Is Yoga Serpent Worship?

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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, thanks for joining us. Ahead 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 “Why did Paul claim Roman Citizenship?” In Religion in the News, “ Rome and Allah.” We’ll take a look at that story, and examine the question: “If doctors can treat the body, why not the mind?” We hope you can stay tuned. 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 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 serpent worship?” 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. Our topic for this segment of our program is Dave Hunt’s book, Yoga and the Body of Christ, What Position Should Christians Hold? And we’re concerned about yoga’s popularity within Christianity, not only because it’s a religion that is in direct opposition to biblical Christianity, but its growing acceptance by many Christians indicates there is a critical lack of discernment in the evangelical church today. So, no matter where you stand on the issue, hopefully we can provide information about the subject that you will find helpful. Dave, why would it be necessary, and obviously some thought it to be very necessary, to create a “spiritual emergency network” with centers around the country complete with hot lines and lists of licensed mental health professionals who are on call?

            Dave:

Tom, this was started mainly by Christina Grof along with her husband Stanislaw, and there were so many people who were experiencing spiritual emergencies. They were, as the hippies used to say, “freaking out.” They were having demonic experiences, to put it bluntly. They were—wow—seeing demons, they were on the verge of insanity, having horrible, horrible experiences as a result of practicing yoga. Not just from drugs, of course you expect that from drugs, but from Eastern meditation. We talked about it in some prior programs, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, TM: Transcendental Meditation, So many of the practitioners of that, some of them went insane, ended up in insane asylums, some of them committed suicide. You remember the young lady we interviewed at one time, and suddenly there is a demon on each side of her trying to get in as she is practicing TM. So, the Grofs started this, and they eventually had a network.

            Tom:

Yeah. Dave, let me give you some information from their promotional Material. It says: “Trained graduate students in the school of professional psychology at the California Institute for Integral Studies respond to each caller, providing assistance and educational information regarding spiritual emergence. They can also make referrals to licensed mental health professionals in the caller’s area…” It goes on to say, “The advisors are respectful of spiritual experience, familiar with a number of spiritual traditions and qualified to work with various areas of difficulty.”

            Dave:

Now Tom, the term that they use is “spiritual emergence” they are not talking about spiritual emergency. So they are trying to say, well, this is all good. You see, you are emerging into a higher level of spirituality, and of course you’re going to have nightmares and you’re going to have visions and demonic appearances. Well that’s just part of this process. So, they’re not really going to discourage you, it says they—Oh, they are familiar with all of these traditions, they’re not going to say anything is right or anything is wrong, but they are just trying to nurse you through. And that’s so tragic, but this is demonic stuff. Now the reason for it is, we’ve got Satan himself, the serpent, involved and he plays a huge part in yoga.

            Tom:

Yeah. Well Dave, that brings us to the title for Chapter 6, of your book. You title it, “The Great Dragon...That Old Serpent” But before I get to that, I’m sure there are people out there think, Man, I never heard of any of this stuff! You know, I thought yoga was just, you know, I was just going to the YMCA to do some stretching exercises.

            Dave:

Or to the local Baptist Church .

            Tom:

Well, now that’s the situation, not just Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, and so on, they don’t have to go to the YMCA anymore, it’s right there. And, as we’ve seen and we’ve talked about, these programs are growing in popularity, you have more people showing up in some churches for yoga exercises than they do for Bible studies, that kind of stuff, that’s what concerns us.

            Dave:

Well, Tom, we’ve talked about it in the past, we know where yoga comes from, it is pure Hinduism. It was devised because they’re trying to escape time, sense and the elements and reach moksha, it’s called, Buddhists call it Nirvana. They are trying to get beyond this physical body and this physical world. In fact, it is not anything that was developed to improve anyone’s health or physical fitness. It is, in fact, a technique for dying, technique for getting out of this body into the next reincarnation, or depending upon what they may believe in. So, Tom, people are being deceived and now somebody can say, Well, I’ve been practicing yoga for ten years and, didn’t bother me, I didn’t have any of this. Well, okay, but many, many people do have problems. But, on the other hand who knows what spiritual delusions this person has embraced through yoga.

            Tom:

Yeah. Now Dave, I just want to comment about what you said about yoga is not for health. We just had a conference as you know, and Caryl Matrisciana was here, she’s the producer of a video that we offer in yoga which is really terrific. But she grew up in India, and one of the things I’m talking there—one of the things that she said, logically, based on what we’ve been saying, I should have thought of this, but she said, You know, Tom, growing up in India, and obviously yoga being Hinduism, it was a part of life there, but it was never a part of life for young people. It was always for older people who were—you know, because it had to do with death and dying, not for developing physical health.

