Is Yoga A 'Sacred Science?'

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Welcome to Search the Scriptures Daily, a radio ministry of The Berean Call featuring Dave Hunt and T. A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael, it’s great to have you along. 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 Really Fall Into a Trance?” In Religion in the News, “The Mormons and Mohammed.” We’ll take a look at that story and examine the question: “What is the Meaning of Election?” 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, “Is Yoga a Sacred Science?” 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. If you’re new to our program, we’re currently doing a series based upon Dave Hunt’s book, Yoga and the Body of Christ: What Position Should Christians Hold? and we’re concerned about yoga’s growing popularity within Christianity, not only because it is a religion that is contradictory to biblical Christianity, but it’s stunning acceptance by many Christians indicate that there is an incredible lack of discernment in the evangelical church today. So for those who are already convinced that yoga is contrary to Christianity, perhaps we can provide some information that you can pass on to others. Now Dave, let me begin with a quote you provide in Chapter 5, titled: “Beware the Science of Yoga,” and you can take off from there. Dave, as you know, this is a quote from Swami Shivenanda of Rishikesh , India , and this is a part of the description of yoga as an exact science, so he says. “ Kundalini yoga is that yoga which treats of kundalini sakti , the six centers of spiritual energy the Shat Chakras , the arousing of the sleeping kundalini sakti and its union with Lord Siva in Sahasrara Chakra , a the crown of the head. This is an exact science. This is also known as Laya yoga . The six centres are pierced ( Chakra Bheda ) by the passing of kundalini sakti to the top of the head. Kundala means “coiled.” Her form is like a coiled serpent. Hence the name Kundalini .” This is science, Dave, exact science?

Dave:

Well Tom, it’s an astonishing statement by this master yogi. What do they mean by science? What science has verified that there is a spiritual power that lies coiled like a serpent at the base of the spine? And then, in this process of yoga, Kundalini yoga , that awakens this, this Kundalini force—it’s a spiritual force, science does not deal with spiritual forces. And it goes through the Chakras, sciences verify the Chakras, and this happens and it ends up in the crown of the head? I mean, is this some kind of a joke? No, they are serious about it, and the West swallows this? Oh yes, the science of yoga. Okay, isn’t that wonderful. There is no such science! Certainly not a science that would pass in the West, one would think.

Tom:

But Dave, people aren’t thinking through these things. For example, we have Religious Science, Science of Mind, it has nothing to do with science at all. Well, why don’t you lay it out for our audience, go ahead.

Dave:

Let me explain that, Tom. You talk about religious science, science of mind and so forth. If it is a science it works by laws. If it works by laws it is not by grace. That’s pretty simple. If it works by laws you don’t have to be spiritual, you don’t have to be religious, you don’t have to be a godly person, you don’t even have to be kind and loving. I fly a lot, you fly a lot, we don’t poke our heads into the cockpit and say, hey are you guys kind? Are you born again Christians? Are you loving? No, all we care about is that they know how to fly an airplane, and that’s a science. That was Mary Baker Eddy’s problem. She thought it would be great if she could pass Jesus off as a scientist, the first scientist, First Church of Christ Scientists in Boston , Massachusetts . If it’s a science— No, but here’s what the scientist, an atheistic scientist, Richard Dawkins, for example: You guys, you believe in this God out there— Your God is only a hypothesis to explain what science hasn’t yet explained, but one day science will have explained everything, and then we don’t need your God—What do we need God for when we have science? So, Mary Baker Eddy, she had it backwards. She’s trying to turn Jesus into a scientist. No, she’s destroyed the whole thing. There are no miracles in science. Well, you thought that was a miracle, you didn’t understand the scientific laws that governed there. We’ll explain that to you, there are no miracles, there is no God. So, she had this all wrong, so Science of Mind, Religious Science, and so forth, they are just barking up the wrong tree.

Tom:

Well Dave, for our audience then, this is supposedly a sacred science, that’s the way these gurus are laying it out.

Dave:

Imagine a sacred science!

Tom:

What would that mean to somebody like Galileo, Boyle, Newton , Pasteur, what was their science? I mean, some of these men were religious, but what about their science? Isn’t there a methodology here that you go about?

