Upanishads

This translation of the Isha Upanishad allows readers with little knowledge of Sanskrit to explore the different possible meanings of the text. The format of this translation closely follows that of Winthrop Sargeant’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita.

This translation of the Kena Upanishad allows readers with little knowledge of Sanskrit to explore the different possible meanings of the text. The format of this translation closely follows that of Winthrop Sargeant’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita.

This translation of the Mandukya Upanishad allows readers with little knowledge of Sanskrit to explore the different possible meanings of the text. The format of this translation closely follows that of Winthrop Sargeant’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita.

The paper introduces main aspects of the historical Vedic religion, i.e. its deities, rituals and sacred texts. Moreover, the author tried to overview how the religious and philosophical thought of ancient India developed into a form of monotheism.

This a sample of a translation of the Isopanisad grammatically analyzed and translated with the commentaries of Sankara and Madhva.  Intended for use in classes on the fundamentals of Vedanta and the rudiments of Sanskrit grammar, or for general readers who want to gain some familiarity with Upanisadic thought.  The full and completed text is now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the link below.

Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism offers a solution to a problem that some have called the holy grail of Buddhist studies: the problem of the " origins " of Mahāyāna Buddhism. In a work that contributes both to a general theory of religion and power for religious studies as well as to the problem of the origin of a Buddhist movement, Walser argues that that it is the neglect of political and social power in the scholarly imagination of the history of Buddhism that has made the origins of Mahāyāna an intractable problem. Walser challenges commonly-held assumptions about Mahāyāna Buddhism, offering a fascinating new take on its genealogy that traces its doctrines of emptiness and mind-only from the present day back to the time before Mahāyāna was " Mahāyāna. " In situating such concepts in their political and social contexts across diverse regimes of power in Tibet, China and India, the book shows that what was at stake in the Mahāyāna championing of the doctrine of emptiness was the articulation and dissemination of court authority across the rural landscapes of Asia. This text will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars of Buddhism, religious studies, history and philosophy.

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) has been praised by a number
of Bengali Muslim authors for his sympathetic portrayal of Islamic concepts
and ideals, and it is well known that some of his works of prose and
verse were influenced by Persian poetry and Sufism. Tagore’s father knew
Persian and could recite the poetry of Ḥāfiẓ (d. 1389) by heart. Tagore
himself was also deeply influenced by the Persian classical poet. In the last
decade
of his life, Tagore described his admiration for the great Persian
Sufi poets, visiting the tombs of Ḥāfiẓ and Sa‘dī in Shiraz. In this article,
I will discuss the spiritual milieu of the Persianate culture of nineteenthand
early twentieth-century Bengal to shed light on the extent of the
influence of Persian
Sufi ideas on this milieu in general and Tagore in particular.
Attention
will also be given to other aspects of Tagore’s religious
syncretism: Bāul mysticism and its lyric poetry, Sahaja Buddhism, Vedanta
philosophy, the Upanishads, and a few other currents of Eastern thought.
Lastly, I will explore Tagore’s relationship with Persian Sufi concepts and
poetry and discuss the effect of his visit to Iran and his encounter with the
poet Ḥāfiẓ.

This article is a reflection on a conception of death, that of karma and rebirth, and its value in interpreting one's life. I have thought about this conception in two ways. The first is that I can see the circumstances of my life as the result of causes of which I was the agent, and the second is that I can see my life and the relationships in my life as part of a much larger narrative that began before this life. Through an examination of Vaishnava and Advaita theology, Ny¯ aya philosophy, and some Puranic and Epic texts, I argue for an interpretation of karma and rebirth as a rational system that allows one to see relationships as involving many layers of complexity.

Tripura Upanishad is a minor Shakta or Tantra Upanishad explaining the structure of and meditation on Sri Chakra or Sri Yantra—a diagrammatic representation of the universe through nine interlocking triangles coming out of a central point.
To date, there are two English translations of this Upanishad. The first and the earliest, by A G Krishna Warrier done in 1967, is a verse translation and because of the obvious constraints of such translation, fails to explain the intricacies and implied meanings of this cryptic Upanishad. The second translation done many years later, is by Douglas Renfrew Brooks, who has also beautifully translated the commentary on this Upanishad by Bhaskararaya in the book 'The Secret of the Three Cities' published by the University of Chicago Press in 1990. While maintaining a high level of accuracy and bringing out the intricate nuances of this Upanishad, the emphasis of Brooks' translation seems to be more on the geometrical aspects of the Sri Chakra. The present translation emphasises the practice aspect of this Upanishad as derived from Bhaskararaya's commentary.

