So the goal of yoga in the Katha is a slippery and confusing mystic notion of realisation’, which seems impossible to nail down. What is clear however, is that overall in the Katha, yoga as technology signifies self-mortification: the conglomerate of mind and senses has been harnessed and brought to stillness. This leads a modern reader to conclude that ascetic-meditative techniques play some blurred role in realisation of the self and brahman ‘, which is further linked to the karma discourse of release of birth’. This impression is confirmed as the Upanishad ends with the following words:
Then after Naciketas received this body of knowledge, and the entire set of yogic rules taught by death. He attained Brahman; he became free from ageing and death, so will others who know this teaching about the self. VI.
We drove across quiet, empty West Village streets and up Yoga poses kidneys through Chelsea till we arrived at the piers. Dozens of yogis gathered in the Chelsea Piers Yoga poses kidneys gymnasium, a cold contrast to the warm, spacious loft in the Puck building, where classes had been held the previous week. Fluorescent lights loomed far overhead while we yogis took our seats and chatted quietly or stretched atop the slick, shiny basketball court floor. A quiet hush arrived like a wave on a shore as a presence as graceful as water glided over each neat row of bodies. Everyone waited obediently for their guru’s cue. Class began with the usual invocation to Patanjali, the guru’s guru’s guru, and then we were led, Mysore-style, through the series following his own long irregular counting. An hour and a half later, at 8:00 A.M.
