Yoga
Did you ever have one of those days when you began pondering the mysteries of God and wondering how something happened or came about in the Kingdom? That’s been me lately.
Recently I’ve been studying the pagan religion of Hinduism and how the practice of yoga plays into that. As someone has said, “There is no Hinduism without yoga, and no yoga without Hinduism.” Let me establish right from the beginning that yoga has no place in the life of a believer or in the church. Because of its relationship to Hinduism, any practice of yoga calls demonic forces into play. The Western acceptance of yoga comes from New Age spirituality. The yoga practitioner, e.g. even someone who engages in Transcendental Meditation (TM), is flirting with the occult.
The yoga positions can ultimately lead to an awakening of a demonic power known as Kundalini.
In yoga there are seven psychic energy points in the body. This psychic energy is pictured as a serpent that initially lies coiled at the base of the spine. Upon practicing yoga and meditation, the serpent is awakened and begins to travel up the spine through these psychic energy points known as chakras. Practiced deeply enough, the energy can be focused through a point on the forehead between the eyes in what is called the third eye. Many psychic/spiritual manifestations can occur through this process, and particularly when it reaches the third eye. (By the way; that’s why all Hindus place that red dot on their foreheads in this position. It’s an acknowledgment of their supposed godhead and the power of yoga to awaken it.)
The final release of the energy through the last chakra at the top of the head is supposed to lead to a state of final bliss known as nirvana. This is the ultimate goal of the yoga practitioner because, in the Hindu belief system, this is when the person merges with the godhead, realizes his oneness with all of creation, and effectively becomes god.
Obviously, this is all absolutely contrary to what the Bible teaches and is exceptionally dangerous. A follower of Jesus Christ should NEVER practice yoga or go anywhere near the occult.
Having said that, I believe there is a mystery here. I also don’t believe that we’ll truly know God’s real intent or unveiling of this mystery until we’re with Him. But that doesn’t hinder us from thinking and speculating. We’re human, after all, and God made us to inquire and to seek out His mysteries.
I want to be very careful in how I express all what I’m going to explore next because there is such potential connection with the occult and things that God never intended for man. You have to understand that as a fiction writer I “go places” in creating scenes and scenarios that a lot of people may not even come near. So, please, give me a little latitude with this and hear me out.
What occurs in yoga in the traveling of this Kundalini serpent through the psychic energy centers is part of the mystery. It’s real. It happens. When people practice yoga, these chakras are opened, and greater awareness, albeit of a demonic nature, occurs.
Here’s my key question. Where did this come from?
Here’s my answer. It had to originally come from God.
God is our creator. Everything in the world came from His creative mind. What is within each human being had, therefore, to come from Him. This means that these seven psychic energy centers within each person had to be placed there by God.
Chew on that a minute. The fact that they are currently used for a demonic purpose is the rest of this story, but Satan didn’t put them inside us. He only figured out a way to use them to his purposes.
My theory—absolutely, completely speculative, but not without some Biblical foundation—is the following. The host of heaven (i.e. the sons of God, the morning stars, the angels) celebrated the creation of the world and all things in it when God did His work in seven days. We see that in Job 38:4-7:
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell Me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements?
Surely you know!
Or who stretched the line upon it?
To what were its foundations fastened?
Or who laid its cornerstone,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?”
When God made man, is it possible that He showed the “blueprints” to the angels? I believe He did. My theory is based on that assumption. Recall in Job 1:6:
Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them.
Consider also 2 Chronicles 18:18-22 in which the prophet Micaiah is summoned to the kings of Judah (Jehoshaphat) and Israel (Ahab) and describes how a lying spirit is placed in the mouths of false prophets:
“And Micaiah said, ‘Therefore hear the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab the king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the Lord said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these your prophets. The Lord has declared disaster concerning you.”
Notice how God consults those around Him, the host of heaven.
There is much more to this, but what we see in these verses is what is known as the Divine Council. God’s creation in the heavens is part of an assembly that He consults. God is completely sovereign and His will is always done, but He works through His creation. An aspect of this could have been the revealing of His divine “blueprint” for the final glorification of man.