The phenomenological question of consciousness usually associated with Husserl (although there are echoes of this in Augustine as in Marcus Aurelius, Kant and Schopenhauer), is the consciousness of the now, the present moment. I explore this consciousness for Erwin Schrödinger, which for him included reference to the Upanishads together with Nietzsche’s central teaching or “thinking” of the eternal recurrence of the same.

Published as

Babette Babich, “Schrödinger and Nietzsche and Life: Eternal Recurrence and the Conscious Now,” in: Christopher Key Chapple, ed., Antonio T. de Nicolas: Poet of Eternal Return (Ahmedabad, India: Ntyalanda International 2014), pp. 157-206,

Il Gāyatrīmantra è un mantra  sacro della tradizione vedica, che ha le sue radici nella Śrūti . Basato su un versetto del Ṛgveda Saṃhitā (3.62.10), attribuito al ṛṣi (Sapiente) Viśvāmitra . Il mantra prende il nome dal metro vedico di 24 sillabe, gāyatrī, con il quale è composto. Come tutti i mantra vedici, il Gāyatrīmantra non è considerato opera di un autore e, come tutti gli altri mantra, si ritiene sia stato rivelato a un Brahmaṛṣi , in questo caso Viśvāmitra. Il testo, in accordo alla Tradizione vedica, ha il Significato d’invocazione alla dea Sāvitrī ; per questo è anche chiamato Sāvitrīmantra. La recitazione del Gāyatrīmantra è tradizionalmente preceduta da oṃ e dalla mahāvyāhṛti , composta da Bhūḥ, Bhuvaḥ e Svaḥ. Le tre espressioni sono prese come i nomi di tre mondi: Bhūḥ: il terrestre, Bhuvaḥ: il mondo che collega la dimensione terrestre a quella celeste, Svaḥ: la dimensione celestiale superiore. Questi sono i nomi dei primi tre dei sette vyāhṛti o mondi superiori della cosmologia Hindū. Da un punto di vista meditativo, Bhūḥ, Bhuvaḥ, Svaḥ hanno il Significato dei livelli di stato dell’Essere. Il mantra è considerato non diverso dall'entità divina che ne forma il contenuto. Il nome dell'entità divina contenuta nel mantra è quindi Gāyatrī. Il mantra è considerato sia un mezzo di culto, sia oggetto di culto in se, come riferimento all'entità divina, la dea in esso descritta. Come avremo modo di vedere, il mantra ha un ruolo fondamentale nell’iniziazione. Premesso che il Significato più profondo del mantra, è nostra convinzione, può essere conosciuto solo vivendolo interiormente, quindi sia ‘non comunicabile’, proponiamo alla discussione questa bozza preliminare, nella quale si è tentato ristabilire le radici, risalendo alle fonti primarie:
Ṛgveda Saṃhitā ऋग्वेदसंहिता III. 62.10
Yajurveda Taittirīya Āraṇyaka यजुर्वेद तैत्तिरीय आरण्यक  10.35.1
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad बृहदारण्यक उपनिषद् (5.14.4)
Manusmṛti मनुस्मृति
Index:
Premessa 2
Gāyatrī-Sāvitrī गायत्रीमन्त्र-सावित्री mantra origine e significati 3
Le fonti del mantra 5
Ṛgveda Saṃhitā ऋग्वेदसंहिता III. 62.10 5
Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad बृहदारण्यक उपनिषद् (V.14) 10
Chāndogya-Upaniṣad छान्दोग्य उपनिषद्  (III.12.1-9) 21
Maitrī Upaniṣad मैत्री उपनिषद्  Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad मैत्रायणीय उपनिषद्  Maitreya Upaniṣad मैत्रेय उपनिषत् (VI.7) N.24 del codice Muktikā 26
Yajurveda Taittirīya Āraṇyaka यजुर्वेद तैत्तिरीय आरण्यक  X.35.1 27
Gāyatrī-Sāvitrī mantra nelle Upaniṣad minori 28
Amṛtanāda Upaniṣad अमृतनाद उपनिषत् n.21 del codice Muktikā 28
Mahānārāyaṇa Upaniṣad महानारायण उपनिषद्, n. 46 del codice Muktikā 29
Akṣamālika Upaniṣad  अक्षमालिका उपनिषद्,  n 67 del codice Muktikā 31
Tripurātāpinī Upaniṣad त्रिपुरातापिनी उपनिषद्, n. 80 del codice Muktikā 31
Sātyāyani Upaniṣad  सात्यायनि उपनिषद्, n 99 del codice Muktikā 33
Manusmṛti मनुस्मृति sāvitrī - gāyatrī 34
L’insegnamento di Śrī Svāmī Sivananda su mantra e Gāyatri 38
L’insegnamento di Śrī Aurobindo su Gāyātrī 43
L’insegnamento di Śrī Ramana Mahaṛṣi su Gāyatrī 45
I. K. Taimni, Gāyatrī la madre dei Veda. 46
Gāyatrī (Sāvitrī) nel rituale d’Iniziazione 47
Definizioni di Sāvitrī - Gāyatrī nei dizionari e nei glossari 50
Le traduzioni letterali 52
Le traduzioni interpretative 53
Pronuncia e ascolto 55
Bibliografia e fonti 56
Appendici 70
Note sul Sanscrito, traslitterazione e pronuncia 71
Alfabeto internazionale per la traslitterazione del Sanscrito 61
Note 61
Vocali e dittonghi 75
Consonanti 76
Testi Sacri della Tradizione: Śrūti श्रुति e Smṛti स्मृति 77
Śrūti श्रुति 77
Smṛti स्मृति 78
Adhikāra अधिकार, Adhikārin अधिकारिन्: il concetto di Qualificazione nell’insegnamento Tradizionale 79

