajra In Tantra, the Buddha (Bhagavan) proclaims that without a perfectly healthy
body can not know the bliss. This is an adage repeated insistently in tantric literature and
SADHA-jiya. Saraha tells it your way, full of pictures: "Here (in the body) are the
Ganges and Jumna, Prayag and Benares: here the moon and sun, the sacred sites, and
Pitha Upapitha. I have not known even a place at a time of pilgrimage and bliss,
comparable to my body. " The Buddha himself is hiding in the body, also says Saraha.
(Text reproduced by Dasgupta, Obscure Religious Cults, p. 103 et seq.)
We can distinguish at least two orientations, different and converging at once, this
emphatic appreciation of the human body and its possibilities: l ^) the emphasis on the
total experience of life considered as part of the sadhana, this is the general position of all
Tantric schools, 2) to dominate the will of the body to transform it into a "divine body",
this is mainly the position of Hathayoga. A domination of that class should start with no
pretensions, based on detailed knowledge of the organs and functions. Because, "^ as able
to achieve perfection yogis who do not know your body and (if) a house with one column
and nine gates, chaired by the five tutelary deities?" (Goraksa Sataka, 14). But it is the
perfection that is sought, and this, as we shall soon see, there is no atletico higrenico
order. £ 1-ga Hathayo not and must not be confunJido with gymnastics. The appearance
of Hathayoga is attached to the name of an ascetic, Gorakhnath, founder of an order, that
of Kanphata Yogi. He lived in the twelfth century, perhaps earlier. Everything we know