White David Gordon White

Sinister Yogis (eBook, PDF)

• Format: PDF

Produktbeschreibung

Since the 1960s, yoga has become a billion-dollar industry in the West, attracting housewives and hipsters, New Agers and the old-aged. But our modern conception of yoga derives much from nineteenth-century European spirituality, and the true story of yoga's origins in South Asia is far richer, stranger, and more entertaining than most of us realize.To uncover this history, David Gordon White focuses on yoga s practitioners. Combing through millennia of South Asia s vast and diverse literature, he discovers that yogis are usually portrayed as wonder-workers or sorcerers who use their dangerous supernatural abilities which can include raising the dead, possession, and levitation to acquire power, wealth, and sexual gratification. As White shows, even those yogis who aren t downright villainous bear little resemblance to Western assumptions about them. At turns rollicking and sophisticated, Sinister Yogis tears down the image of yogis as detached, contemplative teachers, finally placing them in their proper context.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: University of Chicago Press
• Seitenzahl: 376
• Erscheinungstermin: 15. Juli 2010
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780226895154
• Artikelnr.: 53013664

Autorenporträt

David Gordon White is Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Religion at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of several books, including The Alchemical Body, Kiss of the Yogini, and Sinister Yogis, all published by the University of Chicago Press.