Self Realization Versus A New ME!

I changed to title to "self realization" because I realize that self drives us to explore, search, travel on different routes.  Yet..there are thousands of routes that do not bring us to our prescribed destination.  We got to be sure we are taking the right route!

Yoga is one of the ways millions of people are seeking self realization.  Hatha yoga is considered as just a very powerful exercise is blooming all over the world.  Today, worldwide yoga centers are mushrooming in thousands, widely applauded because of its powerful connotations to excellent heath and sound mind.  Yoga is proving a successful treatment for cancer patients, lessen pain levels, depression, fatigue insomnia, and anxiety control as well as schizophrenia and a whole host of other debilitating illnesses and bring one's life to a new level of wholeness and fitness.

So, what is yoga?  The Sanskrit word yoga means union. The sole goal of yoga is the attainment of a state of perfect spiritual insight and tranquility while meditating on the Hindu concept of divinity of Brahma.

In traditional yoga, the chanting of Om is a must.  Om (or AUM) is the sacred syllable of Hinduism and represents God or Brahman - the source of all existence representing the three qualities inherent in the Cosmic Vibration.

 A - represents (Brahma) creation

 U - represents (Vishnu) Preservation

 M - represents (Siva) Transmutation.

The Bible clearly tells us, we are not to even take the names of other gods.  Exodus 23:13:  "Be careful to do everything I have said to you. Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips."

Why?  Because if we unit with God with certain methods, there are millions of powers and principalities in the world or entities which are not God.  When we call them, they respond, and enter our lives.  Yet, we do not know who they are, it is an unknown entity.   It may seem friendly in the beginning, but time will tell the results of that.

One of the aims in yoga is to become like God:  To be like God was the whisper that Satan gave Eve in the Bible in Genesis 3:5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

A yogi said he would stand in front of the mirror and worship himself.  In his understanding, he was right.  He was a god.  This was the promise given by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, the divine knowledge given to all who practiced yoga, the nectar given to all the yoga meditators.   In the Bible, wanting the very place of God or to be looked to as a god is blasphemy, the very act that led Lucifer, Satan to be thrown out of Heaven.

For man to say he is a god and he has to look in himself to find the god in him is a dangerous deception.  It has its serious repercussions.  It is in direct contrast to the Bible, which says, Romans 3:10.  There is no one righteous, not even one".  Jeremiah 17:9:  "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it".

Satan always wanted to be like God, the very desire to be like God is a deeply rooted hatred and rebellion to the Creator who alone is to be worshipped and adored in His glory.  Satan said, "I will ascend into heaven.  I will be like the Most High." (Isa 14.12-14)

Mindless Meditation:  Having a still, calmed, rested mind is essential and balm to the soul's constant crackling thoughts; however, the technique of emptying the mind takes another road, which meanders to another spirit realm.  In yoga, emptying of the mind is very important.  Once you empty your mind, an altered level of consciousness transpires.  The consciousness mind is no longer active.  Will and volition vanishes.

In shamanism (witchcraft), black magic, and tantrism (an Asian tradition of beliefs, meditation and ritual practices that seeks to channel the divine energy of the godhead into the human soul, in order to attain siddhis (enlightenment) and moksha (salvation) will tell you that an altered state is consciousness is essential in order to contact other spirits and this can only happen by emptying the mind.  This is a very essential requirement for a spirit force to enter or for a person to be transported to another realm.  Even people possessed by an evil spirit have taken this step for a spirit invasion.  They wait and wait and wait, empty minded, sometimes muttering chants and humming, until they are taken over by the spirit force.  They have gained powers, without doubt.  It will control their minds over years, but in the end, the very thing that protected and promoted them will destroy them.

A great swami in the 1800s, whom I will not name, is reported to have had a strange death.  When they found him, his hair was electrified and he had a look of shock.  He was a strong devotee of Kali, (goddess of destruction).  He was one of the early advocates of yoga in the 1800s. This report is authenticated and classified given by someone in the ashram at that time.

In Death of a Guru by Rabi R Maharaj, he wrote: "Often while I was in deep meditation, the gods became visible and talked with me.  At times, I seemed to be transported by astral projections to distant planets or to worlds in other dimensions.  It would be years before I would learn that such experiences were being done in laboratories under the watchful eyes of parapsychologists through the use of hypnosis and LSD.  In my yogic trances, most often I would be alone with Shiva the Destroyer, sitting fearfully at his feet the huge cobra coiled about his neck staring at me hissing and darting out its tongue threateningly.  Sometimes I wondered why none of the gods I ever encountered seemed kind and gentle and loving.  But at least they seemed real - I had no doubt of that - and not mere myths like the Christian god Santa Claus".

