Combining Christianity and Yoga

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from a press release issued by Kelly Publications in September 2001 with the caption: “Embodied spirituality, the marriage of Christianity and Yoga.”Eyes closed, palms up, legs crossed, inhale, exhale.Millions of Americans are turning to Yoga as a way to relax, calm inner turmoil, and get healthier.Well known for turning tense people tranquil, Hatha yoga as practiced by those of the Hindu faith has become main stream in our culture.Features about yoga are common in health magazines and lifestyle sections of newspapers.Even in small town USA you’ll find yoga classes in gymnasiums and churches.In An Invitation to Christian Yoga, author and Episcopal priest, Nancy Roth, offers yoga as an ancient, but contemporary path to deepening the Christian experience of prayer and contemplation.Roth offers a few simple explanations for her use of the term “Christian yoga”.One, Christianity believes that God has become human in the person of Jesus.The incarnation itself encourages us to know and enjoy our bodies, and to experience God in our bodies.Two, by using the Psalms as the focus of Christian yoga, it becomes traditional Christian prayer.Three, the calming, centering effects of yoga, provide a way to pray using the body.This is helpful for many Christians who have struggled to find a way to pray.An invitation to Christian yoga makes it possible for anyone to understand yoga and find a place to begin regardless of age, and stamina, or level of fitness.

Tom:

Dave, this isn’t too far away from what we were discussing in our earlier segment about religion or an understanding of religion that doesn’t have much depth.This person doesn’t understand Christianity.She thinks, an Episcopal priest, she thinks she can integrate yoga which is death, a method of dying, to the body to be released for union with Brahman.This is pure Hinduism.Now she’s trying to combine the two, so she doesn’t understand either one.

Dave:

No, she certainly doesn’t understand yoga.Hatha yoga is the physical yoga, so you’d think well it is just physical exercise.However, all of these exercises have been specifically designed to help you reach an altered state of consciousness where you recognize that you are one with god that is the Hindu concept of god.That Atman, that’s the human soul and Brahman, the universal soul are one and the same.Now Shiva, the destroyer, in Hinduism, who has cobras in his hair and so forth, he is known as Yogi Swara, the master of Hatha yoga and yoga—if you want to do exercises that would strengthen the body or relax it, or whatever, do exercise that are designed for that.These exercises, Hatha yoga was never designed for physical fitness.It was designed as you said to reach moksha, to reach an altered state of consciousness, where you escape from time, sense and the elements, and you realize that you are god.Furthermore, if you want to read the books on yoga by the great Yogis, they will warn you that yoga is very dangerous.That in the process of reaching the state of consciousness, you are likely to be taken over by one or more of the Hindu deities.You remember we’ve interviewed people who have gotten involved in TM.

Tom:

Yes, Transcendental Meditation.

Dave:

Right, and suddenly found themselves out of their body, (at least it seemed to them) looking down on themselves, or there’s a demon on each side trying to get into them, or they’re driven insane.Yoga is a religious practice.It was not designed for physical fitness.So this lady does not understand yoga.Secondly, she talks about meditation.Now in the Western world as well as in Christianity, mediation means to think deeply about something.For example, in Psalm 1, it talks about the man who meditates on the Bible and “in God’s law he meditates day and night.”Meditation in the Eastern sense is the opposite.You tune it out.You reach a blank state of mind by focusing on an object or whatever.

Tom:

Or phrase sometimes as she’s trying to introduce take a phrase from the Psalms and you repeat it over and over again, it becomes a mantra, but the purpose is to exclude content.

Dave:

It’s the opposite of Christian meditation.It’s reaching an altered state of consciousness and you know we’ve often quoted Sir John Eccles, Noble Prize winner, for his research on the brain and he says the brain is “a machine that a ghost can operate” and the normal state of consciousness, your spirit operates your brain, but in an altered state reached under drugs or hypnosis (practiced by many Christian psychologists), or yoga you loose the normal connection between your spirit and your brain and that allows another spirit to interpose itself and tick off the neurons in the brain, [and] create a universe of illusion.It can lead to demonic possession.It can lead to all kinds of delusions and one of the things that it does lead to is these people begin to believe the lies of Hinduism, they begin to believe that all is one, they begin to believe in pantheism, everything is god and so forth.

Tom:

Dave, the caption for this press release which is what Gary read: “Embodied Spirituality: The marriage of Christianity and Yoga.”Now that’s an oxymoron.You could no longer put those two together—they are diametrically opposed.

Dave:

Yoga as we’ve said is a religious practice in Hinduism.It is designed—specifically designed—the Hatha yoga positions are specifically designed to help you achieve the state of consciousness where you reach oneness with Brahman.

Tom:

Yes, yoga, yoking yourself, with the absolute—that’s the idea.

Dave:

So if you’re interested in physical fitness, do exercises designed for that.If you want some spiritual, mystical experience, even though you are repeating from the Psalms, go ahead, get involved in yoga, but it will lead you astray.It will open you up to demonic spirits.There is just no question about it and even the great Yogis warn about it in their books.