Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Bollingen Series, Vol. LVI) [Paperback]

Mircea Eliade (Author), Willard R. Trask (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 1970 | ISBN-10: 0691017646 | ISBN-13: 978-0691017648 | Edition: 2

In this landmark book the renowned scholar of religion Mircea Eliade lays the groundwork for a Western understanding of Yoga, exploring how its guiding principle, that of freedom, involves remaining in the world without letting oneself be exhausted by such "conditionings" as time and history. Drawing on years of study and experience in India, Eliade provides a comprehensive survey of Yoga in theory and practice from its earliest foreshadowings in the Vedas through the twentieth century. The subjects discussed include Patañjali, author of the Yoga-sutras; yogic techniques, such as concentration "on a Single Point," postures, and respiratory discipline; and Yoga in relation to Brahmanism, Buddhism, Tantrism, Oriental alchemy, mystical erotism, and shamanism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[I]t states with clarity and precision what the beliefs and practices of yoga are, and how they originated from the primeval Indic religions.
(The New Yorker )

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 2 edition (April 1, 1970)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691017646
• ISBN-13: 978-0691017648
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,019,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars All serious yoga scholars have this book or want it, January 23, 2002

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Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Bollingen Series, Vol. LVI) (Paperback)

I have the Bollingen paperback third printing of the Second Edition of 1969. I have little doubt that they used the plates from that hardcover edition, so the text is identical. The edition of 1970 currently available is the same as the one I have except for a new cover. The original was in French, published in Paris in 1954. This edition is professionally translated by William R. Trask.

Eliade was a nearly legendary scholar of indefatigable energy, and so it is not surprising that this is the definitive single volume academic work on yoga in English (that I am aware of). George Feuerstein's coffee table sized The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice (1998) is a different sort of book, covering yoga from a more practical point of view, and is accessible to a general public. Eliade's book is aimed directly and just about exclusively at academicians. Furthermore, while Feuerstein is a practitioner as well as a scholar, Eliade makes no pretense of first hand experience. As he relates in the Forward, he is interested in the discovery and interpretation of yoga by the West. He wants to explain that in detail. His is a "comparatively full exposition of the theory and practices of yoga...[a] history of its forms, and...its place in Indian spirituality..." (p. xx) The qualifying "comparatively" is a bit of modesty on the part of Eliade. This book really is a "full exposition" (insofar as that is possible) including the ideas, symbolism and methods of yoga "as they are expressed in tantrism, in alchemy, in folklore, in the aboriginal devotion of India." (p. xxii)

The text, which includes lengthy chapters such as, "Yoga and Brahmanism," "Yoga Techniques in Buddhism," "Yoga and Tantrism," "Yoga and Alchemy," etc. runs for 362 dense pages. Sixty-six pages of notes follow, and then a most extensive and valuable bibliography. The Index itself is 47 pages long and concludes with a by-line(!), "Index by Bart Winer," which is only right considering the text was written and set before the age of computers.

This is not a book for practitioners of yoga but a book for students and scholars of the literature of yoga. It is a challenge to read and appreciate and only really accessible to those with some experience with the literature. There is probably no serious yoga book written in the past quarter century that fails to cite it.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yoga philosopy, the details, June 11, 2000

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A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Bollingen Series, Vol. LVI) (Paperback)

Eliade researched for this book, while staying with Surendranath Dasgupta in India, who was the formost scholar of indian philosophy and thelogy at his time. Eliade meticulously analyzed the indian scriptures and commentaries on sankhya and yoga and presents yoga as a huge, complex and precise system of practice and philosphy with the goal of kaivalyam (libration). This book is a lighthouse in the present time of publishing as much as the printing press can print.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended by a former student of the author's, February 23, 2006

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Kathleen A. Burt "windowtothestars" (Boca Raton, FL. USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Bollingen Series, Vol. LVI) (Paperback)

This book was my first introduction to yoga in the late 1960's, when the author taught at the University of Chicago and I did graduate work in South Asian Studies. Many decades later, after yoga teacher's training, studies in Carl Jung's archetypal psychology, alchemy and dreamwork I still find it a valuable reference book. It's a good introduction for anyone interested in following the development of yoga theory and practice in India: the major traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and even aboriginal cultures. Eliade's discussion of the art and practice of Tantric ritual is still among the best I've seen; it clarifies an otherwise confusing topic for the Western reader. A classic not only for yoga teachers' libraries and academics, but recommended for anyone with an interest in what yoga's really about, and where it orginated.