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

and psychological structuring of their temporary status, awareness of the "liberated", ie of
one who has got rid of temporality and, therefore, knows the true, untold freedom. The
conquest of this absolute freedom, spontaneity perfect, is the subject of all philosophies
and all Indian mystical techniques, but mainly through Yoga, one of the many forms of
yoga, which India thought it could secure . It is the main reason why we found it useful to
draft a sufficiently complete exposition of the theories and prdcticas of Yoga, to tell the
his-tory of its forms and increase the place of Yoga in the entire Indian spiritualism.
We started writing this book after three years of studies at the University of Calcutta
(1928-1931) under the direction of Professor Surendranath Dasgupta, and after a sixmonth
stay at the ashram in Rishikesh, Himalayas. The first version, written in English,
translated into Romanian by ourselves and retranslated into French for some friends,
appeared in 1936 under the title: Yoga, Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne
(Libreria Bucarest-Paris. Orientalist Paul Geuthner). The vices of youth and inexperience
were there worse by des-such misunderstandings due to double translation: but still, the
text was marred by many errors idiomdti-ing and printing. Despite these serious
shortcomings, the work was well received by specialists: the views of Louis de la Vallee-
Poussin, Jean Przyluski, Heinrich Zimmer, V. Papesse, to cite only the missing, has long
encouraged us to pre-pare a new edition. The corrections included and the added material
had resulted in a text that departs significantly from the 1936 edition, except for some
pdrrafos, the book has been completely rewritten for the purpose of adapting it, where
possible, to the point of view. (Part of this new version had been already used in the book
published in 1948: Techniques du Yoga.) In the footnotes, we have retained only a
minimum of references. The bibliographies and list of items, the precision required by
mds particular aspects of the problem and, in general, all technical discussions have been
grouped at the end of the work in the form of short appendages. We wanted to present a
book accessible to the reader not internalized, without leaving the scientific rigor: the
encontrardn Indianists bibliogrdficos supplementary materials and elements at the end of
the book. ISERD necessary to add that none of the exhaustive bibliographies?
We have used the French translations of Pali texts and sdnscrito which we found
convenient. If the translation of the Yoga-Sutra and comments once we have departed the
current interpretations, we do given the oral educa-tion of our teachers Hindu, and the
first Professor Surendranath Dasgupta, whom we have translated and co-enced all
important texts of yoga-darsana.
As it is presented, the book is especially directed to specialists in the history of religions,
psychologists and philosophers. Most of the content Std commentary dedicated to
different forms of yoga technique and history. There are excellent works on the system of
Patanjali, especially those of Dasgputa, we have not thought it necessary to dwell too
much on that subject, nor on Buddhist meditation techniques, since this re-gard to have
an abundance of critical literature. We insisted on the contrary, on the less known aspects
or imperfectly studied: the ideas, symbolism and yoga methods, as expressed in Tantrism,
alchemy, folklore and aboriginal devo-cion.
We have dedicated this work to the memory of our patron, the Maharajah Sir
ManindraChandra of Kassimbazaar Nandi, who allowed us to, through a scholarship, our
stay in India, and the memory of our mds expensive teachers: Nae Ionescu and
Surendranath Dasgupta. In the teachings of the first start we owe our philosophical
training and guidance. With respect to Surendranath Das-gupta, not only introduced us to