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"Breathtaking Revelations offers a fascinating story of the life of a text; a Hindu Tantric treatise with its expected Yoginis and magical mantras, offering its techniques of watching the flow of breath to predict the future, ultimately finds it way, morphed and transformed via Hindi and Persian translations, to a 20th century Sufi master. Ernst's and D'Silva's captivating recuperation of this text in its Persian translations offers a rich tapestry, mapping across centuries and cultures an embodied divination practice of breathing. --Loriliai Biernacki, University of Colorado at Boulder, author of Renowned Goddess of Desire: Women, Sex and Speech in Tantra and The Matter of Wonder: Abhinavagupta's Panentheism and New Materialism --Loriliai Biernacki, University of Colorado at Boulder This book contains two surprising and related Sufi texts, one composed prior to 1350 and the other in the early twentieth century. It is a rigorous, philological study of the complex history of translation, transmission, interpretation and re-framing of an esoteric set of Sufi teaching on ""the science of breath"" where that ""science"" overlaps with, draws from, and contributes to traditions of yoga. In places, these texts read like Upaniṣads or Tantric manuals of magic, and they challenge our often simplistic understandings of yoga, Hinduism, Sufism, and Islam as discourses with clear boundaries. --James W. Laine, author of Meta-Religion: Religion and Power in World History --James W. Laine Bookending six centuries of Muslim interest in the other spiritual traditions of India, the two texts brought together here document the discerning weaving of Yogic methods into the Islamic fabric of Sufism. Enhanced by illuminating introductions to both texts, this volume belongs on the shelves of everyone with a serious interest in Sufism, Yoga, and South Asia's religious history.--Nile Green, UCLA, and author of Sufism: A Global History --Nile Green, UCLA From the Medieval period onward, numerous accounts and interpretations of Hindu mystical practices circulated in Muslim textual culture. Carl W. Ernst's and Patrick J. D'Silva's book provides a unique insight into this phenomenon and a broader understanding of the contacts between Hindu and Muslim societies in South Asia before the rise of sectarian ideologies. By looking at the doctrines and practices associated with breath control, this book remarkably shows how the assimilation of these materials constituted a long process that lasted until the contemporary period.--Fabrizio Speziale, Professor, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences - Center for South Asian and Himalayan Studies, Paris. --Fabrizio Speziale, Center for South Asian and Himalayan Studies, Paris. Hazrat Inayat Khan's own murshid, Abu Hashim Madani, once said that there is but one virtue, to breathe in the full awareness of God. These teachings are not abstract, but connected to a wide system of practices shared between the Islamic and the Hindu traditions. The magnificent Breathtaking Revelations explores this centuries-old, rich tradition of breath-based meditation. In it, Carl Ernst and Patrick D'Silva weave together the rich tapestry of Indic systems of meditation and breathwork that spanned from Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic. This is one of our most fruitful areas of shared practice among Hindu Yogis and Muslim Sufis of South Asia. Highly recommended for all spiritual seekers, and for all who dare to imagine a more fruitful area of overlap among all the people of South Asia.--Omid Safi, Duke University, and Founder, Illuminated Courses and Tours --Omid Safi, Duke University Here is a book that will delight any reader, whether academic forager or meditative performer, seeking to understand breath as itself the source of knowledge, worthy of scientific analysis. Ernst and D'Silva have combined to produce a volume that provides what its title announces: breathtaking revelations. --Bruce Lawrence, Duke University --Bruce Lawrence, Duke University In this landmark publication, Carl Ernst and Patrick D'Silva illumine the ways in which Sufis, from the medieval to the modern period, have persistently integrated yogic breathing exercises into their ideational worlds and praxis. For scholars of Islam and yoga, and for religious historians interested in the ways in which religious traditions experiment and evolve through dynamic entanglements with each other, this book provides a breathtaking and timely perspective. -- Ayesha A. Irani, Associate Professor of Asian Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston, author of The Muhammad Avatāra: Salvation History, Translation and the Making of Bengali Islam--Ayesha A. Irani, Assoc. Professor of Asian Studies, University of Massachusetts Boston The publication of these two fascinating and unique works on yoga makes a key contribution to our understanding of the history of yoga, of its adoption and adaptation by Sufi traditions, and of its role therein as a means of spiritual advancement and divination.--James Mallinson, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, University of Oxford--James Mallinson, Boden Professor of Sanskrit, University of Oxford Together with Ernst and D'Silva's lucid introductions, the two fabulously rich texts presented in Breathtaking Revelations are essential sources for understanding some six hundred years of contacts and exchanges between Persianate and Indic worlds of the imagination. Yogis and Sufis, yoginis and angels, planets and flowers, divination and zeppelins all come together in a riotous celebration of the ""science of breath."" --David Gordon White, author of Sinister Yogis and D�mons are Forever: Contacts and Exchanges in the Eurasian Pandemonium --David Gordon White While making accessible two remarkable works on the science of breath, this volume is also a distillation of Carl Ernst's profound scholarship and Patrick D'Silva's expertise. It is a rare and valuable gift for those interested in Sufism, yoga, or the global history of interreligious interactions. --Supriya Gandhi, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University and author of The Emperor Who Never Was: Dara Shukoh in Mughal India --Supriya Gandhi, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Yale University Widely known for his groundbreaking research work on Sufism, Carl W. Ernst, in this exciting new book inspired by the long history of exchanges between Sufis and Yogis, takes a very original approach. He chooses to present the ""breathtaking"" continuity between an early XIVth century Persian treatise about the science of divination by breath, the Fifty Kamarupa Verses, and a modern account by the Sufi master Hazrat Inayat Khan, introduced by Patrick D'Silva. By this thought provoking parallels, they challenge the present-day essentialist approach, focused on religious boundaries and fixed identities.--Veronique Bouillier, CNRS, France, author of Monastic Wanderers: Nāth Yogī Ascetics in Modern South Asia --Veronique Bouillier, CNRS"

