Immortality and Freedom

The book of the outstanding historian and phenomenologist of religion Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) "Yoga: Immortality and Freedom" has long become a classic in the study of such a fundamental and unique phenomenon as Indian yoga. The author represents yoga as... a holistic, multifaceted, all-encompassing spiritual universe, the various elements of which correspond to different cultural levels, states of consciousness, and even layers of traditional society. Eliade traces the roots of yoga in the environment of the indigenous, pre-Aryan population of India, focusing primarily on its "pre-classical" and "non-classical" branches, touching upon the important connection of yoga with shamanism in the context of his scientific work, and draws parallels between Indian yoga and spiritual traditions of other regions of the world. Yoga, from a specific school of Hindu philosophy, becomes an initiatory space for him, where the adept, undergoing trials, is initiated into the values of immortality and freedom and attains the status of jivanmukta - "liberated while alive".
For all those interested in the spiritual traditions of India.