Is Yoga Christian?

Tom:

Thanks, Gary.You’re listening to Search the Scriptures Daily, a program in which we encourage everyone who desires to know God’s truth to look to God’s Word for all that is essential for salvation and living one’s life in a way that is pleasing to Him.In this first segment of our program we’re continuing our series on yoga and the incredible popularity it’s having among those who call themselves Christians.For those who would like more details about the subject beyond what we are presenting in this program you can order Dave Hunt’s book, Yoga and the Body of Christ, which Gary will give you that information later.

Dave:

Well Tom, don’t forget the subtitle, I like that, What Position Should the Church Hold?

Tom:

And it is a matter of no small controversy, Dave, which is, well, we’ll be getting into some of that, although we try and avoid controversy wherever we find it.As one example in one hundreds we could give you as to the growing acceptance and practice of yoga among Christians is an evangelical national pastor convention that began each day with an option, that is, a yoga session that was optional for all those who attended and there are literally thousands. I think they have it in two places, this national convention throughout the United States and they get more than five thousand at each location.The conference featured many conservative evangelical speakers including Rick Warren, and Howard Hendricks, and it was sponsored by Youth Specialties, which is the most influential youth organization with regard to youth pastors and the programs that they implement, and also Zondervan Publishing.Now, Dave, I’m not saying that Warren or Hendricks participated, but it does tell us how widely accepted yoga has become among evangelicals.

Dave:

Well, but Tom, although they probably did not participate, did they say a word about it to enlighten people to just what yoga is?

Tom:

No, not to my knowledge.As we mentioned last week, and I think this is foundational, and this is—

Dave:

Tom, let me go back.This yoga every morning, it was carried on throughout the conference without anyone speaking out about it, saying it shouldn’t be here, and so forth.

Tom:

Well, there may have been some of the attendees, but there was nothing brought to, certainly national attention, and there was no response, as far as I know, by the organization that put it on, because, Dave, we’re going to quote some Youth Specialties later, the president of Youth Specialties, and how he defends that kind of thing.But we’re seeing so much of it, that’s what—last week we said shocking—but, I mean, there are so many things that are going on that you just wonder how shocking it is because it is so prevalent.Last week we mentioned yoga, you gave an overview, Dave, but I think what’s important in this series is that not only do we talk about yoga, but we talk about the religion that is behind yoga, and of course that’s Hinduism.Now, this is going to be critical to our discussion on whether or not yoga exercises can be integrated into Christianity.And I think we need to explain some basic teachings of Hinduism.What do you think?

Dave:

Well, yoga is Hinduism, I mean, there’s no question about it.It was designed as the—I think we mentioned it last week, but we’ll go back over it.You see, one of the foundational beliefs of Hinduism is reincarnation.They have a caste system, and you have to move up through the caste system, you come back and, hopefully, you advance in each reincarnation.Finally you become a Brahman, that’s not to be confused with Brahman, Brahma the god, or Brahman the universal soul.

Tom:

Yeah, but it’s the highest caste.

Dave:

Right, when you reach the highest caste, then you can launch from there through yoga.There is no other way, that I know of, in Hinduism. In one sense it’s a works religion because your works will advance you in the reincarnation hierarchy or cycle, but works will not save you in Hinduism, you have to practice yoga, and you have to get into this state of consciousness where you finally reach moksha, and you achieve union, that’s what yoga - yoke, so you become yoked with the universe basically, Brahman, the universal soul and Othman, and the individual soul becomes one.And so it is a realization that you are God, actually, which was the lie of the serpent.

Tom:

Now, Dave, this is a quick, slick methodology, you go through the caste system and then shortly, by implementing these methods and techniques, and all of a sudden you realize that you are God.The reason I am saying that, it may be a little bit tongue-in-cheek, is that that’s the way it’s promoted in the West, but what about the Hindus?Isn’t this process of reincarnation, isn’t it called samsara, the wheel of sorrows, that you never get off this continuing wheel?

Dave:

Well, Gandhi said reincarnation is a burden too great to bear, because you can’t get off of it.Now, supposedly you can.Let me explain, Tom, we probably explained in detail, let me just very quickly explain why you can’t get off of it.There are three things about reincarnation.First of all it is amoral.Why is it amoral?Because, if I am a husband who beats his wife in this life, I must come back in the next life, you can’t make up for it in this life.I’ve got to come back in another life as a wife who is beaten by her husband.Well, that means that my husband in the next life who beats me he must come back in the following life as a wife beaten by her husband.So, the perpetrator of every crime must become the victim of the same crime which means there must be another perpetrator.Okay, so far from solving the problem of evil, reincarnation perpetuates evil so it is amoral.There is no solution to evil.You can never get off of this thing because—look, the fact, Tom, that you and I are sitting here opposite one another with microphones in front of us is simply the result of the prior karma that we built up in our last life, or maybe even previous lives.Okay, well, we are living the present life in order to work off the karma that we built up in a prior life.But in the process of working off the karma of the prior life we build up more karma which requires another life, another life, and so it goes endlessly.