Quotations from different sources:

Johanna Michaelsen "Like Lambs to the Slaughter" pp. 93-95

"There is a common misconception in the West that hatha-yoga, one of about ten forms of Yoga that supposedly leads to self-realization, is merely a neutral form of exercise, a soothing and effective alternative for those who abhor jogging and calisthenics ... [However], Hatha-yoga is 'one of the six recognized systems of orthodox Hinduism' and is at its roots religious and mystical. It is also one of the most difficult and potentially [spiritually] dangerous forms of Yoga.

"The term hatha is derived from the verb hath, which means 'to oppress.'... What the practice of hatha-yoga is designed to do is suppress the flow of psychic energies through these channels ["symbolic, or psychic passages on either side of the spinal column"], thereby forcing the 'serpent power' or the kundalini force to rise through the central psychic channel in the spine (the sushumna) and up through the chakras, the supposed psychic centers of human personality and power. Westerners mistakenly believe that one can practice hatha-yoga apart from the philosophical and religious beliefs that undergird it. This is an absolutely false belief. ... You cannot separate the exercises from the philosophy. ... 'The movements themselves become a form of meditation.' The continued practice of the exercises will, whether you ... intend it or not, eventually influence you toward an Eastern/mystical perspective. That is what it is meant to do! ... There is, by definition, no such thing as 'neutral' Yoga"

As a personal testimony, in 2005, I was gaining weight rapidly at an alarming degree.  "Try yoga" a lady suggested, "it works, it also helps to relax the mind".  This sounded good, my uncle had even given me a book of yoga so I did not even need to buy it.

Then two incidents happened that shook me about it.  One was, the dear uncle, who was a great yoga fan who went through all the asaanas, to the point of standing on his head in his younger days, suddenly deteriorated in health within a year.  He lost his ability to speak and walk.  He, in his early nineties had been in abundant health and life a year previously.  He went down fast and slipped from life to death in 2008.  It crossed my mind, should not yoga have strengthened an otherwise healthy strong old man at the frail edges of humanity."  Another incident happened shortly after that.  A lady in her 60s, who sweared by yoga, suddenly started to get a kind of crippling arthritis.  She lived in a large 2 storey house.  It came to the point where she literally lived upstairs.  It was too painful for her to climb up and down the stairs.  Why did not the yoga help her?

I have a friend, a beautiful young girl, who years ago was fascinated with the unknown spiritual.  She was seeking the meaning of life and higher spiritual powers.  She started visiting a famous ashram, Osho International Meditation Centre founded by the late Rajneesh also known as OSHO in the year 1974 in Pune, India..  I out of curiosity went to visit the ashram with her one day when I was in Pune on a visit.  It was not easy to get in and one has to undergo some questioning etc. before entering.

I finally got to enter as a visitor for the day.  What I saw that day were some hard-core yogis around the place, some doing yoga in the Lotus Room, others crying bitterly in the garden, I felt they were getting some kind of emotional healing.  . I saw the very strong ones with eyes and skin that glowed.  A power emanated from them.  I was really impressed.

My friend enrolled in the ashram and stayed on for months.  She faithfully did yoga everyday and went to a higher level of transcendal meditation where she experienced powers touching her. She particularly specialized in Kundalini yoga, a physical, mental and spiritual discipline for developing strength, awareness, character, and consciousness, a technique specialized to arouse the sleeping Kundalini Shakti (power) from its coiled base, the sleeping serpent.  The yogis had a special day of coronation when they were awarded and received new names after completing the requirements of this yoga.  On her special day, as she walked up the aisle to get her new name and blessing from the guru, she felt a power hit her and she fell backwards, shocked as she reeled back, she was amazed at the power of a supernatural force!  She had opened her doors to a different spirit force, which many do as they get into the deeper levels of yoga.   Kundalini is a form of yoga that leads to the transmeditation states of mind, more complex and deeper than Hatha yoga, but Hatha yoga is the pathway to Kundalini yoga.

In contrast, I had a Punjabi Hindu friend who became a believer in Christ.  This girl had previously disliked Christians though she did have Christian friends.  One day, a light of understanding dawned on her that Jesus loved her and died for her on the Cross and He was her Savior.  She repented of her sins, and accepted Him as her Savior.  No one was present when it happened.  She knew God had touched her life.  Something felt washed within her from that day onward.  She was hungry to read the Bible and know more about God. However, the girl still attended yoga classes every evening.  Her Christian friends told her to stop it as it was contradictory to the Bible, but they could not tell her how, and she thought what they were saying was foolish.

