Between Sound and Silence in Early Yoga: Meditation on “Om” at Death

Fading into Death through Pātañjalayoga: On the Apparent Dead-like State of the Yoga Practitioner Absorbed into Contentless Samādhi

“…The historical goal of yoga was not particularly to have a mindful and healthy life, but rather to attain ultimate liberation (mokṣa) from the ongoing cycle of saṃsāra. Therefore, in several yoga texts (Gerety 2021;Jonker 2021;Sanderson 2004;Vasudeva 2004) one can find instructions on practices enabling an advanced yoga practitioner to voluntarily abandon his life and to never return. Seen from this perspective, in some early yoga traditions yoga was not primarily about the art of living but especially about the art of abandoning the mind and body, if not the art of dying.…”

“…However, although the ascetic is ideologically "free," he is pragmatically limited by the rules of specific monastic communities and regulated interactions with the laity. What is salient here is the On yoga as a technique for dying, see Gerety (2021). The evidence presented in this study-from the 99 Mahābhārata and Bhagavad Gītā, Jaiminīya and Kauthuma Sāmaveda, Śvetāśvatara, Chāndogya, Muṇḍaka, Katha, and Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣads, and PYŚ-show that this technique is grounded in a Brahmanical milieu, and on a contemplative praxis organized around the oṃ meditation, and that this meditation takes place at a crucial threshold at the moment of death.…”