Yoga in the Church: A Conspiracy Leading to Strong Delusion?

An excerpt from Yoga and the Body of Christ: What Postition Should Christians Hold?

We are the most highly informed and sophisticated society in history and are currently in the midst of a hi-tech explosion beyond anyone’s wildest imagination only a few years ago. Yet at the same time, increasing millions in the West are buying into yoga, an occult practice that has been part of primitive Oriental superstitions and religions for thousands of years. Why is this happening? Finding an answer to that question will give us a good start toward understanding what yoga really is, why it is so appealing, and the havoc it is wreaking upon our culture.

Though it may come as a surprise, the fact is that the explosion of occultism in the West (of which yoga is an integral part) did not come about by accident. This growing obsession was deliberately planted and cultivated by a group of psychologists and physical scientists, many of whom had, as university students, their first encounters with the mysterious powers of the occult and came to believe in the reality of a nonphysical dimension through their use of psychedelic drugs. The major drug of what became known as the “counter-culture” was lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a once legal but now illegal substance commonly called “acid” by its users. It was developed in 1943 by Albert Hoffman, a chemist at the Swiss pharmaceutical company, Sandoz A. B.

“Consciousness” became a primary focus, and soon the phrase “alternate states of consciousness” was on the lips of millions. How to reach “alternate states” became the exciting topic at parties and was the new panacea. Few even suspected that they had stumbled onto the doorway to the occult, much less the horrors that lay beyond.

Of course, the world of academia, closed-minded to anything except materialistic explanations, spoke of an “alternate reality” as though it were a newly discovered unused corner of the physical brain that held amazing potential and must be studied in university labs. The “Human Potential Movement” was born. Mankind’s supposedly unlimited and untapped powers became the new hope of the modern world, bolstered by the psychologists’ ridiculous claim that we use only 10 percent of our brains. In that unused 90 percent, god-like psychic powers supposedly lie, awaiting discovery.

“Ironically,” wrote Marilyn Ferguson, in a key book of this era, “the introduction of major psychedelics like LSD in the 1960s was largely attributable to the Central Intelligence Agency’s investigation into these drugs for possible military use. Experiments on more than eighty college campuses, under various CIA code names, unintentionally popularized LSD. Thousands of graduate students served as guinea pigs. Soon they were synthesizing their own ‘acid.’”

Unintentionally?On the contrary, this devilish development was anything but unintentional, as Ferguson well knew. It was, as we shall see, part of a deliberate and highly secretive plan to initiate the Western world into Eastern occultism, of which the introduction of drugs to American youth played a major part. Under the influence of psychedelics, millions discovered another dimension of reality that surely was not physical. But as long as the “trip” lasted, the adventure was as real as the physical universe—or, seemingly, even more real.

It only remained to be discovered that yoga would produce the same “trip” without drugs—and yoga took off as the new panacea. I remember the mother of a 20-year-old telling me with some sense of relief and little concern, “Our son used to be heavily into drugs; but thank God he isn’t using drugs anymore because he started practicing yoga. I don’t know what yoga is, but it can’t be bad if it got him off of drugs!”

My reply must have shocked her: “I’m glad to hear that your son no longer gets ‘high’ on drugs. I’m sorry to inform you, however, that he can get a lot ‘higher’ on yoga than on drugs. Drugs were the kindergarten of occultism—yoga is the graduate school!”

The Role Being Played by Nonphysical Beings

The Bible declares that we are not alone in the universe but that in addition to mankind, there are angels, demons, Satan, and God—all with individual minds that think and make decisions for themselves. Parapsychologists (especially those associated with the Department of Defense and government Intelligence agencies) have been involved for years in mind-control research. Some of it has nothing to do with controlling minds through drugs or brainwashing techniques but with control of one person’s mind by another person’s mind. This possibility, of course, has been demonstrated repeatedly through hypnosis—even at a distance.

There is, therefore, good reason to believe that, just as a hypnotist can control someone else’s mind, so the other minds mentioned above could do the same to humans. God would never do this Himself because it would nullify the freedom of choice He has given to mankind in the act of creation. It is also both logical and biblical that He would build protection within man to prevent a take-over of the human mind by any other mind. One could, however, voluntarily allow this to be done by willingly submitting to hypnosis. Moreover, deliberately entering an altered state, whether through drugs, hypnosis, or yoga, is giving permission to evil entities to take over, whether one realizes it or not.

Charles Tart, author of Mind Science: Meditation Training for Practical People, says, “There’s enough evidence that comes in to make me take the idea of disembodied intelligence seriously.” William James, one of the most highly regarded psychologists of the last century, wrote: “The refusal of modern ‘enlightenment’ to treat ‘[demonic] possession’ as a hypothesis...has always seemed to me a curious example of the power of fashion in things ‘scientific.’”

