The book “Yoga: Immortality and Freedom” by the outstanding Romanian historian and phenomenologist of religion Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) has long been considered a classic study of the horizons of the Indian spirit. The author creates an idea of yoga as a holistic, universal spiritual world, the different elements of which correspond to different cultural levels, states of consciousness and even layers of traditional society. It is among the autochthonous, pre-Aryan population of India that M. Eliade traces the origins of yoga, focusing mainly on its “non-classical” examples. Yoga from a specific orthodox school of Hindu philosophy becomes for him an initiatory space in which the seeker, going through trials, is introduced to the values of immortality and freedom and acquires the status of jivanmukta - “liberated while alive.” For everyone interested in the spiritual culture of India.