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

ing to mind the death process? For India, in fact, death translates into a brutal
separation of the Spirit that moves away from all psychophysiological ex-perience. And
watching intently, the mystery of liberation, the regression of the elements (tattva) to the
prakrti means also an anticipation of death. We have said above (p. 261): Certain
exercises tantric yogi-are but a "visualizaci6n advance" of the decomposition and
regression of the circuit elements of nature phenomenon normally triggered by the death.
More than an otherworldly experience Thodol described in the Bardo, the Tibetan Book
of Death, corresponds strangely to the meditation exercises-Tantric yogi.
We know now that this death is a death early ini -
sciatica, ie, which is followed necessarily by a re-birth
Towards this is another way of being that the
Yogi sacrificed everything in the plane of worldly existence, pa-rece care. Sacrifice "of
his life," but also of his "persona-ability". In perspecuva a profane existence, this sacrifice
becomes incomprehensible. But we know the response of Indian philosophies: the
existence of secular perspecuva is false. This is due to double raz6n: life stripped of the
sacred is suffering and illusion and, moreover, no problem could be solved, end-to in the
perspective of this life. Recall the response of the Samkhya-Yoga to issues related to the
cause and the beginning of the pseudo-slavery of the Spirit in the circuit of matter and life
are intractable problems in the current human condition: in other words, are "mysteries"
for any intelligence that has not been released (say to all intelligence fall). If you want
lle-gar to understand these "mysteries" is necessary to rise to another way of being and to
get him, we must "die" in this life and "sacrifice" the personality emerging from the
temporal and created by the history
(personality is above all the memory of our own history). The ideal of yoga, the state of
jivanmukta, is living in an "eternal present" out of Time. The "Released in life" no longer
enjoys a personal conscience, or nourished nor its own history, but a witnessconsciousness,
pure lucidity and spontaneity. Do not try to describe this paradoxical state:
obtained through "death" on the human condition, we can not reduce it to our-work
category. However, we point out a fact, rather historical interest: The Yoga resumes and
continues the immemorial symbolism of the initiation, in other words, is integrated into a
universal tradition of religious history of mankind: that is anti-pate death to ensure rebirth
into a life santi-fied, ie, made real through the incorporation of the sacred. But at the
traditional level, India has come a long way. The initiatory rebirth, for Yoga, leads to the
attainment of immortality or absolute freedom. It is in the very structure of this
paradoxical state, which is located alia, in the most profane existence, we must look for
the explication of the coexistence of the "magic" and "mystical" in Yoga: everything
depends on the meaning to be given the iberty.
NOTES
Note I, 1: Texts and bibliographies Samkhya
The word Sankhya has been interpreted in different ways. Garbe (Die Samkhya
Philosophie, cinema Darstellung des indischen Rationalismus, Leipzig, 1894, p. 131-134)
derives from the terrrjino "Sankhya" ( "number", "quantity") and think it means
"enumeration" " search, "" analysis "(Untersuchung, Prvfug, Unterscheidung,
Erwagungen). Oldenberg (Die Lehre der Upanishads des Buddhismus und die Anfdnge,
Gottingen, 1915, p. 351, n. 129) thinks rather in the sense of "act of examining,"