Yoga essentially Hindu, anti-Christ?????

[ajtr]

Yoga essentially Hindu, anti-Christ​

December 18, 2010 4:01:37 PM

Albert Mohler

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When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral.

Some questions we ask today would simply baffle our ancestors. When Christians ask whether believers should practice yoga, they are asking a question that betrays the strangeness of our current cultural moment — a time in which yoga seems almost mainstream in America.

It was not always so. No one tells the story of yoga in America better than Stefanie Syman, whose recent book, The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, is a masterpiece of cultural history. Syman, an engaging author who is also a fifteen-year devotee of yoga, tells this story well.

Her book actually opens with a scene from this year’s annual White House Easter Egg Roll. President Barack Obama made a few comments and then introduced First Lady Michelle Obama, who said: “Our goal today is just to have fun. We want to focus on activity, healthy eating. We’ve got yoga, we’ve got dancing, we’ve got storytelling, we’ve got Easter-egg decorating.”

Syman describes the yoga on the White House lawn as “sanitised, sanctioned, and family-friendly,” and she noted the rather amazing fact that a practice once seen as so exotic and even dangerous was now included as an activity sufficiently safe and mainstream for children.

In her words:

There certainly was no better proof that Americans had assimilated this spiritual discipline. We had turned a technique for God realisation that had, at various points in time, enjoined its adherents to reduce their diet to rice, milk, and a few vegetables, fix their minds on a set of, to us, incomprehensible syllables, and self-administer daily enemas (without the benefit of equipment), to name just a few of its prerequisites, into an activity suitable for children. Though yoga has no coherent tradition in India, being preserved instead by thousands of gurus and hundreds of lineages, each of which makes a unique claim to authenticity, we had managed to turn it into a singular thing: a way to stay healthy and relaxed.

In her book, Syman tells the fascinating story of how yoga was transformed in the American mind from a foreign and “even heathen” practice into a cultural reality that is widely admired and practiced.

In telling this story, Syman documents the ties between yoga and groups or movements such as the Transcendentalists and New Thought — movements that sought to provide a spirituality that would be a clear alternative to biblical Christianity. She traces the influence of leading figures such as Swami Vivekananda and Swami Prabhavananda, along with Pierre Bernard and the now lesser-known Margaret Woodrow Wilson. Each of these figures played a role in the growing acceptance of yoga in America, but most were controversial at the time — some extremely so.

Syman describes yoga as a varied practice, but she makes clear that yoga cannot be fully extricated from its spiritual roots in Hinduism and Buddhism. She is also straightforward in explaining the role of sexual energy in virtually all forms of yoga and of ritualised sex in some yoga traditions. She also explains that yoga “is one of the first and most successful products of globalisation, and it has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.”

Reading The Subtle Body is an eye-opening and truly interesting experience. To a remarkable degree, the growing acceptance of yoga points to the retreat of biblical Christianity in the culture. Yoga begins and ends with an understanding of the body that is, to say the very least, at odds with the Christian understanding. Christians are not called to empty the mind or to see the human body as a means of connecting to and coming to know the divine. Believers are called to meditate upon the Word of God — an external Word that comes to us by divine revelation — not to meditate by means of incomprehensible syllables.

Nevertheless, a significant number of American Christians either experiment with yoga or become adherents of some yoga discipline. Most seem unaware that yoga cannot be neatly separated into physical and spiritual dimensions. The physical is the spiritual in yoga, and the exercises and disciplines of yoga are meant to connect with the divine.

Douglas R Groothuis, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and a respected specialist on the New Age Movement, warns Christians that yoga is not merely about physical exercise or health. “All forms of yoga involve occult assumptions,” he warns, “even hatha yoga, which is often presented as a merely physical discipline.” While most adherents of yoga avoid the more exotic forms of ritualised sex that are associated with tantric yoga, virtually all forms of yoga involve an emphasis on channeling sexual energy throughout the body as a means of spiritual enlightenment.Stefanie Syman documents how yoga was transformed in American culture from an exotic and heathen practice into a central component of our national cult of health. Of course, her story would end differently if Americans still had cultural access to the notion of “heathen.”