Tom:

Dave, what did I do in a former life to a radio announcer, did I bad mouth the radio announcer, now I’m a radio announcer?

Dave:

It must have been something like that, Tom.Now, it’s not only amoral it’s senseless.I don’t think you and I are very advanced beings, Tom, actually we are going down, and of course that’s the result of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which is actually working on our DNA.They are copying errors if we want to be scientific about it, and they accumulate.

Tom:

We’re not evolving, we are devolving.

Dave:

That’s right, but anyway it’s senseless because—how many of your prior lives do you remember, Tom?

Tom:

I can’t think of one, seriously.

Dave:

Nor can I, nor can anybody out there.Now they’ll say, oh, this child, deja vu, I’ve been here before, or whatever.That’s not going to help you.Now, the problem is, we don’t remember the mistakes we made in a prior life, and we’re here, supposedly, as a result of those mistakes in order to better ourselves, but if you can’t remember the mistakes you made in the last life you’re probably going to repeat them again, so the whole thing is senseless, okay.But this is the foundation of Hinduism and this is where yoga comes in because this karma is built into the very universe itself, you can’t escape it.Now the Bible does say, “Whatsoever a man sows, that he will reap,” but the Bible says there is a “but”—but there is forgiveness.In karma, reincarnation, there is no forgiveness!Who would you go to forgive you?You have to work it off yourself.How do you work it off?By suffering.Tom, it is a horrible religion, so that if you pick some poor soul up out of the gutter in Calcutta, running sores and dying, you know, and you put them in a hospital, and you feed them and try to restore them to life, you have not done a favor to that person, this is not loving at all.You have interfered with their karma, and in the next life they will have to come back right to that very gutter from which you rescued them, horrible stuff.But why do we say this, Tom?Because this is yoga, the only hope of escaping this is yoga.

Tom:

And Dave, I think it’s so important for us, again and again, to draw people’s attention to the religion that is foundational to yoga.Another aspect of Hinduism is that it is pantheistic, meaning that God is in everything and is everything.Dave, we offer a DVD which is quite excellent called, Yoga Uncoiled, from East to West.And in the video, Dave, in the lobby of a four-star hotel, and the manager is explaining they are doing a sand painting, almost like an mundala, and it’s offered to the guests.And the manager goes on to explain that all of the guests that come into the hotel are gods and are treated as gods.

Dave:

What hotel is this, Tom, not a major hotel, but it is really—

Tom:

In India.

Dave:

Oh, in India, I gotcha.

Tom:

And the amazing thing is people are somewhat shocked because, wait a minute, you are treating the guests as gods and bowing down to the guests?But when you think about it, that’s what Hinduism is all about, correct?

Dave:

Well, Tom, the Hindu greeting, the traditional greeting, is you put your hands together, you take a bow and you say ahimsa, I bow down to the god in you, because everyone is a god, of course.

Tom:

And everything is a god, you could bow down to a tree, an ant or whatever it is.

Dave:

Tom, I was in India, I can’t remember the name of the holiday, but it was a special holiday where you worshiped the implement of your profession or of your work.If you were a taxi driver, the taxis were all just decked out in flowers, the taxi driver worships his taxi.The secretary worships her typewriter, or whatever it is.The doctor, I guess, worships his stethoscope or what other instruments he may have.Everything is to be worshiped, but Tom—

Tom:
And therefore, nothing is god, if everything is god, then there is no transcendent, no higher god.

Dave:

No difference between god and not god, everything is god.Tom, I don’t want to offend any Indians who may be listening, but this is a pitiful, pitiful country.I saw rats as big as small dogs, they can gnaw their way through cement, because you wouldn’t kill anything.You wouldn’t step on an ant, a-n-t, it might be your aunt, a-u-n-t, who died who knows how long ago.Actually what you do in India, Tom, you throw the rat over into the neighbor’s yard.I saw old folks rest homes for cows because you wouldn’t kill them for meat, people starving in India, have been starving.Actually, Tom, the tragedy, some of these desperate people will carve something out of the hind quarters of a living cow in order to eat it because they are not killing the cow, you understand.They may die from the wound, I don’t know, but Tom, it’s a country of poverty, disease and of course it is gradually improving with the influence from the West.You remember, Tom, we used to go to these New Age conferences, and so forth, and remember these pitiful guys, a lot of them on drugs, they went to Goha Beach in India, they went over there to get enlightened.The Beatles went to India, they studied under a guru, in fact the guru was Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.Wait a minute!Oh, Yogi, that’s part of his name.Yes, he is a yogi, a master of yoga and transcendental meditation is yoga.You talk about the deceit behind this!When he first brought his program to America, and by the way, into the West, by the way, who sent him?His guru, Guru Dev.Every one of these yogis or gurus, Paramahansa Yogananda, or whoever it was, they were all sent by their guru, each one is sent by his guru.Now these are called, holy men.Yoga is practiced in temples, it’s taught in temples in America, and this is a holy tradition.What do you mean, holy?Well, this is our religion.

