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

the mean the profane human condition, namely, the initiation or release. We know that
the costumes and rituals of Siberian shamans often tries to imitate a skeleton (our Le
Chamanisme, p. 151 et seq.). However, the same symbolism is widely reported in Tibet
and the Himalayan regions. According to legend, Padmasambhava was dancing on the
roof of his house, a mystical dance, dressed solely the "seven bone ornaments. We know
also the paper by de-empefiado human skulls and femurs in tantric ceremonies and Lama.
The dance called the skeleton has first-rate importance in the dramatic setting called
tcham, proposed, inter alia, to familiarize viewers with the terrible images that arise in the
bardo state, ie in the intermediate state between death and a new reincarnation. From this
point of view the skeleton dance should be considered a iniciaci6n It reveals certain
experiences posthumous (our Le Chamanisme, p. 383 et seq.).
ASCENSION TO HEAVEN. MYSTIC FLIGHT
On the second element "shamanic" that identify you as a rope-trick, to say the "ascent to
heaven" is a more complex problem. Indeed, the rite of ascension on the path of post
slaughter (yupa) exists in Vedic India, and outside any shamanic complex, it is a rite
which is performed by the "split level". However, our attention certain similarities
between estnjctura anzas of Indian ritual and shamanic ascent of the tree, we know that
this symbolizes the cosmic tree, however, the sacrificial post (yupa) is also treated as
Cosmic Tree (Rig Veda, III , 8, 3; Satapatha Br, Ill., 6, 4, 13, 7, 1,
15 Knud Rasmussen, Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimo * (Copen -
gue, 1929), p. 114.
14, the tree chamaluco presents seven, nine or sixteen esca -
LONES, symbolizing each in a Heaven, and his ascension is equal to the ascent of the
tree or the cosmic pillar, however, the Indian sacrificial rises, also the, the sky through
the sacrificial Post yupa assimilated (TaittiriyaSamhita, VI, 6 , 4, 2, etc.).. The same
symbolism appears in the birth of Buddha newborn, gives seven steps and touch the top
of the world (Majjimanikaya £ [l, 123), as the Altaic shaman at seven or nine notches on
the birch ritual end to get to Heaven (see our Le Chamanisme, ps. 235-362). Afiadir
superfluous as the old cosmological scheme of the heavenly ascent and Vedic shamanic
presented here is enriched with the contribution of ancient Indian metaphysical
theorizing. The Seven Steps of Buddha are not intended as "the world of the gods" and
"immortality" but the overshoot of the human condition.
The conception of the seven heavens, which alludes to Majjia-manikaya goes back to
Brahmanism, and we are probably facing a influence of Babylonian cosmology, which
also influenced, though indirectly, on the cosmological conceptions and Siberian Altaic.
But Buddhism also known cosmological scheme of nine heavens, deeply "internalizedzados"
on the other hand, for the first eight heavens correspond to the different stages of
meditation, symbolizes heaven and the last Nirvana. In each of these heavens is projected
a god of the Pantheon. Buddhism, which represents both a degree of meditation yogui.1 *
Now we know that among the seven or nine Altai heavens are inhabited by dif-ferent
shapes or semi-divine divine the shaman is over his ascension and with which departe: in
the ninth heaven, is before the Supreme Being, Bai Ulgan. Obviously, in Buddhism it is
no longer symbolic of ascension to heaven, but the stages of meditation, and time niismo
"steps" towards final liberation.