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

In the texts are quite often lists of ascetics and yogis, but they are usually shallow (see
Note III, 7).
CHAPTER IV THE TRIUMPH OF YOGA
YOGA AND IIINDUISMO
We can continue, both in literature and in
didactic and religious parties of the Epic, the gradual penetration of Yoga practice.,
regarded as an excellent way of salvation. It would be difficult to determine the stages of
this penetration, which ultimately lead to almost total conquest of Indian spirituality in
Yoga ism Let's just say that we are in contact with works whose redaction is situated in
the period from the fourth century BC and the fourth century AD. But an interesting fact,
approached from another point of view, is the coincidence of this triumph of yogic
practices in the em-bids irresistible popular mystical devotion. Indeed, the installation of
yoga technique in the very heart of Hinduism took place in a crisis of orthodoxy that is, at
the precise moment that this valid in conjunction mystical movements "sectarian". During
its expansion, Brahmanism had to accept, as every religion victorious, on the other hand,
an amount-ing elements which initially showed extrafios, if not hos-tile. The assimilation
of the indigenous religious forms, pre-Aryan, begins very early, from Vedic times (this is
the case, for example, of the god Shiva). But this time, ie, early medieval India (during
the period from the flowers "-ing of Buddhism to Bfiagavad-Gita), assimilation takes on
disturbing proportions. Sometimes one has the impression of a revolution victorious, to
which the Brahmin orthodoxy can not do anything but lean. What we call "Hinduism"
data from the
time, in part still unknown in the ancient Vedic pantheon is eclipsed by the enormous
popularity of Shiva, Vishnu or one of Krishna. Here we could not profitably study the
causes of this transformation deep and broad. However, ob-served that one of the main
causes of this transformation was precisely the need experienced by the masses of poor
neighborhoods, a more concrete religious experience, a mystical devotion easily
accessible, intimate, personal. However, traditional practices yogis (folk, baroque,
unsystematic) ofe-eian just a mystical experience of the genre: neglecting the rituals and
theological science facts relied almost immedi-ing, concrete, yet not entirely disengaged
from its physiological substrate.
Obviously, this increasingly deep penetration of the techniques yogis in dej6 orthodoxy
and find some resistors. They rose cries, sporadically, contrary to the propaganda of
ascetics and "wizards", who pretended that he could not get the final liberation (mukti), m
the "hidden powers" (siddhi) rather than embracing the disciplines of they. It is natural
that this resistance was expressed in the first term in official circles of orthodox