When Satan rebelled against God, what did he do? He went to the Garden of Eden to corrupt mankind. He tempted Eve, and through her, Adam fell. Satan asked Eve one critical question, “Has God truly said?” (Genesis 3:1), and made one fatal statement: “For God knows that in the day you eat of the fruit your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5).
Satan taught man to first question God and then to aspire to be like Him. This led to the fall of man. It resulted in our DNA somehow being corrupted by sin, so that within every person there is a sin nature.
Now, let’s suppose that Satan knows that God has put within every person something very special—call it an essence of the fullness of the Spirit that will be activated within us at the appropriate time. This essence, however, was never intended by God to be used by mankind in the flesh as we know it. It was to be initiated by God at some point in the future. It may very well be that it’s connected to our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). Perhaps this essence was only intended to become manifest once we’ve become like Jesus and are given our glorified bodies after the resurrection. Remember that 1 John 3:2 says:
“Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
Don’t forget that, in our glorified bodies, at some point, we will judge angels (1 Corinthians 6:3)—probably fallen angels. How do we do this without something greater within us that enables this? Is part of it the living water that bubbles up within us flowing to eternal life? (John 7:37-39). Is all this interconnected?
What if this essence, the living water, is the Spirit of God with definitive attributes? Isaiah 11:1-2 speaks of this specifically regarding Jesus:
“There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse,
And a Branch shall grow out of his roots.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”
There are seven qualities, characteristics, or manifestations of this essence of the Spirit. They are:
- Spirit of the Lord
- Wisdom
- Understanding
- Counsel
- Might
- Knowledge
- Fear of the Lord
Remember how Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan; and after that, the Spirit of the Lord came upon Him? (Luke 4:14). Was this the true awakening of the Son of Man into the power of the Son of God?
This is also the sevenfold Spirit mentioned in Revelation 1:4 and 4:5:
“Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne.”
“And from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings, and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.”
Going back to yoga and the seven chakras, I couldn’t definitively correlate these psychic energy centers that Satan has constructed with the true seven Spirits of the Lord, but I suspect that was the intent in the counterfeiting plans of the adversary.
I guess this is where the conspiracy theory really kicks in. Knowing these spiritual things, Satan decides to use them in his ages-long quest to displace God and take down His creation to the pit of hell with him. The fruit that Eve eats, however it works, is the gateway. It’s part of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; it opens man’s eyes to that which he isn’t supposed to see at this time. But he does. The sin nature comes in, and the ability to access this spiritual essence comes about. At this point, God has to expel Adam and Eve from the Garden, because He can’t also have them partake of the tree of life and live forever in this sinful state with dormant powers and capabilities we were never supposed to have in the flesh. That would really mess things up.
Mankind is now infected with the sin of desiring to be like God. Adam and Eve never went any further in their quest for ultimate knowledge; but that doesn’t stop Satan, because their descendants certainly pursue it. He has now made a way through the very mechanism in man’s body that will ultimately be used for good when born-again believers are glorified and we have spiritual bodies.
Satan can tempt man to awaken his supposed godhead. He devises yoga within the pagan Hindu culture and makes this spiritual quest the ultimate achievement of man. He spreads it worldwide through the practice of yoga in the New Age movement. But it must be gained only through endless lives recycled again and again, all based on how one lives his life at any time. Theoretically, man’s karma enables him to progress spiritually through the cycle of reincarnation and attempt to become god even as he focuses solely on himself. Very diabolical, and opposed to the truth, which is found in Hebrews 9:27 that:
“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.”
The bottom line in this conspiracy theory is that Satan, as he so often does, uses the good things of God, twists and corrupts them, and causes many to fall away from eternal life that comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
Don’t be deceived, and don’t be tempted by something that seems good but can only end in death. God’s plan for us is so much better, and He will reveal it in His own time.
Gary Ritter is a lay pastor and serves as Missions Director at his church. He is also a prolific author. His Whirlwind Series is comprised of three books: Sow the Wind, Reap the Whirlwind, and There Is A Time. He has a standalone novel of supernatural suspense, The Tattooed Cat, and plans to release Alien Revelation – The Unveiling, the first novel in a new series in early Fall 2019. You can reach him via his website at www.GaryRitter.com or at his Facebook Author page at https://www.facebook.com/gritter3390.