Free Hell-Bent by Benjamin Lorr Page B

in order to reveal the secrets of immortality, he must first instruct the boy in the practice of something called Yoga.
    To impart this knowledge, the Lord of Death relates the following metaphor:
    Know thy Self as the lord of the chariot
    The body as the chariot.
    Know the intellect as the chariot-driver
    And the mind as the reins.
    The senses of perception are the unruly horses
    The objects of sense, the terrain they range over
    He who has understanding
    Whose mind is constantly held firm
    His senses under-control
    Like the good horses of a chariot-driver (KU 3:3–6 )
    This they consider Yoga
    The firm holding back of the senses (KU 6:11 )
    And there, looking suspiciously like an LSAT question is the essential yogic metaphor, containing the first principles needed to undertake the spiritual discipline. Mind, body, sensory perception are all aspects of the self—represented here as the chariot driver, chariot, and unruly horses. A person who can control their sensory perception, who is not misled by its illusions, by its false demands, by its nagging aches and possessive jealousies—is unified. Such a person has control over not only their own body, but also how they interact with the worldly sense-objects they come into contact with.
    The yoga in this metaphor uses stillness and control to examine sensory inputs and the motor outputs. Practitioners learn to observe sensations, detach from them, and choose instead to yoke their awareness to themselvesas a whole or the universe beyond. 7 To practice yoga is to cultivate that connection.
    Yama proceeds to elaborate on this metaphor over the sixty-three verses that follow its introduction. However, it is only with his final instruction to the youth that the god ties this knowledge together, explaining its link to immortality and putting a purpose to the techniques described above. In this final instruction, he reveals perhaps the single greatest spiritual insight of Upanshadic thought: the fruit of yoga and promise of successful practice.
    Speaking to the youth, Yama explains this insight thus:
    There is a Self within the self
    Eternally ensconced in the hearts of every living creature.
    One should, with one’s intelligence, strip him out of one’s body
    One should know him as the shining, pure immortal one. (KU 6:17 )
    Yama is suggesting that beyond our reflexive understanding of identity, there lurks within us an authentic self, a self within the self. By using our intelligence and mental control, we can strip out and identify this authentic self. And when we do, we will know him—we will know ourselves—as nothing more and nothing less than gods: immortal, pure, infinite, and connected to all beings.
    There is something resonant about the idea of turning inward for salvation. As ethnographer Mircea Eliade points out, this concept of transcendence is the exact opposite of the Christian concept of ecstasy, which from the Greek root ex- means “to go outward.” Instead, yoga postulates an “instasy,” a journey into ourselves, whereby we discover and come to fully realize that we are made of the same material that pervades all existence: call it atoms, quanta, strings, or spirit. Once we identify ourselves in this fundamental manner, we become connected to the entire universe—not unlikethe individual unique drops of water creating and subsumed within a vast ocean. Separate and yet inseparable; fragile yet impossible to destroy. It is a vision that is simultaneously mystic and purely materialistic, open to dreamer and cynic alike.
    In this sense, yoga is a case of mistaken identity, the story of a cognitive error. By identifying ourselves with something that inadequately describes us (our body, our brain, our sensory perceptions) we are prevented from seeing what we actually are (the indestructible matter/energy that makes up the universe). The techniques, the tools of yoga, are simply the somewhat strenuous activities taken to correct this misapprehension. At heart,