Should Christians Meditate?

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Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call with Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael, we’re glad you could join us. Coming up in today’s broadcast in our Understanding the Scriptures segment, Dave and Tom will continue their in-depth study of the Book of Acts, and “Did Paul turn the Jews away from the law?” In Religion in the News, “Badgering Christians in Baghdad .” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question: “Are there four dimensions?” We hope you can stay with us. Our ministry, The Berean Call, offers a wide variety of teaching materials, including books, tracts, audio and video disks, and copies of our weekly broadcast on compact disk or DVD. You may also subscribe to our monthly newsletter, which we offer free of charge. We’ll let you know how to order later in the program. Now, this week’s Cover Article. Tom and Dave continue their new series of programs based on Dave Hunt’s book, Yoga and the Body of Christ: What Position Should Christians Hold? This week we focus on the question, “Should Christians Meditate?” Along with Dave Hunt, here’s T. A. McMahon.

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 are continuing a series on yoga and the incredible popularity that it has among those who call themselves Christians. For those who would like more details about the subject beyond what we’re presenting here, you can order Dave Hunt’s book, Yoga and the Body of Christ, and Gary will give you that information later. Dave, last week, as you know, we established that the religion of Hinduism is foundational to the practice of yoga, and the goal of Hinduism is self-realization, that is, to realize that you are God, and everything about yoga is designed for God realization. So, when a Christian practices yoga he or she is, to some degree, involved in the religion of Hinduism. In our last program we discussed some of the major doctrines of Hinduism, such as the worship of 330 million plus gods, the belief that God is everything, which is pantheism, or God is in everything, in pantheism.

Dave:

Yeah, you’re God and I’m God, that would be really bad, wouldn’t it?

Tom:

Also, Dave, we mentioned transmigration, we didn’t use that term but that’s the technical term for reincarnation.

Dave:

Transmigration of souls, right.

Tom:

And Karma and Dharma, we mentioned all these things last week, so if you are interested in that you can get last week’s program. Although such beliefs and practices are certainly a part of the belief system of yoga, one practice is nearly always involved in yoga and that is meditation, Dave. That’s what I would like you to talk about as we start this segment. What is wrong with a Christian practicing yoga meditation?

Dave:

Well, we have to define the term. Westerners generally think of meditation as contemplation, thinking deeply about something. So if you try to tell someone who is into yoga, some yoga center, YMCA, YWCA could be.

Tom:

Baptist church, which we will get into a little bit later.

Dave:

Yeah, yeah. Well, we don’t—never get me meditating on anything, but Eastern meditation is the opposite of what the West has always understood and what the Bible means by meditation. For example, Psalm 1, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law doth he meditate day and night.” Oh, meditation, oh you’re thinking, you’re meditating on the Bible. Meditation in the East is the opposite, it’s non-thinking, it’s quieting yourself, stilling the mind, getting all thoughts out. They would call it relaxation, and they would say, well, but yoga helps me to relax. So what does that do? Well, I think in the book we quote, probably some of the great yogis of the past, this all came out of Hinduism, and they would tell you that when you put yourself in this meditative but non-thinking, alert and awake but relaxed, they would say, a state of consciousness, you are open to a take over by a—well, they would call it, by the gods. And you would be, now not every yoga class of course would give you a mantra, but Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Transcendental Meditation TM, and the mantra’s are all the names of Hindu deities, and you are calling them by the repetition of this mantra, you are calling that entity to come and possess you. So if you read the books by the yoga masters, which of course Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, that’s his title, Yogi, claimed to be, or Paramahansa Yogananda,—you lived in Southern California, I grew up in Southern California, and we would drive by on the way to San Diego, we would drive by the temple there, Yogananda’s Temple, the Self Realization Fellowship, is what it was called, and that word was right out there plain. He came to teach you that you can realize that you are God. Kriya yoga, they called it, but it’s also hatha yoga, and he initiated more than 100,000 people into this. So, the definition of the words is much different and you are opening yourself—even if you’re practicing in the YMCA, and you’re trying to reach this meditative, quiet, relaxed state, you could be opening yourself to demonic entities, and the yoga masters warned about this and said you’ve got to have your guru present with you in case something starts to happen. Tom, you know, we did a movie some years ago, now a DVD, called, Cult Explosion. I wrote the book many, many years ago.

Tom:

That was one of the first projects I worked on as a film maker.

