Yoga - what I learned and experienced

Yoga has three parts in it: Postures (Asanas), Breathing (Swasa), and Meditation (Dhyanam).

To understand roles of the three parts, we need to understand philosophy and beliefs behind it. One may say, I don't want to understand all that as I'm going to replace the philosophy with my own beliefs, which you cannot. Because, they are born out of the philosophy, especially those three together. You will notice, by practicing them together, you practice the philosophy.

The Belief

In Hinduism the emphasis is unequivocally on Duality (dwanda). God is one, but the phenomenal world is characterized by duality. The diversity of creation is characterized by pairs of opposites, day and night, earth and heaven, soul and body, light and darkness, heat and cold, good and evil, god and goddesses, man and woman, male and female, stable and unstable, gods and demons, death and rebirth, the sun and the moon etc. Human beings are forever caught in this duality, driven by desires and attachments, which create in them feelings of attraction and aversion. The ideal portrayed is that every human being should rise above these dualities and become equal to them. This is called samatvam, equanimity, which is the condition of a stabilized mind experienced by the yogis and ascetics at the end of a long spiritual journey. Attraction and aversion towards objects or creation, whether it is sexual or otherwise, is responsible for our bondage and until we become equal to all, we cannot enter transcendental states.

On a side note here, notice Shiva who is worshipped and whose idol you find in many of the yoga places is Ardha nareeswarudu, means he is half man (god) and half woman (goddess), both opposites together in one.

The goal of yoga (combination of Postures, Breathing mechanism and Meditation) is to raise above the Duality and become one with God (Brahman). This duality is also referred as Veil, which you can find in LDS religion as well.

When you are getting into yoga more and more, you experience (I experienced) the following:

First, you start gaining control over your body. Your mind starts to sensing deeper muscles and joints through postures and stretches. Second, through combining the breathing exercises, you start establishing control over (union between) your mind and body, and start preparing for meditation through holding your breaths for a short period of time after every inhalation (when you do that, you can experience small block outs or still mode in your mind and body, from top to bottom). Third, through bringing the meditation into the combination, you start separating yourself from your physical body. You start having a view point of onlooker. It shift from self-identification to self-atman (soul or spirit). You would notice many people practicing yoga referring themselves (physical) in third person.

Why do you experience this? To understand that, you need to understand the philosophy that gave birth to the combination of the three (Postures, Breathing and Meditation) in the Yoga.  

The Philosophy

Our emotions, bondages and complexity in our lives are a result of the duality (the veil) which is intrinsic part of the creation that we are part of. Four different directions people use to attain the highest goal of raising above the duality (creation, the veil) and reach the God in whom there is oneness. The direction is determined by the complex of Attitudes, Interests and Temperament of the individual. The unique feature of Hinduism is that there are multiple paths to the same goal.

4 kind of persons

1. reflective (thinking) 
2. emotional (valuing or feeling) 
3. essentially active (sensation) 
4. empirical or experimental (intuitive) 

All 4 ways have the common preliminary of cultivating the habits and practices of nonInjury, Truthfulness, Honesty, Cleanliness, Contentment, Self-Discipline, and a Compelling Desire to reach the goal. 

4 Basic Forms of Yoga 

1. Jnana Yoga 
2. Bhakti Yoga 
3. Karma Yoga 
4. Raja Yoga 

Jnana Yoga - 

Appeals to the Thinker, the Philosopher, and the Analyst. 

3 Main parts 

• Education (scriptures) 
• Reflection: involves breathing, life into the concept of Atman into a momentous reality. Active awareness. Notice the language of referring themselves as a third person. "My" distinguishes. What I think stands apart. Starts separating your body from your self. For example: instead of saying a car hit me, it would be said, a car him my right rear. 
• Meditation: shifting self-identification to self-Atman. (it is used to relive the life-cycle of different animals). With meditation one has the detached viewpoint of an onlooker--one still feels pain, but the fear is gone. 

Notice how the principles of Karma creeps in. Relieving from responsibilities and bondages through separating body from soul. What body is doing, I don't need to worry too much about it. This reflection through meditation and postures start influencing our thoughts and views. 

Bhakti Yoga - 

God is conceived as otherness; separateness (total rejection of the view that the God you love is your Self). 

