Eastern Mysticism – Part 2

By: Dave Hunt; ©1998

Dave Hunt explains how yoga and Transcendental Meditation have been repackaged in an effort to hide their religious content and to make them palatable to a Western audience.

Life is an Illusion—So Make Up Your Own!

Much credit for bringing Eastern mysticism into the West goes to Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. As a young girl, psychologist Jean Houston was heavily influenced by de Chardin. ^[1] Houston claims that the techniques she teaches for activating the imagination open the person to a new reality. Echoing de Chardin’s Eastern mysticism, she claims that this alternate reality is more real than the “cultural trance,” known as “normal waking con­sciousness… in which we all dream the same dream, more or less, and call it: reality.” ^[2]

Carl Jung wrote introductions to some of the first Western editions of books on yoga and Eastern mysticism. Reflecting the Hindu view that life is but a dream, Jung was obsessed with dreams and their interpretation. In one dream he saw himself in yogic meditation representing his “unconscious prenatal wholeness….” In commenting upon the dream, Jung declared:

In the opinion of the “other side” [i.e., the communicating spirit guides] our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious world a kind of illusion… which seems a reality as long as we are in it. It is clear that this state of affairs resembles very closely the Oriental conception of Maya. ^[3]

Jung claimed to have received multiple communications from the “other side.” The messages he received were consistent with the vast majority of such communications— proving again a common source and identifying it beyond dispute. Over and over, Eastern mysticism rears its serpentine head. Ramtha’s message is no exception: “You are God, and therefore capable of creating any reality you desire, if not now, then in a later incarna­tion.” ^[4] Again it is Hinduism’s belief that all is maya, or illusion. Houston’s goal is to deliver us from this common delusion so that “… we will one day look back astounded at the im­poverished world of consciousness we once shared, and supposed to be the real world— our officially defined and defended ‘reality.’” ^[5]

Yoga was developed to escape from this unreal world of time and sense and to reach moksha, the Hindu heaven. With its breathing exercises and limbering-up positions, yoga is promoted in the West for enhancing health and better living—but in the East it is under­stood to be a way of dying. Yogis claim the ability to survive on almost no oxygen and to remain motionless for hours, free of the “illusion” of this life.

The Deceit and Danger of the “Science of Yoga”

In a classic flimflam, one of the world’s most ancient religious practices is being sold as the “science of yoga.” The average Westerner is not aware that yoga was introduced by Lord Krishna in the Baghavad Gita as the sure way to Hindu heaven, or that Shiva (one of the most feared Hindu deities) is addressed as Yogeshwara, or Lord of Yoga.

That yoga is Hinduism is usually denied. Hearing occasional references to Patanjali’s second-century B.C. Yoga Sutras, the Westerner assumes that Patanjali was an early Indian Plato or Einstein. In fact, Hindus regard him as one of their greatest religious leaders. Thinking they are buying health, millions are unwittingly getting involved in Hinduism. Believing they are being taught scientific practices, yoga enthusiasts are led unaware into Eastern religious beliefs and rituals which are designed to open them to the occult.

Hatha Yoga, known as physical yoga, is alleged to be devoid of the mysticism in other forms. Not so. Yoga is yoga, and all of the positions and breathing exercises are specifi­cally designed for yoking with Brahman, the universal All of Hinduism. If the goal is physical fitness, one should adopt an exercise program designed to that end, not one designed for reaching godhood. In one of the most authoritative Hatha Yoga texts, the fifteenth century Hathayoga-Pradipika, Svatmarama lists Lord Shiva (known by Hindus as “The Destroyer”) as the first Hatha Yoga teacher. No wonder yoga can be so destructive!