Anthropologist Michael Harner wrote, “A shaman...enters an altered state of consciousness...to acquire...special, personal power, which is usually supplied by his guardian and helping spirits.”John Lilly, who invented the isolation tank (in which one floats in a sea of heavy salt water, completely isolated from sights or sounds of the world) that inspired the movie, Altered States, declared: “Some people call it ‘lucid dreaming.’ It’s a lot easier if you have a psychedelic [drug] in you, but a lot of people...can just meditate and go into these alternate realities....” There are many recorded accounts by those who have experienced similar adventures and “possession” while practicing yoga.

Marilyn Ferguson Called It a “Conspiracy”

In 1974, a think tank at Stanford Research Institute (known as SRI), with funds from the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, completed a study called Changing Images of Man. Reading this important unpublished study, one arrives at the following startling conclusion concerning its purpose: to determine how Western man could deliberately be turned into an Eastern mystic/psychic. The project was directed by Willis W. Harman, who later became president of Edgar Mitchell’s Institute of Noetic Sciences, founded by Mitchell as a result of mystical experiences on his trip to the moon. The scientists involved sincerely believed that turning to Eastern mysticism was the only hope for human survival. In their own minds, their reasons were all very scientific and their intentions noble. The end, it was believed, justified the means.

The 319-page mimeographed report was prepared by a team of fourteen researchers and supervised by a panel of twenty-three controllers, including anthropologist Margaret Mead, psychologist B. F. Skinner, Ervin Laszlo of the United Nations, and Sir Geoffrey Vickers of British intelligence. The task of persuading the public to walk through this magic door leading to a “new age” fell to one of Dr. Harman’s friends and admirers, Marilyn Ferguson. She fulfilled her assignment with the publication in 1980 of her groundbreaking bestseller, The Aquarian Conspiracy,which made it all seem very desirable. She wrote:

A great, shuddering irrevocable shift is overtaking us...a new mind, a turnabout in consciousness in critical numbers of individuals, a network powerful enough to bring about radical change in our culture.

This network—the Aquarian Conspiracy—has already enlisted the minds, hearts and resources of some of our most advanced thinkers, including Nobel laureate scientists, philosophers, statesmen, celebrities...who are working to create a different kind of society.... There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors’ offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country.

The [Eastern mystical] technologies for expanding and transforming personal consciousness, once the secret of an elite, are now generating massive change in every cultural institution—medicine, politics, business, education, religion, and the family.

Famed architect Buckminster Fuller, after staying up half the night reading Ferguson’s The Aquarian Conspiracy, suggested that “the spirits of the dead” had helped her to write it. Laughing, Ferguson replied, “Well, I sometimes thought so, but I wasn’t about to tell anybody.”

Friedrich Nietzsche indicated that the inspiration for Thus Spake Zarathustracame as a form of possession. “It invaded me. One can hardly reject the idea that one is the mere incarnation, or mouthpiece, or medium, of some almighty power.” It takes little thought to conclude which “power” inspired this great inspirer of Hitler.

Molding Western Minds—Through Media

Eastern mysticism has now penetrated every area of today’s Western society. Children are being schooled in it from their earliest years through comic books, TV cartoons, movies, and videos that feature weird creatures with mind powers that exceed what even science fiction writers imagined a generation ago....

[So powerful is the medium of entertainment in “shifting” culture today that thousands of similar confessions of spirit-channeled material have come from modern musicians and writers alike, including Stephanie Meyer, scribe of the Twilighttrilogy, and J. K. Rowling, who penned the Harry Potter phenomenon.]

This belief in an impersonal force that permeates the universe and that mankind can tap into through mystical rites is not new. It has been the underlying belief of primitive religions led by initiates, or masters, variously called shamans, witchdoctors, medicine men, gurus, yogis, etc., for thousands of years. Its utilization by heroes for seemingly supernatural exploits is found in the ancient fairy tales common to all cultures.

Nor has our modern world, with its worship of science, been able to escape the myths that seem to be embedded in human consciousness—again, seen planted there by the Serpent’s promise of godhood to Eve. The shift in consciousness to which Marilyn Ferguson referred has spawned two major developments, both related to yoga, though the connection may not be apparent to most readers without further explanation:

1.In general, children (and even adults) no longer look upon the fantastic powers exhibited by heroes or their evil enemies in videos and movies as fiction but as something to which they could attain as well if they only knew the secret. No one needs God anymore, because each person has the same God-powers within—it’s only a matter of learning how to master them. [Even Christians fall prey to this idea, enrolling in “Schools of Supernatural Ministry” which train believers how to “access the heavenly realm” and bring its “wonders” to earth.]

2.The Serpent’s promise to Eve in the Garden that she could become one of the gods is no longer viewed as a seductive lie that destroyed the human race in separating it from God and bringing His judgment. It has become the new truth, realized by fictional characters who are the new heroes to replace David who defeated Goliath, Daniel who came through the lions’ den unscathed—and even God himself.

An entire genre of “fiction as truth” as well as TV cartoons by the dozens...have made Eastern mysticism the normal way of thinking. This is a change in consciousness [a “paradigm shift”]—and its possible consequences for the future are alarming!

But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.