Bøger af Alain Danielou

YOGA / PHILOSOPHY "It is by studying the microcosm that we can understand the macrocosm; it is through our own impermanent being that we can reach the Universal Being. It is in the cavern of our heart that we can realize the immensity of spaces, and by controlling our own vital rhythms that we can escape the power of time. It is by reaching the source of life that we can escape the power of death. It is by exploring the unknown spheres within ourselves that we can visit the celestial and infernal worlds." --The Author One of the most distinguished living Orientalists, ALAIN DANIeLOU spent more than twenty years in India studying music and philosophy with eminent pandits of the Hindu tradition. In this book he gives a fully authentic account--based entirely on original published and unpublished Sanskrit sources--of the methods of Yoga in its different forms, including techniques of the more challenging "left-hand" paths. Of special interest is his insight into the unique requirements and capacities of today's aspirant and the specific practices appropriate to Western students. Danielou is also the author of the acclaimed Gods of India, Shiva and Dionysus, and While the Gods Play.

HISTORY / INDIA Alain Danielou approaches the history of India through the enduring institutions of its culture that have remained constant, despite the ephemeral historical events that have shapted its destiny. His synthesis and narration create a thoroughly engaging and readable journey through time, with a level of detail and comprehensiveness that is truly a marvel. Because of the continuity of its civilization, its unique social system, and the tremendous diversity of cultures, races, languages, and religions that exist in its vast territory, India is like a history museum. Its diverse groups have maintained their separate identities, never fully supplanting the culture and knowledge of their predecessors. Even today one may encounter in India indigenous Stone Age people, whose technology has remained at what is considered prehistoric levels, existing side by side with computer engineers and rocket scientists. Thus Danielou's examination of India reveals not only the diversity, historical events, and trends of that country, but also the history of all mankind. Through Danielou's history of India we learn from whence we came; what we have discovered over the years in the fields of science, arts, technology, social structures, religions, and philosophical concepts; and what the future may hold for us. ALAIN DANIeLOU was born in Paris in 1907. After studying in France and the United States, he devoted himself to musicology, traveling in North Africa, the Middle East, China, Japan, and Indonesia. He then settled in India, first at Santiniketan and then at Benares, where for more than twenty years he studied Sanskrit, music, and philosophy with traditional Hindu scholars. In 1945, he was appointed Assistant Director/Professor of the College of Music at the Hindu University of Benares. He founded and directed the Institute for Comparative Music Studies in Berlin and Venice, also directing the UNESCO anthologies of Oriental Music and Musical Sources. In 1971, he donated his precious library to the Cini Foundation in Venice. The author of more than thirty books on the religion, history, and arts of India and the Mediterranean, Alain Danielou died in 1994.

The study of Hindu mythology explores the significance of the most prominent Hindu dieties as they are envisioned by the Hindus themselves. Referred to by its adherents as the ""eternal religion,"" Hinduism recognizes for each age and each country a new form of revelation--and for each person, according to his or her stage of development, a different path of realization.

Alain Danielou here unveils the religious impulse underlying art that at first glance seems to have no purpose beyond the erotic. Illustrated throughout with photographs and line drawings of European and Indian art, The Phallus celebrates the expression of the masculine in the religious traditions of East and West.

What is the Nature of the social order that unquestionably produced one of the greatest and longest lasting civilizations known to humankind? Alain Daniélou, distinguished Orientalist, musicologist, and linguist, reveals the foundations of India''s culture and the four aims of human life as they are viewed in the traditional Hindu society: virtue on a moral plane; success on the material and social planes; pleasure on a sensual plane; and liberation on a spiritual plane. Coexistent with these aims are the four stages of life: quest for knowledge, family life, retreat into the forest, and renunciation. A four-fold division can be found in all traditional societies throughout the world, symbolically representing the progression of creative consciousness into physical reality. In India, this division is reflected in the caste system, a social order that differs profoundly from those accepted in the contemporary Western world. Exploring he fundamental concepts of the caste system, the author addresses issues of race, individual rights, sexual mores, martial practices, and spiritual attainments. In this light, he exposes the inherent flaws and hypocrisies of our modern egalitarian governments and shows how the shadow side of the ancient caste system persists, disguised and unacknowledged, beneath contemporary economic regimes. Daniélou explains how Hindu society has served as a model for the realization of human potential on many levels, addressing sociological and human problems that are both timeless and universal.

Danielou examines the earliest traditions of the Hindu and Greek gods of magical power, ecstatic sexuality, and transcendence.