Contemporary scholars, this article argues, stand to learn a great deal from Sri Aurobindo’s sophisticated hermeneutic approach to the Vedāntic scriptures. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of traditional and modern hermeneutic approaches to the scriptures, I summarize Sri Aurobindo’s neglected essay, “The Interpretation of Scripture” (1912), where he outlines a timely hermeneutic method that combines elements from both traditional and modern approaches. I then focus on the Īśā Upaniṣad as a test case, critically comparing the commentaries of the traditional Advaita Vedāntin Śaṅkara, the modern Indologist Paul Thieme, and Sri Aurobindo. I make the case that Sri Aurobindo’s interpretive approach to the Īśā Upaniṣad has significant advantages over the approaches of Śaṅkara and Thieme. Finally, I call for an Aurobindonian hermeneutics of śraddhā, which combines historico-philological inquiry with interpretive charity and an openness to the transformative possibilities of scripture.

This translation of the Aitareya Upanishad allows readers with little knowledge of Sanskrit to explore the different possible meanings of the text. The format of this translation closely follows that of Winthrop Sargeant’s translation of the Bhagavad-Gita.

The part 'Dating the Bhagavadgita' reviews the date of Buddha's death, the chronology of the Upanisads, the layered structures in the Bhagavadgita and the dating of the Mahabharata. The part 'a Review of the Search for Its Original,' reviews the Critical Edition of the Mahabharata, the Bhagavadgita, the Ur-Bhagavadgita's by von Humboldt, Garbe and Otto, Jacobi, Oldenburg, Sinha, and Jezic; the three authors and layers defined by Khair and Malinar; the extended Bhagavadgita by Bhattacharjya; and the original text found by Saswitha. The discussion of ``The Class-Caste System with Its Genomic Evidence'' shows that the caste system in India was introduced in the last centuries BCE. It is suggested that it was introduced by the brahmins for political rather than spiritual reasons. In Vedic times admixture was the norm, where one chose one's own partner, as is confirmed by recently found genomic data. An overall generation length for the Indian people has been derived from population growth, historic, and data from genomic studies. Applying this length confirms also the brahmanization of northern India 70 generations ago, and the late first occurrence of a large, four-armed sculpture of Krishna among the bas-reliefs of Badami (c.\ 500--800 CE).