            Dave:

Right, and yet that’s what it is being promoted as in the United States .

            Tom:

Right, and even in India today, which is interesting, so the real theology behind it is being really overturned. But getting on to Chapter 6, which you titled, “The Great Dragon…That Old Serpent”

            Dave:

I didn’t finish the quotation: That Old Serpent the Devil. This is Revelation Chapter 12, who “…deceives the whole world.” It’s interesting that Satan—he kind of likes to be called The Serpent. You’d think he would try to avoid that, but instead he is worshipped in the form of a serpent all over this world, and that’s kind of what we get into in this chapter.

            Tom:

Yeah, and I think it’s interesting to just underscore some of these things, the religions of the world and how they have taken the lie of the serpent to Eve, and turned it into a blessing. In other words, Satan is worshipped, not because people are into satanic worship, but because in the historical process of the lie and the deceit involved, now this has become a good thing. So, Dave, there’s a couple of things I would like you to address in this. Number One, it really demonstrates that this was a historical event. Why would these people in all of these religions from South America, all over the world, the Greek, the Roman gods, to the Norse gods, and so on, there’s a serpent involved in some way. What? Does somebody just come up with that? These cultures independent of one another all have the same idea?

            Dave:

Well, Tom, I was speaking about this, I forget when, in a church, and a man came up to me afterwards, or he may have raised his hand in a Q&A and said it publicly, I don’t remember, but he said that he had just come back from Northern India. And way off in the jungles where nobody gets, they visited this temple, an ancient temple, and inside there was---I don’t know, you wouldn’t call it a fresco---it was a painting of some kind or other, really an ancient painting, very dim now with time. It was of a, there was a serpent, a woman, and a tree. Maybe I had mentioned that archeologists digging all over the world, they come across these three together, a serpent, a woman and a tree. So, he asked the natives there, through an interpreter, Why this? And they said, well, we worship the serpent. And he asked, well, why do you worship the serpent? Well, the serpent is the creator, he’s our savior, he brings the blessings to us. So, you have the Genesis story turned inside out. Now, the serpent is no longer the destroyer, he's not the one who lies to the human race but he’s the savior. Now Tom, just from my poor memory, because I haven’t even thought about this for many years, but you can go right down the list.

            Tom:

Let’s start with voodoo, with regard to the serpent, they teach that the “great serpent is the fountain of all true wisdom and the creator of the universe who took the rainbow as his wife and from the union came blood and all creatures.” Now, I’m quoting, Dave,

“And then as a final gift they taught the people to partake of the blood as a sacrament, that they might become the spirit and embrace the wisdom of the serpent.”

            Dave:

Well, that’s part of it, Tom, You’ve got the Hopi Indian dance, let’s go back a little farther. Let’s go back to the Orphic egg, a symbol of the cosmos wrapped around it is a serpent showing that he really is the originator, the sustainer, and so forth. Or, if you went to the temples in Egypt , Serapis the god, has a serpent coiled on his forehead. Or you could go to Central South America , Quetzalcoatl , the plumed serpent of the Mayans, the Aztecs.

            Tom:

Again, the savior of the world, from their perspective.

            Dave:

It’s staggering! You’ve got the naga of the Scandinavians. You’ve got, well, the caduceus, this symbol you see it on license plates on cars, the symbol of modern medicine is a staff with a serpent wound around it. And that comes from the temples of Asculepius, the god Asculepius, and the god Asculepius was worshiped with serpents. Why was that? I mean, this is into modern medicine now, because of an ancient story that said that the god Asculepius had received a healing herb from the mouth of a serpent. So, the serpent again, is not the destroyer, he’s not the liar, he’s the savior of the world, and how does he save us but through drugs, the healing herb. So, I remember, Tom, being at a graduation, this happened to be USC I think, University of Southern California , and the graduates were receiving their MD degree. They all recited together the Hippocratic oath. It begins something like this: I swear by Asculepius Physician, by Apollo, by Hygeia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses. Now where did I miss it, Tom?

            Tom:

Well, just turn a few things around, but then it says, “Making them my witnesses.”

            Right.

            Tom:

You think that would shock some people out there to know that this is what’s, this is what’s been going on for…?

            Dave:

This is the Hippocratic oath that is still current among doctors today.