The nation of India is almost manically syncretistic, blending worldviews over and over again. But, in more recent times, America has developed its own obsession with syncretism, mixing elements of worldviews with little or no attention to what each mix means. Americans have turned yoga into an exercise ritual, a means of focusing attention, and an avenue to longer life and greater health. Many Americans attempt to deny or minimise the spiritual aspects of yoga — to the great consternation of many in India.

When Christians practice yoga, they must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga. The contradictions are not few, nor are they peripheral. The bare fact is that yoga is a spiritual discipline by which the adherent is trained to use the body as a vehicle for achieving consciousness of the divine. Christians are called to look to Christ for all that we need and to obey Christ through obeying his Word. We are not called to escape the consciousness of this world by achieving an elevated state of consciousness, but to follow Christ in the way of faithfulness.

There is nothing wrong with physical exercise, and yoga positions in themselves are not the main issue. But these positions are teaching postures with a spiritual purpose. Consider this — if you have to meditate intensely in order to achieve or to maintain a physical posture, it is no longer merely a physical posture.

The embrace of yoga is a symptom of our postmodern spiritual confusion, and, to our shame, this confusion reaches into the church. Stefanie Syman is telling us something important when she writes that yoga “has augured a truly post-Christian, spiritually polyglot country.” Christians who practice yoga are embracing, or at minimum flirting with, a spiritual practice that threatens to transform their own spiritual lives into a “post-Christian, spiritually polyglot” reality. Should any Christian willingly risk that?

-- The writer is president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary — the flagship school of the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the largest seminaries in the world

 

[ajtr]

‘Christian Yoga’ an oxymoron​

December 18, 2010 4:11:30 PM

Rajiv Malhotra

Yoga is sweeping America, but a lot of Americans are persuaded by religious dogma to distort Yoga principles and fit them into a “Christian” framework by denying Yoga’s cosmology. In the process, Yogic liberation becomes a mirage

While Yoga is not a “religion” in the sense that the Abrahamic religions are, it is a well-established spiritual path. Its physical postures are only the tip of an iceberg, beneath which is a distinct metaphysics with profound depth and breadth. Its spiritual benefits are undoubtedly available to anyone regardless of religion. However, the assumptions and consequences of Yoga do run counter to much of Christianity as understood today. This is why, as a Hindu Yoga practitioner and scholar, I agree with the Southern Baptist Seminary president, Albert Mohler, when he speaks of the incompatibility between Christianity and Yoga, arguing that “the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine” is fundamentally at odds with Christian teaching. This incompatibility runs much deeper.

Yoga’s metaphysics centre around the quest to attain liberation from one’s conditioning caused by past karma. Karma includes the baggage from prior lives, underscoring the importance of reincarnation. While it is fashionable for many Westerners to say they believe in karma and reincarnation, they have seldom worked out the contradictions with core Biblical doctrines. For instance, according to Karma theory, Adam and Eve’s deeds would produce effects only on their individual future lives, but not on all their progeny ad infinitum. Karma is not a sexually transmitted problem flowing from ancestors. This view obviates the doctrine of original sin and eternal damnation. An individual’s karmic debts accrue by personal action alone, in a separate and self-contained account. The view of an individual having multiple births also contradicts Christian ideas of eternal heaven and hell seen as a system of rewards and punishments in an afterlife. Yogic liberation is here and now, in the bodily state referred to and celebrated as jivanmukti, a concept unavailable in Christianity and in an afterlife somewhere else.