Etymologies are often encountered in Vedic prose, in Brahmanas and
early Upanisads. Though they have received a fair amount of scholarly attention, Vedic etymologies still present a challenge to interpreters. To respond to it, I critically review previous interpretations, and focus on three case studies, Aitareya Brāhmaṇa 1.1.2, Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3, and Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8. In my interpretation, I emphasize the need for a contextual reading, foreground Vedic etymologies’ complexity and sophistication, and call attention to the variety of purposes they serve to achieve as well as to Vedic etymologists’ agency.  Supplementing conventional interpretations concentrating mostly on their religious-magical aspects, I describe Vedic etymologies as discursive devices used by Vedic authors to further their thoughts and agendas.

"Os versos no Satasloki focam nitidamente nos principais ensinamentos de todas as Upanishads. Para os estudantes avançados de Vedanta, essa obra servirá como um auxílio para a reflexão. Para os menos avançados, será um bom guia para entender as sutilezas e nuances do Vedanta Advaita. Alguns dos versos contêm instruções muito úteis sobre quais qualidades se deve cultivar para obter progresso espiritual."

The first chapter of Kaṭhopaniṣad reformulates an older Brāhmaṇical narrative of a meeting between the boy Naciketas and Death and the proper piling of the nāciketa fire altar. In this article, I argue that the Kaṭhopaniṣad deploys this narrative as part of a discursive strategy to theorize the metaphysics by which fire-altars operate. Death teaches Naciketas the secrets of the fire-altar by piling the altar in reverse order, thereby rhetorically deconstructing it to a connection between the fire-altar in the heart of the patron of the sacrifice, of the Sun as the fire-altar of heaven, and the nāciketa fire-altar which mediates the two.

The intriguing similarity between the allegories of the soul chariot in Plato’s Phædrus and in the Kaṭha Upaniṣad has been pointed out — if not thoroughly investigated — by several scholars, accompanied with varying assessments, largely dependent on each individual scholar’s assumptions concerning the bare possibility or the degree of likelihood of contacts and influences between early Greek and Indian thought, the significance (or otherwise) of the intercultural comparative endeavour, or, indeed, the methodological soundness of even positing the question, in the almost complete absence of pertinent historical documentation.
Because assessments are to such a great extent  influenced by theoretical assumptions, the paper will start with some methodological considerations in order to define the grounds, scope and limits of the attempted comparison, also drawing on the methodological discourses of other related fields, like mythology and folklore.
A review of the relevant texts of the Phædrus and the Kaṭhopaniṣad will come next, setting out both the congruencies and the discrepancies in the treatment of the chariot allegory. A detailed survey of kindred passages in both literary traditions (which I have presented elsewhere) lies outside the purview of this paper, but a summary reference to its results will help substantiate the contention that the allegory of the soul chariot is integral to upaniṣadic thought in a way that is unparalleled in Greek thought, thus supporting the conjecture of diffusion in a westward direction.
Finally, the paper will briefly discuss what I regard as the paramount difference — i.e. the conspicuous absence of the idle passenger in the Phædrus allegory vs. his centrality to the allegory of the Kaṭha — and its significance as a theoretical watershed between Upaniṣad-based Indian and Plato-influenced Greek philosophy.

The Origins of Sant Mat, The Five Names, and the Identity of Tulsi Sahib's Guru, by James Bean

Everyone in contemporary Sant Mat has a clear idea about their own recent history of masters, at least dating back a few generations. Most trace their lineage of gurus back to Sant Tulsi Sahib of Hathras, India. Tulsi Sahib (1763–1843) is viewed as the adi-guru or founding guru, the “great grandfather” of modern-day Sant Mat. The identity of Sant Tulsi Sahib’s guru has understandably been of great interest to many students of Sant Mat history. It’s quite normal for followers of a spiritual path to be curious about “the family tree” of previous masters, wanting to know where their spiritual path comes from. So, who was the guru of Tulsi Sahib? And who was that individual’s guru? Who was the guru before that? And so on.