Adoration is in passionate inwardness and is personal in character. 

God's personality is indispensable--the worship of God through human incarnation. 

Emphasis on Hinduism's myths. 

Example invocation: 

Myth, not logic, moves people. 3 special features of this approach: 

• japam - repeating the name of God as a warming presence, and repetition becomes unconscious. 
• ringing the changes on love--different nuances of love in different relationships. All aspects are part of the love for God. 
• the worship of God as one's chosen ideal as one of God's human incarnations: Christ, Rama, Krishna, or Buddha. 

Karma Yoga - 

The way through work for active persons. You can find God in the everyday world. 

• Karma yoga is usually practiced with either Jnana or Bhakti yoga. 
• The idea is that every action performed upon the external world has its imprint on the mind, either positive or negative, based on the action. 
• All tasks of daily life become a way of devotion. You view each task as a ritual. 
• Work is done without attachments. One forsakes all claims for success or failure. What's done is done. 
• Karma yogi will do each thing as it comes as if it were the only thing he has to do. (This is where Caste system comes out of). 

Raja Yoga - 

The royal road to re-integration by psychological experiment. 

• A starting point for Raja yoga is the recognition that our true selves are vastly very wonderful and that we have a true passion for finding this Self. 
• The experiments consist of practicing certain prescribed mental exercises and seeing the effect on our mental condition. 
• Hindu model of a man is a layered being. Perhaps, it's more metaphorical than literally accurate--even so it's a map of the territory of great use. 
• The positive effects are getting beyond the pitter-patter of daily existence (Samsara), but great risks are involved also. Consciousness can degenerate into neurosis or psychosis. 

This involves Postures (E.g., the lotus position), Mastering the Breath (a typical inhaling and exhaling exercise as well as a kind of hibernation that helps reducing the amount of CO2 exhaled in some specific cycles) and Meditation (mastering the concentration to loosing the awareness of yourself and of time and duration).

"Rightly used, it is the high road to perfection; abused, and it can create a hell past human imagining (p. 3). More men and women have been driven insane through a premature awakening of forces latent in these centers than most students realize." - Concentration and Meditation: A Manual of Mind Development. 

Our bodies and physiology are very complex. To see how these specific postures help preparing our bodies towards this goal, please read this: 

Regarding the yoga asanas or physical postures Swami Vivekananda writes in his book Raja Yoga: “A series of exercises, physical and mental, is to be gone through every day until certain higher states are reached. Nerve currents will have to be dispatched and given a new channel. New sorts of vibrations will begin: the whole constitution will be remodeled, as it were.”

In Yoga: The Method of Re-Intergation Alain Danielou, a French scholar on yoga, writes that the real import of yoga is as “a process of control of the gross body which aims at freeing the subtle body.” The subtle body is regarded as extremely complex and consisting of 72,000 invisible psychic channels called nadis corresponding to the physical or gross body. The subtle body and the physical body are connected at seven primary points or chakras ranging from the top of the head to the base of the spine.

The chakras are believed to control the consciousness of an individual. Manipulating the spine through various yoga postures is believed to increase the energy flow from the subtle body altering the consciousness of the individual. Kundalini yoga and hatha yoga directly manipulate the chakras through their various postures and breathing exercises.

In a mind over body relationship mantra yoga also seeks to alter consciousness of an individual by the repetition of mantras, which Guru Dev, the guru of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, considered the “favorite names of the gods”. Mantras are repeated silently or audibly up to several hours and produce altered states of consciousness.

The combination of Yoga postures, breathing techniques and meditation is very dangerous. It naturally drives you to open yourself to all kinds of things, philosophies and thoughts.

Jesus says in Matthew 12:43-45

“When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”

That is why, even though I'm still planning on writing a response to Holy Yoga if God wills it, I called the book heresy as it is deceiving to teach that just adding the name Jesus, yet practicing the combination would help us strengthening our relationship with God. From reading Introduction and the first chapter, she uses the concepts of the body and unity of the Church in a very wrongful way. She must not have proper understanding the concepts well and confused by her practices or driven by some forces that I believe do exist.

Once you get in this path, there is a lot down out there in the depths.