Dave:

They were Christians, professing Christians. In fact, almost every founder of science was a Christian. In fact, they said, it was their confidence that God had created the universe as an orderly system that you could figure out. You can’t figure God out, you can’t make God do something. And Einstein, when he came up with the Theory of Relativity, he was asked: What does this have to do with religion? He said: It has nothing to do with religion. This is science. Religion is something else. Now we’ve got religious science, and these guys—we have scientific, spiritual power that is coiled like a serpent and springs up and manifests itself through the Chakras when you reach the right state of consciousness. As you said, Galileo never heard of that and he wouldn’t acknowledge this as a science, neither would Einstein, or Newton , or anyone else. But you’ve got a big conference, you’ve had a number of big conferences with scientists and yogis getting together. We mentioned some weeks ago, and I won’t go over that again, remember Herbert Benson went up with a group of scientists, and they verified—I mean, they didn’t verify, they don’t know what this power is, but they verified that these Buddhists, these monks, can sit there in below freezing weather with just a cotton robe around them, they took their sandals off, and they are meditating all night. The they get up in the morning and they just dust the snow off, its been snowing, and back down they go. What was that, 18,000 feet, something like that, and the scientists are stunned. This is something outside of science. Try to identify demons, try to identify satanic power. How did Satan put boils on Job? And he could have taken them off. How did Satan take Jesus up to the top of a mountain, a high mountain it says, show Him the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time? This is not supernatural by the way, it comes from another dimension. Satan is subject to God’s laws, he cannot violate them. But his dimension, when it invades our dimension, we have nothing in our laws, laws of physics and chemistry and so forth, to explain what’s going on. But they think they can some day, and it won’t work.

Tom:

Dave, there’s another aspect to this. In science, when you come up with a theory—now, correct me if I’m wrong here, this is not my background, all right? But my understanding is that if you come up with a theory, the first thing you try and do, if you’re a true scientist you try to disprove it, right?

Dave:

Well, it has to be disprovable if possible.

Tom:

Well, in other words it doesn’t become a law if you can disprove it. So you work at trying to see if it will hold, in effect, hold water, all right? With a so-called religious science, or this sacred science, there’s no testing this. You take it by faith, and there may be manifestations, and so on, but it’s still not based on a scientific methodology, right?

Dave:

No, because it is not governed by the laws of science, it’s from somewhere else. You don’t govern God by the laws of science. See Tom, you know, it’s like witchcraft, when you light a candle, when you mumble a formula, then the spirit world has to respond. God does not have to respond to you. It’s by grace, it’s by His mercy, He’s in charge and there is nothing you can do to evoke God, nothing you can do that would cause God to respond to you, that would cause God to answer your prayer. When you deal with God you are not dealing with cause and effect. Even if you lived a perfect sinless life—well, God’s going to have to help me now. No, it’s still by His grace and mercy, He doesn’t owe us anything. So, in science it all works by laws, it has to. When you put two chemicals together in a test tube it had better do the same thing every time or, sometimes you jump up and you come down, the law of gravity. But sometimes you jump up and you get stuck on the ceiling, because, you know, you never know what’s going to happen next. No, it works by laws! If it works by laws, it is not by God’s grace an mercy. And you cannot get God to do what you want Him to do by following certain procedures. That’s witchcraft, that’s divination, absolutely forbidden, you know, like an Ouija Board, or like tarot cards, or a crystal ball. These are devices that will cause you to get in touch with spiritual power. That is not—you may try to make a science out of, but that is not dealing with God, you’re dealing with a demonic world, and they will oblige you in order to deceive you.

Tom:

Dave, as we talked about in the past programs, and this is why, one of the reasons we are objecting to all of this. because this “spirituality” from the East has been promoted as science. For example, we have talked about Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, he began with the Spiritual Regeneration Movement, but that didn’t fly, couldn’t that into schools, couldn’t really promote that here. So now he comes back with the science of Transcendental Meditation, and has been able to get our educational systems to buy into it. All he did was change the title.

Dave:

Yeah, if they really knew what it was about, and we explain that, we get to that in another program perhaps, this is not science by a long shot.

Tom:

But Dave, there was somebody who preceded Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and I’m thinking about Paramahansa Yogananda. When I was living in Southern California in Santa Monica , I remember, you know, driving down to the beach, and right around Pacific Palisades he had one of his centers. When I lived there I would go by it every day, but he was the most influential and I want to talk about him. Can you give us a little bit of background?

Dave:

Well Tom, you’re a “johnny come lately.” See, I was born and raised in California , and his center was on the way to San Diego , much farther South. But anyway, it was called, the Self Realization Fellowship, SRS. Why? What do you mean, Self Realization? Because you are God, and through yoga you learn that you are God. That’s what you are supposed to find out, that’s the big secret that, The Secret , is talking about that we talked about earlier. So, Self Realization Fellowship, is also called, Kriya yoga. He initiated more than 100,000 people into Kriya yoga, and then his disciples initiated many others into it.

Tom:

This goes back to the 20’s, so we’re not talking about somebody who just stepped off the boat from India .

Dave:

Right. Kriya yoga is also known as Hatha yoga, the physical yoga, but this physical yoga has a spiritual goal to link you with Brahman, the universal force actually, and to bring you to where you realize that you are God. Now Tom, Yogananda, I forget the details, I knew Yogananda well, but he died, not triumphantly. He had his diseases, he had his problems like all of them do.

Tom:

Well, he was taking on the karma of the world.

Dave:

That’s what they said, that’s what they said, yeah.