On the Usage of the Term "Sant Mat" and the Tulsi Sahib Connection;

Sants of Antiquity;

Who Was Tulsi Sahib's Guru? Our One-And-Only Solid Clue;

Sant Dariya Sahib of Bihar;

About the Ratnagar Rao Doctrine;

Rare Quotes From Sat Saheb, Dariya's Guru;

The Origin of the Five Names;

The Panch Naam Words Traced Back to Kabir/Dharamdasi Texts;

The Five Names of the Nath Yogis?

"George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber (eds.), The Roar of Awakening. A Whiteheadian Dialogue Between Western Psychotherapies and Eastern Worldviews, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2009. (251 p. ; ISBN: 978-3-86838-039-2 ; 89 €)
The primary goal of this volume is to describe the contemporary state of affairs in Western psychotherapy, and to do so in a Whiteheadian spirit: with genuine openness to the relative ways in which creativity, beauty, truth and peace manifest themselves in various cultural traditions. To do so, it chooses to explore afresh a cross-elucidatory path that was born with the field of history of religion (and Religionwissenschaft): what have we, and can we, learn from a dialogue with Eastern worldviews? In order to generate meaningful contrasts between these different systems of thought, all the papers address the following core issues. On the one hand, how does the given system understand the interaction of individuality, society, and nature (or cosmos)? Especially: what is its standpoint with regard to the nature of consciousness and with regard to the mind/body problem?; how far is it dualistic?; how are destiny and historicity assessed? On the other hand, what is the paradigm of all mal-adjustment (or pathology) and what is its typical tuning-in (or curative) pattern? What are furthermore the ins and outs of the diagnostic and therapeutic assessments involved? Wherever possible, some (meta)theoretical and clinical issues are addressed from the vantage point of selected material from abnormal psychology or psychiatry.
Table of contents
Contents
Contributors
Foreword — George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber
Introduction — Michel Weber
I. The View from the East
1. Consciousness: The Vedantic Approach to Life and Reality, Francis-Vincent Anthony
2. Dual-Aspect Framework for Consciousness, RamLakhan Pandey Vimal
3. The Paradoxes of Radical Asceticism: Jainism as a Therapeutic Paradigm, Jeffery D. Long
4. Yoga Therapeutics: Philosophical, Scientific and Humanistic Approaches, Ashok Kumar Malhotra
5. Can Indian spiritual practices be used in psychotherapy?, R L Kapur
II. Transcultural Dialogue
6. Ineradicable Frustration and Liberation in Tiantai Buddhism, Brook Ziporyn
7. An Exploration and Analysis into Chinese Traditional Psychotherapy Ideas—A Concurrent Comment on the Integrative point of view of Whitehead’s Organic Philosophy, Fengqiang Gao and Yingmin Chen
8. The Kyoto School and self-awareness in the field of the absolute nothingness —A comparison with Whitehead’s philosophy, Eiko Hanaoka
9. Jung and Hisamatsu Re-envisioning Religiosity: Jungian Psychotherapy and the Kyoto School, Tokiyuki Nobuhara
10. Reconstructing the Meaning of Being Human: A Postmodern Reinterpretation of Frankl in the Framework of Whitehead’s Philosophy, Yoshihiro Hayashi
11. The Development of Binswanger’s Daseinsanalysis, Shoji Muramoto
12. The Intercultural and Daseinsanalytical Psychiatry of Kimura Bin, Bernard Stevens
13. A Certain Form of Psychotherapy (Kenosis, Prajna, Jung, and Hillman), David T. Bradford
14. Vedanta, Process and Psychotherapy, Joseph Grange
15. On Zen Buddhism, Clive Sherlock
"

