[KALKI]

Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) born in Bucharest, Romania and was educated as a philosopher lectured in the Ecole des Hautes-Etudes of the Sorbonne. He is author of Yoga: Immortality and Freedom

"Yoga, as a 'science' of achieving this transformation of finite man into the infinite One, has to be recognized as something intrinsically Indian or, as 'a specific dimension of the Indian mind."

"Yoga constitutes a characteristic dimension of the Indian mind, to such a point that whatever Indian religion and culture have made their way, we also find a more or less pure form of Yoga. In India, Yoga was adopted and valorized by all religious movements, whether Hinduist or 'heretical.' The various Christian or syncretistic Yogas of modern India constitutes another proof that Indian religious experience finds the yogic methods of "meditation" and "concentration" a necessity.

"Yoga had to meet all the deepest needs of the Indian soul. In the universal history of mysticism, Yoga occupies a place of its own, and one that is difficult to define. It represents a living fossil, a modality of archaic spirituality that has survived nowhere else. Yoga takes over and continues the immemorial symbolism of initiation; in other words, it finds its place in a universal tradition of the religious history of mankind." "From the Upanishads onward, India has been seriously preoccupied with but one great problem - the structure of the human condition. With a rigor unknown elsewhere, India has applied itself to analyzing the various conditionings of the human being."

"The conquest of this absolute freedom, or perfect spontaneity, is the goal of all Indian philosophies and mystical techniques; but it is above all through Yoga, through one of the many forms of Yoga, that India has held that it can be assured."

"Yoga is present everywhere - no less in the oral tradition of India than in the Sanskrit and vernacular literature....To such a degree is this true that Yoga has ended by becoming a characteristic dimension of Indian spirituality."

(source: Yoga: Immortality and Freedom - by Mircea Eliade p. xvi - xx and 101 and 359-364).

Commenting on history which has no metaphysical significance for either Hinduism or Buddhism, he states that:

"Profane time must be abolished, at least symbolically, so that man forgets his "historical situation". The highest human ideal is the jivamukta - one who is liberated from Time. Man, according to the Indian view, 'must, at all costs, find in his world a road that issues upon a tran-historical and atemporal plane.'

(source: The Speaking Tree: A Study of Indian Culture and Society - By Richard Lannoy p. 292). For more on Mircea Eliade refer to chapter on Yoga and Hindu Philosophy).