Photograph © 1986
Jeff Lowenthal
Born March 9, 1907, Bucharest, Romania.Historian of religions and man of letters, distinguished for his researches in the symbolic language used by various religious traditions and for his attempt to reduce their meaning to underlying primordial myths that provide the basis for mystical phenomena.
Eliade took an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Bucharest in 1928. He studied Sanskrit and Indian philosophy at the University of Calcutta (1928-31) and then lived for six months in the Ashram (hermitage) of Rishikesh, the Himalayas, in the same spiritual milieu as such notables as Lama Anagarika Govinda. During the time he was in Calcutta Eliade met Gopinath Kaviraj, another Sanskrit scholar of some repute that eventually became famous for his for his comprehensive account of Gyanganj, the ultra secret home for immortals which is said to be hidden in a valley in the remote Himalayas. "Gyanganj" is the same place and true name of the hidden mountain hermitage known more commonly as Shangri-La and Shambhala.
Returning to Romania, he earned his Ph.D. in 1933 with the dissertation Yoga: Essai sur les origines de la mystique indienne ("Yoga: Essay on the Origins of Indian Mysticism") and was named assistant professor at Bucharest, where he taught the history of religions and Indian philosophy (1933-39). In 1945 he went to Paris as a visiting professor at the ęcole des Hautes ętudes of the Sorbonne. In 1956 he became professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, where he remained. In 1961 he founded the journal History of Religions.
Fundamentally, Eliade considered religious experience in traditional and contemporary societies as credible phenomena that he termed hierophanies (i.e., manifestations of the sacred in the world). His researches traced the forms that these hierophanies have taken throughout the world and through time. Eliade's essential interpretation of traditional religious cultures and his analysis of the forms of mystical experience characterize his major works: TraitĘ d'histoire des religions (1949; Patterns of Comparative Religion), Le Mythe de l'Ęternel retour (1949; The Myth of the Eternal Return), and Le Chamanisme et les techniques archa Đques de l'extase, his acclaimed and widely quoted work on Shamanism (1951; Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy).
Unlike his much younger contemporary Carlos Castaneda (1925-1998), who has been accused by a number of critics such as professor and Yaqui scholar Jane Holden Kelley and others, of mixing fact with fiction --- or even fiction with fiction --- regarding the Yaqui Indian shaman-sorcerer Don Juan Matus found in his eleven book series, Eliade chose to express his views knowingly in works of fiction. Those works of fiction are most notably the novels ForËt interdite (1955; The Forbidden Forest) and The Old Man and the Bureaucrats (1979). Among his later works are two collections of essays, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion (1969) and Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashion: Essays in Comparative Religion (1976). He also wrote a three-volume work entitled A History of Religious Ideas (1978-85) and was editor-in-chief of the 16-volume Encyclopedia of Religion.
Some people would argue most vehemently that Buddhism and Shamanism are for the most part nowhere related and to draw an anology would be creating a thin line. However, the coincidence of characteristics and striking similarities between Buddhist adepts and Shamans and Shamanism has been studied and outlined quite thoroughly by Eliade in his monograph, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy. For example, the abilities of the Arhat relating to the sixfold knowledge of the worthy ones that includes not only the ability similar to the Cloud Shaman to appear and disappear at will, but also the oft cited case in Buddhism and Zen by the Venerable Pindola Bharadvaja where the venerable Arhat was adomished by the Buddha for flying and performing miraculous acts infront of the faithful.
Mircea Eliade was the Sewell L. Avery Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago where he remained and taught until his death on April 22 in the year 1986.
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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