Yogic liberation is therefore not contingent upon any unique historical event or intervention. Every individual’s ultimate essence is sat-chit-ananda, originally divine and not originally sinful. All humans come equipped to recover their own innate divinity without recourse to any historical person’s suffering on their behalf. Karma dynamics and the spiritual practices to deal with them, are strictly an individual enterprise, and there is no special “deal” given to any chosen group, either by birth or by accepting a system of dogma franchised by an institution. The Abrahamic religions posit an infinite gap between God and the cosmos, bridged only in the distant past through unique prophetic revelations, making the exclusive lineage of prophets indispensable. (I refer to this doctrine elsewhere in my work as history-centrism.) Yoga, by contrast, has a non-dual cosmology, in which God is everything and permeates everything, and is at the same time also transcendent.

The Yogic path of embodied-knowing seeks to dissolve the historical ego, both individual and collective, as false. It sees the Christian fixations on history and the associated guilt, as bondage and illusions to be erased through spiritual practice. Yoga is a do-it-yourself path that eliminates the need for intermediaries such as a priesthood or other institutional authority. Its emphasis on the body runs contrary to Christian beliefs that the body will lead humans astray. For example, the apostle Paul was troubled by the clash between body and spirit, and wrote: “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:22-24).

Most of the 20 million American yoga practitioners encounter these issues and find them troubling. Some have responded by distorting yogic principles in order to domesticate it into a Christian framework, i.e. the oxymoron, ‘Christian Yoga.’ Others simply avoid the issues or deny the differences. Likewise, many Hindu gurus obscure differences, characterising Jesus as a great yogi and/or as one of several incarnations of God. These views belie the principles stated in the Nicene Creed, to which members of mainstream Christian denominations must adhere. They don’t address the above underlying contradictions that might undermine their popularity with Judeo-Christian Americans. This is reductionist and unhelpful both to Yoga and Christianity. In my forthcoming book, The Audacity of Difference, I advocate that both sides adopt the dharmic stance called purva-paksha, the practice of gazing directly at an opponent’s viewpoint in an honest manner. This stance involves a mastery of the ego and respect for difference, and the hope is that it would usher in a whole new level of interfaith collaborations.

 

[ajtr]

Yoga rules​

December 18, 2010 4:13:15 PM

Subhash Chandra Sharma

Evangelical Christianity is passing through a bad patch; perhaps a bit of Yoga could help Gospel pushers see new light

In the 19th century, Christian missionaries who came to propagate the white man’s faith in India dismissed our ancient way of life as ‘pagan’. But despite all use of force and guile, they failed to make an impression on the vast majority of Indians. Today’s Caucasian missionaries are terribly worried that not only are they failing to win converts in India, their own ilk are subscribing to Yogic philosophy. They perceive this, wrongly too, as an attack on Christianity. An Osama bin Laden character has emerged in the American Church — Rev Albert Mohler.

People in India are familiar with the Southern Baptists. This Church is actively converting people in parts of India where there is great disaffection over poverty and corruption. One of its most prominent faces is Albert Mohler, president of their theological seminary. In September this year, he lashed out at Yoga, which is perhaps one of the few ‘industries’ in recession-hit America to be growing, calling it essentially Hindu and something which good Christians should shun because it negates Jesus Christ. I don’t apologise for the quack Yoga which dominates the Yoga market of America. A lot of garbage is being sold to gullible Americans as Yoga and I thank Saturday Special for highlighting this in its May 1, 2010 issue (The Rape of Yoga), but Mohler is stooping to an unprecedented low in intellectual morality. But since the power of the media gives all sorts of humbug theories extra mileage, it is necessary for Saturday Special to put things in their right perspective. The views of Mohler are presented in the Main space, and the picture on the ground in America is revealed through Rajiv Malhotra’s article (The Other Voice).

I want to take this discourse to a slightly higher level. Let’s start with the bottomline — Sutra 24 of Samadhi Pada in Maharishi Patanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms. Kles, Karma, Vipaaka, Ashayer ae paramrashtPurush vishesh Ishwaraha In other words, affliction, karma, result, impressions of that result lead Man on to further affliction. This is not the work of God, but Man alone.