Dave:

Yeah, and you’ve interviewed a lot of practitioners of yoga. Some of them were TM practitioners, some of them sued Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I can tell you—well, there were numbers of them who went insane, or committed suicide, and Maharishi would say, well, you’re just working out the bad karma, you know. And they would have to lock some of these people in rooms in the hotel where they were going through this. Anyway, so it may seem very innocent, but it can be very dangerous. But getting back to one thing that we keep saying, Tom, if you are interested in physical fitness, why don’t you practice exercises that were designed for physical fitness? Now if you want to yoke yourself with Brahman, the universe, you want to become God and realize that you’ve got these amazing powers, then practice yoga. But if that doesn’t fit your hopes, then I think you ought to get away from it.

Tom:

Well, Dave, we are going to get into more and more details as we continue in this series, but meditation: there are those that say, look, I’m just interested in the physical side, I’m not interested in spirituality, and so on. But invariably, in almost every case that I can think of, and we’re going to cover some examples later, perhaps this program and the programs to come, but meditation is always a part of this. Last week we talked about—

Dave:

Well, they would call it relaxation.

Tom:

Yes, but it is meditation no matter how you describe it, that’s what’s happening.

Dave:

You’re blanking your mind out, Eastern meditation.

Tom:

Exactly, exactly. Dave, last week, the end of the program we talked about how this popularity developed with regard to yoga. There is a missionary organization, not a Christian missionary organization, but it’s the largest missionary organization in the world, it’s called: The Hindu Vishwa Parashad. Dave, you started to talk about it last week, as I mentioned. Again, this organization, I think, can take credit for bringing yoga to the West, and not only yoga, but certainly Hinduism, which is what it’s all about. But this has been the organization that has created, I think, is responsible for creating the popularity of yoga that we are seeing today.

Dave:

Tom, it is astonishing when you do a little investigation. Of course, I presume everyone would know, but they don’t know, every guru who was sent here to the West, they came from India where this Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Yogananda that I mentioned, or Swami Muktananda, Baba Muktananda, or whoever it is,—

Tom:

Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh, who created lots of problems here in Oregon , Central Oregon .

Dave:

They were all sent by their guru, you must have a guru to be a guru, and why did their gurus send them? Well, as part of the goal of the Vishwa Hindu Parashad is to spread, what they called, dynamic Hinduism all over the world, to convert the world to Hinduism. Now, when India obtained its independence from England back there they immediately banned all foreign missionaries. You want to be a missionary, you’re a Christian, you go to India to get a job, there’s not many jobs going around over there, and then you try to evangelize. But they banned all foreign missionaries. The hypocrisy of it is they have the largest missionary organization in the world, they are sending out their missionaries all over the world. Well, many of them are yoga instructors, and some of them don’t even realize, well, they’re following the American—just take the American yoga instructors for example, they may well be relatively innocent in this, they don’t know that they are missionaries for Hinduism. But the yoga centers are missionary centers for spreading Hinduism. A lot of yoga is taught in temples, and it all comes from a yogi, they will all name—oh yeah, we’re following yogi so and so. So, this is one of the means by which Hinduism is spread. And Tom, I don’t know how many letters we have gotten, but a few, more than one from the parents of a young lady—I don’t know if we’ve gotten any from young men, about young men—but maybe in her thirties, late twenties, you remember some of these, and they went into this innocently. All they wanted was to learn to relax and become limber and so forth, and now they are haunted by demonic entities, some of them haunted by the guru himself.

Tom:

Or a demon posing as a guru.

Dave:

Right, and they are desperate! Some of them have gone to the hospital, gone to psychiatrists. Desperate to somehow solve this problem, and we get appeals from parents. What can you do for my daughter? Well, they didn’t intend to get into this situation, they were told this was purely physical. And Tom, it is growing.

Tom:

Right. Dave, now certainly we’re viewing this from a biblical, from a Christian perspective, a biblical Christian perspective, so we would say we disagree with the theology of Hinduism, and so on, but nevertheless, we wouldn’t have any problem with anybody who wanted to proselytize, who wanted to promote their own beliefs, and so on, I mean, this is what this country is all about, freedom of religion. On the other hand, the problem that we have is the deceit that’s involved. Can you speak just a little about presenting yoga as just for health, presenting it as non spiritual, getting it in schools, and so on, the basis of like the Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi, transcendental meditation. Oh, no, this is not spirituality, this is the science of relaxation, and so on.

Dave:

That would be like the Pope, going around the world claiming that no, no, he’s not the head of a religious organization, or a church, he represents a group of scientists who have been developing these techniques, the Mass, and so forth and so on. No, it is an outright lie! There’s nothing scientific about this. Give me the examples, give me the scientific tests. Well, they have made some tests to show that alpha level, alpha waves go down when they are in a yogi trance, and so forth. Benson of Harvard University —

Tom:

Herbert Benson, a medical doctor.

Dave:

Yeah, but he has done some amazing—we tell, I think, in the book of a group of Buddhist monks that—where did they start out? About 16,000 feet I think.

