Question: How do I counsel my unbelieving sister about yoga?

Question: How do I counsel my unbelieving sister about yoga?

Answer: She has been deceived and must be willing to face the truth or there is no deliverance. With its breathing exercises and limbering-up positions, yoga is promoted in the West as a way to enhance health and better living—but in the East it is understood to be a way of dying, indeed the way to escape this world of time and sense and to unite with the infinite. Thinking they are buying health, millions are unwittingly embracing Hinduism and opening themselves to the occult.

Hatha Yoga is supposedly safe because it is physical yoga. But all yoga is Hinduism. All of the positions and breathing exercises are specifically designed for yoking with Brahman, the universal All of Hinduism. If the goal is physical fitness, one should use exercises designed to that end, not one designed for reaching godhood. An authoritative Hatha Yoga text, the 15th century Svatmarama’s Hathayoga-Pradipika, lists Lord Shiva as the first Hatha Yoga teacher.

The average yoga instructor never mentions (and may not know about) the many warnings in ancient texts that “Hatha Yoga is a dangerous tool.” One can be possessed by a Hindu deity (demon) through the altered state of consciousness induced by this practice.

One of the most ancient religious practices is being passed off as science. Yoga was introduced by Lord Krishna in the Baghavad Gita as the sure way to Hindu heaven; and Shiva (one of the most feared Hindu deities, known as “The Destroyer”) is addressed as Yogeshwara, Lord of Yoga. No wonder yoga can be so destructive. In  Yoga Journal, Ken Wilbur, a yoga expert known as the “Einstein of consciousness,” warns that Eastern meditation, no matter how carefully practiced, involves “a whole series of deaths and rebirths...rough and frightening times.”

David Pursglove, trans-personal therapist for decades, warns that Eastern meditation can produce “Frightening ESP and other parapsychological occurrences...out-of-body experiences...[encounters] with death and subsequent rebirth...awakening of the serpent power (Kundalini)...violent shaking and twisting....” The Brain/Mind Bulletin warns that “such experiences are common among people involved in Yoga, [Eastern] meditation....”

Consider a typical letter from one of our readers: “My daughter, age 43, for the past 10 years has been involved with Hatha Yoga, and at the present time she is experiencing exactly what you describe in Occult Invasion, p. 225 [“violent shaking, hallucinations, murderous impulses…uncontrollable rage…trying to commit suicide…”]. She would like to give up yoga and be released from the spirit of her last teacher that is currently inflicting excruciating pain upon her. We’ve taken her to several doctors, but they have been of no help. Her mother and I are at our wit’s end…. Please help.”