Man is trapped in an unending cycle. From the moment of birth, he feels the need to breathe to live. That is the original affliction and sets off a chain of actions from which there is no release on earth. Who is free of this definition of Man which is also the apt description of God? A Christian or a Hindu or a Muslim?

One who has affliction does not feel the need to work, waits not for the result of his action and hence does not have impressions of any kind. In other words, he has no past, therefore no present and future too, which is further explained through another Sutra:

Sa purvesam api giri aaem amisjjedat (He is the guide of even the past, therefore present and the future; and therefore out of time).

On the other hand, if this is not His definition, then He must have afflictions of listening to the prayers and fulfilling their prayers becomes His job. But everybody’s prayers cannot possibly be fulfilled and therefore he should either be sad about it or happy when He succeeds in intervening. His interventions become His results (vipaka). Subject to these results, He should have impressions of the actions of all people on earth (rewarded or not), which means he is within the timeframe of birth and death and other features of life. This means either the second sutra is valueless or utterly wrong.

This second definition of Mohler’s God is essentially Dwaita (dualist) philosophy, which he calls his Christianity (not true Christianity) and has been rejected all over the world. He means to say “God is God, Man is Man, never the twain shall meet”. The Adwaita philosophy propounded by Adi Shankara and Ramanuja, which gave a new dimension to the Sanatana faith, God and Man are the same much like ornaments of gold and gold, the metal. If Rev Mohler says dualism is at the heart of Christianity, then I must say he has misunderstood his own religion. Like all white practitioners of Christianity, he denies the Asiatic roots of Christ and his Word. I don’t want to dwell here on Lord Jesus Christ’s India connection — contemporary historians have more than proved it with the help of hard evidence. But it is important to point out Mohler’s bigger agenda: he betrays his belief in the “war of civilisations” and would like to reinvent the White West versus Dark East war by seeking recourse to bogus rhetoric.

Yoga offers hope to Man in that Man alone has cosmic powers to sustain the cosmos. If all the consciousness of Man becomes coherent, Man would become a superpower or superconscious. In our ordinary life we see superconsciousness in sacred shrines, wherever people collect with positive thoughts in their head. Yoga cultivation takes Man towards that.

Roop, Lavanya, Bal, Vajra, Samnatvaani kaya sampat — or, the complete health of a person is achieved when he has a body like vajra, forceful intellectualism and spiritual beauty. No herbs, lotions and potions can give this to any human being, except Yoga. Today, humanity is in its worst hour. Materialism is destroying everything that was sacred and decent in our lives. The popularisation of Yoga, even in the bogus forms seen in the United States, was a silver lining. Now, we have mock-Christians like Mohler undermining it.

Throughout history, Christian superciliousness has been the curse of civilisation. It has caused enough misery across South America, Africa and Asia. Now, the sad denizens of North America who are fast realising the poverty of being rich, are the intended victims.

-- The writer is a pioneer in Yoga therapy and lives in New Delhi

 

[AMCA]

Err Nop..... Actually Yoga Like Many Believe it To be Done with Hindu Shlokas is Entirely a Propaganda.... Yoga Is A form of Exercise Which Is Done In a Systematic manner to tame the Body,extracting The Maxim Natural resources from Sun Shine to the Air You Breath to Convert it into Energy to keep your Life Cycle Healthy...

And Its a Scientifically Proven procedure... Nothing Religious In it... I would Call namaz a Perfect form of Yoga too...

 

[rockstarIN]

Yoga is from Indian civilization..you may call it is attached to Hinduism, but people all over the sub continent can claim it. Its a way of life..

Nowdays all people around the world practice it.

Just treat this like Katate or Kung-Fu.

Thats it

 

[Salman Rushdie]

The Two Things Hindus want is:

1) Don't Disrespect Hinduism or any of its Affiliates.
2) Always give Proper Credit to Hinduism for Yoga.

Otherwise no Hindu gives a Rats *** of How you want to understand Yoga or Hinduism.