NOTE: If you are doing just the postures (without the combination of breathing techniques and meditation) to the extent of stretching and not driven to attain higher goals in them, I believe it is fine. We to stretches and let our kids do those in our supervision. 

Yoga - idol

Just as with most things, there are two sets of arguments on Yoga and on how it fits to the Christian walk. I think, before we take a side, we need to identify the core issue where these two arguments arise from. The core issue here is whether an idol and a practice that is used to worship an idol has any demonic power to it. Understanding these would help us understand how far we should stretch this aspect that distinguishes the two arguments.

To the Western World, idol or worshipping idol is not familiar. So, let's start there. 

What is an idol? 

From my Hindu background, in which worshipping an idol is a big part of it, which is very similar to OT days, I see it as one or a partial aspect of God, worshipping of which keeps us from the fullness of God. It is like giving us a quick fulfillment that goes as quick as it comes, which makes us depending on it again and again. In a way, it's like the difference between joy and happiness. Some form of entertainment, like TV, would make you happy quickly, but it doesn't last long as the joy that would come from establishing a relationship with God. So, one can say the idols of the Western World are drugs, money and sex. 

That is why, there had to be millions of god in Hinduism. There is one idol or god for money (called Laxmi), one for education (Saraswathi), one for dance (Nataraj), one for power (Durga), one for fertility, one for destruction, one for truth, one for loyalty, one for renunciation, one for getting rid of bad omens........the list goes on. 

And, what you need to notice here is, there is a specific way to worship to specific idol. Please bare with me another important aspect here. The combination of a specific idol and the specific form of worship, limits you to being transformed in that one aspect of life, and keeps you from being transformed wholly. You can see the same with worshipping (love of) money. One could get rich, while it's not always guaranteed, but end up leaving everything else. 

Psalm 115:8 says "Those who make them become like them; so do all who trust in them."  

These concepts are something that I had to wrestle with before accepting the God of the Bible. When I was worshipping idol, didn't I love god? Yes, there is no doubt that I always loved God. And, please note that, the love on god is what drives all those to worship idols. Then, when it is my love for god that drives me to worship an idol in whatever form, why the God of the Bible HATED it? 

In fact, an idol and a specific form of worship geared towards a specific idol keeps us from the God who is complete and keeps us from being transformed into His likeness as a whole. 

Again, coming back to the difference between happiness produced by entertainment and happiness produced by joy, without God, we lack joy that lasts for eternity, but entertainment gives you a quick dose of happiness. One could keep craving for more and more entertainment and kept from looking beyond it. 

As you got some idea on idol and power of it, let's look at next topic. 

Source of the power of an idol. Is it demonic? or simply in the minds of people? 

There are two understandings on this as well.  

One - idols and practices of their worship have demonic forces, so we need to stay away from them. 

Two - there is no power to idols and practices, it is just in our minds, and as long as we have clear conscious, we don't have to worry about it. 

Seriously, one simple way to find it is to participate in one of those worships to personally experience of the power of it. My wife, who was born and brought up here in US and in the knowledge and understanding of the Word of God, came very close to it in her first visit to India, and can explain this to you well. 

But, here, let's look at what Bible says about it first. 

While one verse after another talks about how power less an idol is, like Psalm 135:15-17, let's not forget two points: one - why there had to be that many verses to keep reminding us over and over how powerless they are? two - why God did not simply ignore the topic of idol, but specifically told us neither to have an idol nor to use any of those pagan practices of worshipping (Exodus 34:17 and Deuteronomy 12:30-31)? 

Psalm 115:4-8 and Colossians 2:8 

Exodus 32:4 - the work of God in one becomes wasted. 

God didn't say idols are nothing but man made, so I don't care whatever you do with those. Instead, every time after they conquered a land filled with idols, He asked them to destroy all those completely. 

Let's not use passages like 1 Corinthians 8 and Acts 10 & 11 out of context. 

First, topic here is when someone offers you food that is sacrificed. But, let's ask ourselves if Paul himself would practice the act of sacrificing food, so he can win over the souls that are lost? Second, you may be practicing it with a clear conscience, but what about your weaker brother? Then, what about same Paul talking on the same issue in 1 Corinthians 10:27-28? Ultimately, when you read Paul's instructions in this matter carefully, even thought there is no power behind it, do not practice it. It is same as rest of the Bible on this issue. 