It is not widely known that Swami Vivekananda remarked to his disciple Swami Shuddhananda that he should try to understand the “true intention” of the author of the Brahmasūtras instead of relying on the biased interpretations of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara.  In the same conversation with his disciple, Vivekananda himself furnished a striking example of such an independent approach to the Brahmasūtras: he suggests that sūtra 1.1.19 (asminnasya ca tadyogaṃ śāsti)—translated as “The scriptures teach the union of the jīva and Brahman”—supports “both Advaita and Viśīṣṭādvaita.”  This essay aims to explore and develop Vivekananda’s provocative—if all too brief—reading of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19 by placing it in the context of his broader hermeneutic speculations and showing how his reading of 1.1.19 might help explain other relevant sūtras from the Brahmasūtras.  For Vivekananda, I argue, 1.1.19 not only captures the essence of the original non-sectarian Vedānta of the Upaniṣads but also provides the hermeneutic key to interpreting the entire prasthānatraya in a liberal and non-eisegetic spirit.  In Part I, I will outline briefly some of the fundamental principles of Vivekananda’s scriptural hermeneutics and their basis in the life and teachings of his guru Sri Ramakrishna.  This will set the stage for Part II, where I will develop Vivekananda’s unique interpretation of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19.  As we will see, while both traditional and modern commentators have tended to explain 1.1.19 in terms of a particular philosophical sect, Vivekananda suggests—quite radically—that the author of the Brahmasūtras deliberately employs the capacious and open-ended language of "yogam" ("union") in 1.1.19 in order both to harmonize a variety of apparently conflicting scriptural passages concerning the jīva’s relation to Brahman and to accommodate numerous sectarian interpretations of these passages.  From Vivekananda’s perspective, 1.1.19 serves as an ideal hermeneutic framework for honoring and reconciling the various types of union with the Divine expressed in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, ranging from the Advaitic union of absolute identity with Brahman to the Viśiṣṭādvaitic unity of part and Whole, the Bhedābheda unity of difference and non-difference, and the Dvaitic unity of servant and Master.

This paper examines the work of Richard Garbe (1857-1927), a German Protestant indologist who studied the history and theology of Indian religious traditions. Garbe was one of many German scholars intent on uncovering the ‘genuine’ authorship of seminal indian texts such as the Upaniṣads, the Mahābhārata, and the Bhagavad Gītā. his work would impact intellectual debates with socio-political consequences, as evident in the “pantheistic controversy” and various indo-Aryan hypotheses. In particular, my investigation probes Garbe’s problematic depiction of Sāṃkhya philosophy as an ancient, atheistic, Indian rationalism. Garbe posited that this tradition was eventually surpassed by a Gītā-attested monotheism, but the establishment of Sāṃkhya as ‘scientific’ or ‘rational’ was still central to his religious and ethnically charged agenda. In the decades to follow, indological ‘findings’ of this sort would contribute to the intimate relationship between German Indology and National Socialist rhetoric. From a wider perspective, though Garbe’s influence waned considerably in late twentieth century scholarship, his impact on the Western reception of Sāṃkhya has largely remained intact. Sāṃkhya’s presupposed atheistic base has led to the continued trivialization and elimination of the theistic dimension of Sāṃkhya and especially “classical” Yoga.

The rich tradition of Indian classical sculpture and religious representational art is based on the visualization principles laid down in ancient texts. The paper discusses the procedure of form creation and formal visualization of the formless, the invisible, and the unmanifest, as given in Vastusutra Upanishad, one such ancient text; and discusses the effectiveness of this procedure as a means of creating meaningful symbolic form in non-religious contexts and applications also.

By focusing on Eliade’s early life and writings (1921–1936), and specifically on his work on Yoga, I address in this paper a question that is frequently asked about the problematic relation between personal belief and scholarship in fields such as the history of religions. Eliade’s interest in Yoga showcases his own personal spiritual quest, of course. But it is also informed by his earlier readings of, and reflections on, two polar aspects of the religious experience: the magical and the mystical. For Eliade, these two categories provide not only a key to unlocking the conceptual and pragmatic dimensions of Yoga, but also the impetus for charting a systematic theory of religion. The last major expression of these early ideas can be seen in Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne (1936). Eliade’s thoughts on Yoga and religion then took different paths, reaching their full expression in works published in Paris after 1945. In his later books on Yoga – Techniques du Yoga (1948), Le Yoga: Immortalité et liberté (1954) – the twofold schema of the magical and the mystical no longer plays a key hermeneutical role. Nonetheless, understanding this early phase of his work is crucial if we are to provide a comprehensive account of the development of his thought on Yoga. This early phase in his scholarly career and experiential transformation, marked by his trip to India, is also very important in terms of understanding the further developments of his ideas on history of religions, as well as to evince the ground on which Eliade built his own – never confessed – private religious belief.