Yoga Powers

A neglected topic in the research on yoga and meditation traditions, the extraordinary capacities called yoga powers are at the core of the religious imagination in the history of religions in South Asia. Yoga powers explained the divine, the highest gods were thought of as great yogins, and since major religious traditions considered their attainment as an inevitable part of the salvific process the textual traditions had to provide rational analyses of the powers. The essays of the book provide a number of new insights in the yoga powers and their history, position and function in the Hindu, Buddhist and Jain traditions, in classical Yoga, Haṭha Yoga, Tantra and Śaiva textual traditions, in South Asian medieval and modern hagographies, and in some contemporary yoga traditions.

Knut A. Jacobsen, Ph.D. (1994) is Professor at the University of Bergen, Norway. He is the author and editor of numerous books on religions in South Asia, and editor-in-chief of the five-volume Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2009-2013).