Acts 10 & 11 is about God blessing Jews and Gentiles, whoever believes, receiving the Holy Spirit alike, and it is about receiving gentile believers equally. It is not about receiving a ticket or license to practice ways of other religions. 

Again, the fact that the Bible had to remind us the idols and pagan practices have no power over and over again itself shows what kind of a snare they are. They themselves might not be demonic forces, but demonic forces use them very well. That is why God always asked them to be destroyed completely. 

A quick response to https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/hy-website/YogaandChrist.pdf : 

I was born and raised in that Indian culture and religion, and now I'm married to and live in this US culture and follows Christian religion. I was part of the Cru, especially on the International part of it, in which we learn and experience adopting to the cultures and ways to reach out people from various cultures more effectively. 

So, I see his point of view, and agree to several things he says. But, to the extent of his wife wearing articles of hindu idols? to the extent of using coconuts in the worship which has a very deep meaning in the religion that they are coming from? 

I'm not a theologian and I didn't go to a seminary, but I can tell you this. While, as I chose not to compromise in the ways and concepts, my parents, even though they struggled to the point of hating the God I chose to believe in to start with, ended up receiving Jesus and became a part of Church, everyone I met who came to Christ from Hindu background but did what his or her parents asked him to do in the name of loving them does not have his/her parents received Jesus yet. Instead, few of them ended up moving from believing Jesus being the only way to Him being one of the ways. I can give you names and details of them if you think I am making it up. 

In India, just because a person started believing in Jesus and coming to the Church, doesn't mean he or she is saved. Because, Jesus is viewed as one of the gods by many, and, if you act like you accept and respect their gods, they sure do the same. In fact, we faced similar situation right here before. But, as Autumn said that, in the end the way of God wins, and not bending but sticking to the principles and ways gave us the credibility to the level of asking to pray for them during their hardships. I can share with you more details in person.   

Let's not fall into the temptation of quick routs and short cuts. Our God is not a god of quick routs and short cuts. While blending into the culture and ways of certain group to reach out to them is important, we should not ever compromise to the level of causing more confusion to either the other non-believer or a weak brother in Christ. In the end, it is that parson who needs to chose and there has to be a clear distinguish between what he has to chose and what he already follows. 

We, in the flesh, tend to idolize everything. Sometimes, we do that with the Great Commission as well, and take it to too far, into our hands, and end up doing it outside God's principles. Even though our intention is right and even seems like producing fruit right away in the starting, it ends up causing a lot of damage in the long run. History is our evidence. 

A quick response to Holy Yoga 

It was just yesterday that this book was brought to my attention. I got a copy of it online and started reading it. With kids and many other things that keeping me busy and distracting constantly, I could only finish Introduction part of the book so far. There is a saying in India. When cooking rice, you don't need to test the whole rice, but by testing one grain, you can tell if it is cooked or not. Just from the introduction, with many notes and Bible references I wrote, I'm sorry to say but I call it heresy. 

Nothing in related to Yoga seems changed, except using the name Jesus. Either the name Jesus or a verse from the Bible itself is not a "mantra", that chanting or saying it over and over again would produce any miracle. Meditating on the Word is different from using the Word to meditate in eastern way. Verses like 1 Corinthians 6:20 and the way the holy yoga (batman :)) presents the body to serve the LORD are different. While Bible calls us to offer our body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2), the holy yoga wants to make sure of making body healthy, relieved from pain and connected to mind first. I feel bad for Paul for not knowing this technique as he was suffering and pressure from a lot of pain from the persecution (2 Corinthians 11:23-29), but went to God to heal him instead, and accepted even when God said my Grace is enough instead (2 Corinthians 12). In fact, which prophet in the Bible was effected by weak or deteriorating body? 

Those are my quick thoughts, and I'm still planning on reading the whole book and writing a response (may be chapter by chapter as I read) in a separate post.

Meanwhile, I shared my knowledge and experience on Yoga and Meditation in a separate post here: http://challengestochrisianwalk.blogspot.com/2015/10/yoga-what-i-learned-and-experienced.html