Tom:

Well Dave, Yogananda, he really angers me, and I’ll tell you—I’m going to read a quote that you have in your book, Yoga and the Body of Christ, his spin on Jesus is outrageous libel.

Dave:

Yes, it is.

Tom:

I want to read some of it, but before I get into that, you see, not only do these gurus lie about their religion being a science, they lie about their religion and other religions and religious figures in order for it to be accepted. I’m reading from View of Yogananda with Regard to Christ . Here’s what he writes: “The three Wise Men who came to worship the Christ child hailed from India and named him Isa…a Sanskrit name that became Jesus in the Bible. The star they followed was not a physical celestial body but in the spiritual eye located between the eyebrows, which they accessed through deep meditation. Jesus traveled to India , where he practiced yoga meditation with the great sages…during his “lost years” from age 13 to 30.” Yogananda’s book, Dave, I’m continuing on with—this is a review. It says: (Yogananda’s book) “The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of Christ Within You, offers…the deeper meaning of Christ’s teachings and their essential unity with yoga, one of the world’s oldest and most systematic religious paths to achieving oneness with God. The book…the first detailed interpretation of the four Gospels by a Hindu…aims to recover what Yogananda believed were major teachings of Christ lost to institutional Christianity…that every seeker can know God…by direct experience through yoga.” Dave, what is this, with business with lost. I mean, the Mormons say that things were lost, the Muslims say that things were lost, everything is lost.

Dave:

Well, that’s one thing about the Bible, you can trace it back. Its been there in the Bible unchanged, and you know we just had a conference here in Bend , I think it was a terrific conference, one of the speakers was Randall Price. He put some, you know, on his DVD’s, there were the images on the screen.

Tom:

He’s really a terrific archeologist as well as a Bible teacher and so forth.

Dave:

He talked some about the Dead Sea Scrolls, out in these jars in the caves of Kumera, where he has been doing archeological digging for the last five years, I believe, he has been in charge. And what did they find? One of the things they found was almost a complete Isaiah scroll. If you visit—they have a whole museum for the Isaiah scroll. You’ve been there, and you walk in and you can walk around, you can read in Hebrew, the same Hebrew as they have today, there it is word for word. That manuscript is dated to be a thousand years older than the earliest manuscript we have prior to its discovery. Well, I guess there would be a lot of mistakes, and so forth. No, exactly the same!

Tom:

It was good enough for Jesus, He used it.

Dave:

The Bible has not changed, so what’s this nonsense about hidden—oh those Christians, they didn’t realize the real meaning of this. So when you talk about a hidden meaning to the text, well, wait a minute! God said to Moses, Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Psalm 1 says: “In his law he meditates day and night.” Psalm 119, is all about the law of God, his statutes, his word, and so forth. So, the Word of God does not change! The scripture says: “Forever, O God, your word is settled in heaven.” It doesn’t change—we have to bring it up to date and you couldn’t lose it. These are real Christians, the apostles, Jesus himself did not lose what the scripture teaches. It is the fact that these yogis are trying to introduce a teaching that isn’t even part of this. It talked about the “lost years” of Jesus. Well, they say Jesus went to India and he studied under the yogis, under the gurus. Tom, you know as well as I do, every guru who came to America , whether it was Paramahansa Yogananda, whether it’s Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, they all are sent by their guru, and they all must mention their guru—Guru Dev who was Maharishi’s guru. Jesus never referred to his guru. He used a term that the gurus didn’t like and neither did the rabbis. He spoke of My Father, which is in heaven. Jesus did not lead people into practicing yoga. You know, one of the holiest things that a disciple could do is to drink the water in which the yogi has bathed, and just drink it. That’s a marvelous thing—that gets you closer to yogi and so forth. Jesus gave them living water. He turned water into wine. He said, If any man thirst let him come to me and drink, and the water that I give will be like a well springing up to eternal life. All the teachings of Jesus are absolutely contrary to what these gurus teach, and there were no special practices taught by Jesus to lead you into a spiritual state of consciousness. Jesus said: If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples, indeed—you will know the truth, the truth will set you free. Jesus said: I am THE way, THE truth, THE life, no man comes to the Father but by me. So, you want to go to Jesus? You want to learn who he is? Go to his Word. You want to become one with the universe, find out that you’re a god? God says, in the Old Testament, Jeremiah:10:10But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king: at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation. & 11, You say to the god who have not created the heavens and the earth, they will perish from under this heaven and from this earth. So, you want to become a god, you want to reach self-realization? I can tell you that Paramahansa Yogananda, he is in hell right now, separated from the true God whom he never knew and whom he denied by his teachings.

Tom:

Dave, again, I get angry because it’s not just that they are introducing a religion as a science, but then they are turning to our belief system, biblical Christianity and corrupting and destroying that. These guys are just bad!

Dave:

Amen.