            Tom:

So Dave, how does that tie in with Hinduism and yoga?   What about the serpent in Hinduism?  

            Dave:

Well, the serpent is the very heart of yoga. When you really get into yoga, and whether they call it Hatha Yoga, physical yoga, or not, Siddha Yoga, ultimately you have to contact the serpent power and release the serpent power, this is Kundalini Yoga. Kundalini, Kundalini means “coiled” in the Sanskrit, and this serpent is coiled three and a half times--why that was chosen, I don’t know--at the base of the spine, and when you reach the proper state of consciousness, which is the goal of yoga, it springs up and manifests itself through the chakras, the four centers, and up and through the crown of the head, and you reach enlightenment. Now, the books by the yogis, going way back, would say you must have your master there, your guru present, because you get involved in this it could be very dangerous, it could destroy you. But this is the goal, they all acknowledge this, and of course in Hinduism, we’ve mentioned in the past that Shiva, “The Destroyer” he’s called, one of the trimurti of the Hindu deities, he has entwined in his hair serpents. His name is Yogeshwara, which means, Lord of Yoga. And Krishna , you wouldn’t remember, Tom, back in the days, the Bhagavad Gita was more popular with university students than the Bible, of course. The Bhagavad Gita was all about Krishna . Krishna is one of the manifestations of Vishnu the third in this trimurti, and I don’t believe I even mentioned it this book, Tom, but I went to India on one occasion to write the story of a Hindu, former Hindu, who had been converted to Christ, come to know Christ. It’s very interesting how this came about. It involves Vishnu, it involves the Bhagavad Gita because he was trying to get a guru—in Hinduism you have to have a guru. Look, every yoga teacher, not the American ones, but the ones Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Muktananda, Sivananda, and all the rest of them, they were sent by their guru. There is always a guru involved, and you learn it all from the guru, you study under the guru, and so forth. He was trying to get his grandmother’s guru to be his guru, and the man said, you read the Bhagavad Gita for six months, and at the end of that time I will give you a test to see whether I will be willing to take you on as my disciple, and so he began reading it. Now, his father and his four uncles, they had a place of business, they were money lenders, it was right on the main square in this village. And so every morning as they were opening up, customers were arriving, he was reading the Bhagavad Gita in the Sanskrit. He came to this verse, I think it’s Chapter 2, somewhere around there, Vishnu is saying: From time to time I come forth—in a different form, and one of the forms was Krishna—I come forth to rescue the righteous and to destroy the sinners. Wow! He asked people around him, Is that—you know he’s reading in the Sanskrit,—do I have a misunderstanding of this language? No, they said, that’s what it says. He closed that Bhagavad Gita, wrapped it in its holy cloth, back on the shelf—that was it! Because he knew that he was a sinner, and how he is going to—Vishnu in whatever form he comes is going to destroy him. Tom, amazing how God works! One of these despised missionaries just a few days after that, stands right in front of this man’s place of business and opens this little black book. Wow! What do you think he’s—the verse he’s preaching from? This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. He never heard that before, of course. What?! That’s the one I need! And he had seen the untouchables, you know they have their—they’re off in a village by themselves.

            Tom:

That’s the lowest of the chaste, of the castes.

            Dave:

Right, and he knew—well, they don’t have any chaste, and he knew that they, these people read this little black book. He sent one of his servants to get one, and he began to read it, and he met Jesus. His life was transformed, I mean…. But here is Krishna , one of the manifestations of Vishnu, and he is the one who really introduced yoga to mankind, although Shiva is the Lord of Yoga. Tom, it is so intertwined with Hinduism. This is an integral part of the Hindu religion, and that it would come to America and then they would say, It’s purely a science, or it’s beneficial for health, has nothing to do with Hinduism, It’s just simply a lie. There may be some Western yoga instructors who do not know the truth, but they ought to learn the truth, and that’s why we have written this book.

            Tom:

Right. But you would think, Dave, for those who call themselves Christians, how more obvious can it be that this is so antithetical, so contrary to the Word of God. How does this stuff end up in churches? It’s just unbelievable.

            Dave:

Well, it’s a deception, and you quoted earlier: That Old Serpent—I guess that’s the title of the Chapter— That old serpent, the Devil . The rest of the verse says: who deceives the whole world. He is the deceiver and he is doing a masterful job of deceiving this world with putting the bait out, Oh you want good health? You want physical fitness? Okay, get it through Yoga, this is the way to do it.