Tom:

In the Himalayas .

Dave:

Yeah, and they have nothing but a cotton robe around them and sandals and they go up another thousand feet or so. It’s snowing, they get on their haunches, they take their sandals off, if you can imagine, be more comfortable, I guess. And they are in a meditative state a good part of the night. The camera crew with their parkas and everything, they are freezing, and these guys get up, shake the snow off of their robes and put on their sandals and head back down. Now, that’s rather remarkable, and some of these things are documented.

Tom:

Dave, is there a scientific basis for it, I mean, how do you explain something like this?

Dave:

Oh, there is no scientific basis, and this is why they are studying it, how do they do this? Well, it’s like the demoniac in the Bible, do you remember? He was possessed by a legion of demons. They tried to bind him with iron chains. He snapped those things like it was thread. Well now, I don’t think it was because he worked out at Gold’s Gym, or he took some nutritional supplements to make him stronger than ordinary, I’m sure he didn’t have bulging muscles. It was a demonic power, and this is what is being developed through yoga. Some of the yogis can stop their heart, they can control, for a limited length of time of course, they can control their blood pressure. They can make their blood pressure go up or go down just by the power of their mind. So, the medical doctors are studying it, thinking wow, if we could teach this to people just think of what it could do. But again, there is no scientific evidence of how it works. How does it work? In fact, it defies all scientific explanations. The only explanation that fits is what the Bible says, this is demonic power. Now how does that happen? Satan is subject to the laws—we had better get that clear—Satan is not supernatural, he cannot do any supernatural things, but he lives in another dimension, or occupies another dimension, a non-physical dimension, subject to the laws of that non-physical dimension as well. But when he invades, Satan or his demons invade the physical dimension, then they can do what seem to be miracles, but they are not miracles from our standpoint. So Tom, it’s dangerous stuff, and we try to give a documentation for that in this book.

Tom:

Dave, one of the most influential individuals in really winning the West to Eastern mysticism is the Dalai Lama. You find him everywhere, it seems, his influence, even within the Roman Catholic Church, is amazing but in general he is a spiritual leader that has been accepted by the West and people flock to wherever he is. What about him?

Dave:

Tom, I don’t know if you were with me, whether we were there together, I remember in a Lutheran church in Southern California , Los Angeles area, and here come the Lutheran priests or whatever you want to call them, here comes the Dalai Lama’s monks and they are walking down the center isle. Were you there at that time?

Tom:

No.

Dave:

Walking down the center isle, you know, one group on each side, and oh just a wonderful ecumenical event to show how close Christianity is to the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama spoke in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and to an overflow crowd of 5,000, got a standing ovation when he said all religions are the same. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1969, I think it was, I don’t remember, I can’t remember all these things, but I was in New Zealand . I was in New Zealand being interviewed by a newspaper, one of the national newspapers. They wanted to ask me—well, they did ask me questions, what about Robert Schuler, what about Oral Roberts and Robertson and all these phonies? I told them, I just gave them the facts, and then I said, But what about the Dalai Lama? Now let me tell you about the Dalai Lama. He’s traveling around the world, he has audiences of thousands and he is initiating them into Tibetan Tantric Yoga, sexual yoga, and he tells them that through this meditation, and through this yoga they can become Bodhisatvas, that is little Buddhas, and they can create their own—I mean, I didn’t even get that far, Tom. No, they stopped me right there. They did not want to hear one bad word about the Dalai Lama, but they sure wanted to hear whatever I could dig up on Christian leaders!

Tom:

Dave, he is an evangelist—

Dave:

Absolutely.

Tom:

What we are talking about here, not only yoga but for Eastern mysticism, and so on. Dave, let me address what we are going to talk about next week, the Lord willing. Your title Chapter 2 of your book, Yoga and the Body of Christ , and I know you love the subtitle: What Positions Should Christians Hold? Well, this is an area of controversy, and it’s important because as we see the apostasy developing within Christianity we find that Christians are turning away, professing Christians or even biblical Christian, those who would call themselves evangelicals, are turning away from the Word of God, and picking up anything and everything that’s out there. And certainly, Christian yoga, which we will get into next week, it’s really an oxymoron, it’s a contradiction in terms. What can you tell us about what we will get into next week?

Dave:

Well, Tom, it’s fantastic how it is growing, and the Christians who are teaching it in evangelical churches who are saying, “but this is Christianity, Jesus practiced it,” and so forth. It simply isn’t true, but millions, literally millions are being deceived by this, and hundreds of thousands, at least, in the church.

Tom:

And this is not just fringe Christianity, we’re talking about Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, those who would call themselves fundamentally biblical, yet yoga has invaded the church.