Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2015
Abstract
Haṭhayogic texts in Sanskrit are full of references and allusions to immortality, but the precise character of this immortality is not explicitly described anywhere. Most of the scholars subscribe to the concept that the yogin has to achieve at first a perfected physical body (siddhadeha), which has to be later transformed into the new spiritual and non-material divine body (divyadeha).
This article first discusses different types of bodies in Sanskrit texts on Haṭhayoga and demonstrates that no such concept is present in them. Then it offers an explanation how and when the fallacious idea about the transformation of the material body into the non-material one has originated.