Author Information

Carl Ernst is a specialist in Islamic studies, with a focus on West and South Asia. His research, based on the study of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, has included premodern and contemporary Sufism, and Indo-Muslim culture. His most recent book, which won the inaugural Global Humanities Translation Prize from the Buffet Institute, is a translation from the Arabic, Hallaj: Poems of a Sufi Martyr. His scholarly work is summarized by two collections of essays: It's Not Just Academic: Essays on Sufism and Islam (2017), and Refractions of Islam in India: Situating Sufism and Yoga (2016). His other publications include How to Read the Qur'an: A New Guide, with Select Translations (UNC Press, 2011); Sufi Martyrs of Love: Chishti Sufism in South Asia and Beyond (co-authored with Bruce Lawrence, 2002); Teachings of Sufism (1999); a translation of The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master by Ruzbihan Baqli (1997); Guide to Sufism (1997); Ruzbihan Baqli: Mystical Experience and the Rhetoric of Sainthood in Persian Sufism (1996); and Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (1985). On the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1992 to 2022, he is William R. Kenan, Jr., Distinguished Professor Emeritus. He was also the founding Director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies (2003-2022), and President of the American Society for the Study of Religion (2017-2020). Patrick J. D' Silva specializes in the study of Muslim engagement with yoga with an emphasis on the Persianate world. He completed his B.A. in religious studies and classics at Macalester College, his M.A. in Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and his Ph.D. in Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. He is currently researching the rise of yoga in the West, as well as the interplay of race, religion, and cultural appropriation in science fiction. He is a Visiting Teaching Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Denver. He lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his family. Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Pir Zia is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice with offerings in North America and Europe, as well as online. He is editor of A Pearl in Wine: Essays in the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan and Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan, and author of Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest; Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions; and Dream Flowers: The Collected Works of Noor Inayat Khan with a Critical Commentary by Pir Zia Inayat Khan. Pir Zia divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France.

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