The average yoga instructor does not mention the many warnings contained in ancient texts that even “Hatha Yoga is a dangerous tool.” ^[6] In an unusually frank interview in Yoga Journal, Ken Wilber (practicing mystic and yoga enthusiast, often called today’s “Einstein of consciousness”) warns that any form of Eastern meditation, even done “correctly,” involves “a whole series of deaths and rebirths; extraordinary conflicts and stresses… some very rough and frightening times.” ^[7]

David Pursglove, a therapist and transpersonal counselor for 25 years, lists some of the “transpersonal crises” common to people who get involved in Eastern meditation:

Frightening ESP and other parapsychological occurrences… [spontaneous] out-of-body experiences or accurate precognitive “takes”… profound psychological encounter with death and subsequent rebirth… the awakening of the serpent power (Kundalini)… energy streaming up the spine, tremors, spasms and sometimes violent shaking and twisting…. ^[8]

“Such experiences,” admits the Brain/Mind Bulletin, “are common among people in­volved in Yoga, [Eastern] meditation and other [pagan] spiritual disciplines….” ^[9]

Transcendental Trickery

Transcendental Meditation (TM), one of the most popular forms of yoga in the West, exemplifies the deliberate misrepresentation that characterizes so much of today’s New Age scene. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi at first introduced TM to the West as a Hindu religious practice. He openly taught that its purpose was to produce “a legendary substance called soma in the meditator’s body so the gods of the Hindu pantheon could be fed and awak­ened.” ^[10] But when TM was excluded from public schools and government funding as a religious practice, Maharishi quickly deleted all reference to religion and began presenting TM as pure science.

Such deliberate deceit says much about Maharishi’s integrity. Nothing was changed except the labels. This deception has been furthered by the many celebrities, who have practiced and then enthusiastically promoted TM. Subsequent advertisements dishonestly declared that TM “is not a religion, not a philosophy, not yoga… involves no change of belief system….” In fact, TM involves all of these. According to Kropinski, Maharishi told those on the inside:

It doesn’t matter if you lie teaching people… [because] TM is the ultimate, absolute spiritual authority on the face of this Earth.

[TMers] are the only teachers and upholders of genuine spiritual tradition…. They’re running the universe.

They are controlling the gods through the soma sacrifice. ^[11]

Beachheads of Occult Invasion

The proliferating centers where yoga and other forms of Eastern meditation are taught become focal points of the occult invasion. Channeled messages describe such centers as “the first beachheads secured by the approaching forces… to prepare the human species for its collective awakening.” ^[12] This so-called “awakening” into “higher consciousness” is actually the demonization of mankind in preparation for Antichrist and his world religion.

It is astonishing that millions of otherwise intelligent and well-educated Westerners can be so easily persuaded to accept as “truth” information transmitted by mysterious entities whom they are unable to identify. Yet this fact offers further proof of the Genesis account of Satan’s seduction of Eve and confirms the universal appeal of his lies.

The practice of yoga and other forms of Eastern meditation creates the same altered state as do drugs, hypnosis, drumming, dancing, visualization, and other shamanic tech­niques now so widely used in the West. The door is opened to demonic seduction of man­kind. Incredibly, yoga is now widely practiced and promoted within the church.

Notes

1. ↑ Jean Houston, Life Force: The Psycho-Historical Recovery of the Self (Quest Books, 1993), pp. 254-56.
2. ↑ Ibid., pp. 211-42.
3. ↑ C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Pantheon Books, 1963), pp. 323-24.
4. ↑ “The World According to Ram,” The Utne Reader, July/Aug. 1988, p. 80 abridged from Martin Gardner, The New Age: Notes of a Fringe Watcher (Prometheus Books, 1988)
5. ↑ Robert Masters and Jean Houston, Mind Games (Dell Publishing, 1972), pp. 13, 229-30; see also Houston, Life Force.
6. ↑ Georg Feuerstein, “A Brief History of Hatha Yoga, Part II,” in Yoga Journal, September/ October 1987, p. 67.
7. ↑ Catherine Ingram, “Ken Wilber: The Pundit of Transpersonal Psychology,” in Yoga Jour­nal, September/October 1987, p. 43.
8. ↑ Naomi Steinfeld, “Passages In: For People in Spiritual Crisis,” In AHP Perspective, Febru­ary 1986, p. 9
9. ↑ Brain/Mind Bulletin, July 12, 1982, p. 3
10. ↑ Art Kunkin, “Transcendental Meditation on Trial, Part Two,” in Whole Life Monthly, Sep­tember 1987, pp. 14, 17.
11. ↑ Ibid., pp. 15-17.
12. ↑ Ken Carey, The Starseed Transmissions: Living in the Post-Historic World (Harper Collins, 1991), pp. 54-55.

Read Part 3