Tom:

Sounds spiritual to me, Dave.

Dave:

Very heart of the religion.Well, Tom, what do the yoga instructors say about that?Well, yes, but maybe there was some connection back there to go back there read Hatha yoga-pradipikaone of the most authoritative texts on yoga, it’s from about the 15^th century, I think.It will tell you that Shiva, Lord Shiva, was the first instructor, the yoga instructor, okay.

Tom:

Lord Shiva, The Destroyer.

Dave:

Right, one of the trimurti of gods, the three major gods.And if you read the Bhagavad-Gita you will find out it was Krishna, who also instructed people in yoga.Anyway, Tom, what will they say?Well, but we don’t get into that, you see, this is only for health.And as I mentioned last week, well, if you are really interested in health why don’t you take some program that was designed, some exercises designed for health?This is a religious tradition, it is the heart of Hinduism, and the goal of it is—we’ve been mentioning it now—self-realization, to realize you are god.Now why would you go to that—Tom, there’s a little aside here, it reminds me of the Christian psychologist.Remember James Dobson who said in his Focus on the Family Magazine, Well, Christian psychology, that’s a worthy profession for any young person to get into, provided, you remember his words, provided their faith is strong enough to withstand the humanism to which they will be exposed.Now I ask the question, Why do Christians go to the humanist to find out how to counsel from the Bible?So you ask the same question, Why go to a religious tradition, which is evil, really, we could talk about all the evils involved in this thing, why are you going to go to that in order to get some expositions, asonas and pryomas, your breathing exercises for good health? Why don’t you go to something that was designed for good health, okay?Yoga was never ever designed for good health.So Tom, we’ve got a lot of basic problems in this thing, and yet, as you said, it’s all through the church, the evangelical church.

Tom:

Right.Dave, before we get to Chapter 2, which is—you titled it, Yoga For Christians?And again, what we’re trying to do here is establish THE religion, which is the basics, it’s the fundamentals of yoga, it’s all found in Hinduism.And it should be very simple, very clear, Dave, that somebody who professes to be, anybody who professes to be a biblical Christian who wants to go by what the Bible says, the words of Jesus, Old Testament and New Testament, if they have chosen to believe what Jesus said and go by the scriptures, how can they reconcile practicing yoga?I mean, they can’t,based on just what we have said, what Hinduism is all about, and it being foundational to yoga.

Dave:

Well, Tom, there is a lot of dishonesty involved.They go to great lengths to try to show that Jesus was a yogi, Jesus practiced yoga.Now even people who say, You know, those lost years of Jesus, where do you think He was?There’s nothing about it from 12 to 30.Well, of course He was over in India studying under the masters.All right, Tom, very quick rebuttal of that—every yoga instructor, every yogi, I don't care if they are a Westerner, they got it from somewhere, you must be true to your guru, everyone has to have a guru.Jesus never talked about His guru, He used a term that the Hindus and Rabbis didn’t like, “My Father in heaven.”He did not come to spread this tradition, but He came to pay the penalty for the sins of the world.But they would try to say, Oh, it’s in the Bible.No, it’s not in the Bible, there’s nothing in the Bible about breathing and positions, and so forth.In fact, Tom, this is occultism, it’s a technique to get in touch with God, and you don’t get in touch with God through techniques, you get in touch with God through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Tom:

Dave, let me quote, we mentioned earlier, Youth Specialties, this is the president of Youth Specialties in defending yoga, which Youth Specialties introduced at this pastor’s convention.He says, “Christianity is an Eastern religion, it has all its roots in the East.”He goes on to say, “Yoga is really just about stretching and slowing down.Sure, yoga could focus on Hindu or Buddhist gods, but it can also focus on Christ.”Unbelievable!

Dave:

Yeah, it’s not all about stretching, it’s—well, we’ve explained it, Tom, what it is all about to reach a state of consciousness that links you—you have an altered state of consciousness, you can reach it under drugs, a number of different ways, but yoga would be a major way.

Tom:

Sure, meditation, absolutely.

Dave:

It would be the surest way eventually, but it’s the longest way.But the people who are being brought into this, Tom, are being told, No, that’s not what the purpose is.It’s astonishing, Tom.Let me see if I can just find a quick quote here.The Vishva Hindu Parishad, the largest missionary organization in the world, every one of these gurus was sent, they are missionaries, and the yoga centers are centers of the propagation of the religion of Hinduism, and one of the primary goals of the VHP, it’s called, is, (I’m taking this from their literature) “To establish an order of missionaries, both lay and initiate, for the purpose of propagating dynamic Hinduism representing…various faiths and denominations including Buddhist, Jains, Sikhs, Lingayats, etc., and to open, manage or assist seminaries or centers for spiritual principles and practices of Hinduism…in all parts of the world….”The biggest missionary organization in the world.

Tom:

And tremendously effective, sadly, tragically in the evangelical church.