One evening as she was breathing her asasnas, she suddenly saw a flash of a dark shadowy figure, and felt a terrible fear grip her, and she started shivering violently and nearly blacked out.  Somehow, she knew it was connected with her yoga.  She had opened a spiritual pathway to an unknown entity.  She developed fevers and that spirit of fear came over her.  That night she knelt beside her bed and prayed to Jesus for help and all of a sudden, a calm went through her and remained with her.  She knew Jesus was with her.  After that, she never went for a yoga class again.  That was more than 15 years ago.

Note, she was practicing Hatha Yoga, the very simple one with exercise and breathing techniques.  She had not reached the tran-meditational stage yet.  In Hatha Yoga, there are animistic postures depicting animal spirit forces that open a door of entry to the soul to the other spirit world.  Remember, the aim of yoga is to gain oneness with this universal force, which we do not really know and cannot identify.

Now why would that happen to her?  The reason is when we open our lives to another spirit which we do not identify, for a season, it is our protector, but if we reject it or turn away, it becomes our ferocious enemy.  When my friend became a Christian, that every spirit that was positive energy for her started to attack her.

I share this in testimony.  Before I became a "born again" believer in 1992, I was into spiritism not very deep into it, but interested, and even went to places where I experience their power like a famous temple in Katra, near Kashmir, which has a very powerful goddess and I actually felt that power hitting me.  These were all supposed to be good gods and goddesses.  In 1993, after turning to Christ, I started experiencing attacks like some force trying to strangle me, or I would feel myself sliding down below very below, seemed like a pit.  With these direct attack on my life, I learned spiritual warfare, how to rebuke, and how to plead the Blood of Jesus on my life daily, which demons fear. After I learned spiritual warfare in Jesus, those entities left me alone.  The reason was that the years I had invited them in unknowingly, and now turned to Christ made them furious enough to attack me.

Never are we supposed to do mindless meditation.  We can wait quietly upon God to hear Him, but emptying is dangerous.  

Worship of God brings the love, joy and peace that humans are looking for.  God does not need any ways other than His to accomplish His works of glory and power or even for us to gain better health mentally and physically.  Any methods other than His method are dabbling with the occult.  This no matter how effective and good leads a soul into a different pathway.

See 2 Kings 17:17 Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him.

Deuteronomy 18:9-11.  9 When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the ways of the nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, 11 or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritualist or who consults the dead.

The dangers of emptying the mind is also explained here:  "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. 45 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".  Matthew 12:44-45.

We might argue, yoga is an exercise. In reality, it is a spiritual union.  All the postures and exercises of yoga lead to that ultimate union.  One may say, they are connecting to God. The yogis have seen powers and principalities talking to them while they are in their trances. In reality, they are meeting with spirit entities who cannot tell them anything about the Creator. 

Why is it dangerous to contact an unknown spirit? 
There are millions of spirits which lead us away from God, the Creator.  Their sole aim is to take people away from God, give them the good highs for a season and give them everything.  They put a mist of deception around us so we can never know or perceive God, who created the Universe and who created us. If we never knew our Creator in this life, in endless eternity, we will be separated from Him, and that will be a terrible thing.

Daniel 1:8.  It is important we do not open our spirits to other spirit forces.  The aim is to unite with God, but if one cannot identify God or have personal relationship with God, then definitely, we are opening our human spirits to contact another spirit and that union with an unknown entity would bring dire consequences and destroy us in the end.

We can have a personal relationship with the One True Living God by repenting of sin for which we cannot atone for by all our good works.  We can accept the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ, who became the supreme sacrifice for the sins of humankind and through His shed blood, the justice and righteousness of Holy God whose holiness precedes His other divine attributes was satisfied so that sinful humans can be reconciled back to God, the Divine Creator of the Universe and receive a new life in Christ, to walk in victory on earth and one day, be in the Heavenly Kingdom with God.  

Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one can come through the Father, but through Me."

When we repent and accept Jesus as our Savior, a supernatural transaction takes place.  It is powerful and life and soul transforming!! We experience being born again where we undergo a spiritual rebirth.  Then, we start to understand and receive the Spiritual life from God so that we can have a personal relationship with God.  We can know God and He reveals Himself and His thoughts, plans, and secrets to us!  Life becomes new, exciting and rich.  Then we walk on the Earth with the power of the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, who dwells within us.  He fills us with love, joy and peace and victory of life's problems.  He is not a force or an entity, but a Person, the third member of the Trinity of God.  We could never go wrong with the Holy Spirit, we could never be deceived.  He is Truth, Light, and Life in Jesus!

In this, we also discover our new identity.  All our past mistakes, weaknesses are forgiven and forgotten by God.  We are a New Creation with a new identify, a beautiful new person, which Christ has sealed upon us, and transforms us from strength to strength, from glory to glory.

                                                 

Only God is the true  converter of a human soul.  No human can convert anyone.  It is God's Spirit to a human's spirit that converts.

© Rita Farhat Kurian