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

that a number of references to "immortality" of the yogi, which abound in the texts
mainly hathayoguis, they are concerned with the experiences of these "living dead".
CAPITOLO VII
YOGA AND ALCHEMY
LEGENDS of yogis ER
Tantric Vajrayana tended to seek a "diamond body"
incorruptible, outside of becoming. The Hathayoga fortifying the body to prepare for the
"transmutation" final and to make it suitable for "immortality".
As we have seen, tantric processes were done in a subtle body, approved at the same time
the Cosmos and the Pantheon, body and somehow divine. Important detail: the disciplesit
was to contemplate the dissolution and the creation of the Universe and, finally,
experience in itself "death" (= disoluci6n) and the "resurrection" (= re-creation) of his
subtle body so as Cosmos (p. 262). This process of dissolution and re-creation hacc
remember to solve et coagula of Western alchemy. As the alchemist, the yogi makes
changes in the "substantia" and this, in India, is the work of Prakrti or Shakti (or the
Maya, the archetype of the Magician). Tantric Yoga for fatally showed prolongation
alchemical one: firstly, to master the secrets of the Sakti, the Yogi manages to imitate his
"transformation" and the transmutation of common metals into gold early falls between
traditional siddhi: the other hand, the "diamond body" of the Vajrayana, the siddha-deha
of hathayoguis, has some resemblance to the "body of glory" of the Western alchemists,
the transmutation is made from the meat, it produces a "divine body " '(divya-deha), a"
body of Gnosis (jnana-deha), a worthy receptacle for the one who is liberated in life
"(jivanmukta).
The solidarity between Yoga and alchemy was also perceived in India, both as the first
foreign travelers by the
people that quickly draw up a whole yogi-alchemical folklore, integrating the themes of
the elixir of immortality and the transmutation of metals into the mythology of the Yogi-
Magician. Exa-mined before alchemical texts as such, presents some in teres
remembering some observations of travelers and certain le-going on the famous
alchemists: as quite often, the "myth" is more eloquent than the historical reality and
allows us to better penetrate the deeper meaning of a historical fact that the recorded
documents.
Marco Polo, speaking of chugchi (yogis) who "live 150 or 200 years," writes: "They used
very rarely drink, prepare pupils for a potion made from a mixture of sulfur and mercury,
and drink it twice month. It gives them, they say, very long life, and is a potion that
usually take from childhood "(Yule, Travels of Marco Polo, edition of H. Cordier, 1903,
vol. II, p. 365 ff. ). Marco Polo seems to have given greater importance to the yogis,
alchemists. Francois Bernier, however, who had ob-served and studied to various sects of
ascetics natives, have been de-syndicated several pages that formed until the early
nineteenth century, the main source of information about the yogis and fakirs (Voyages
Francois Bernier, Docteur en Medicine, Faculty of Montpellier, Amsterdam, edited by
David Paul Marret, II, pp. 121-131). I keep noticing his alchemical knowledge: "There