Wednesday, May 10, 2006
YOGA IN NEW OXFORD REVIEW
This month's NOR came yesterday. A couple of letters to the editor were interesting. Both of them comment on the article giving warnings about Yoga that ran last month.
The first letter is a testimony to the practice of Yoga for ten years that has been beneficial. The writer, Robert Petty, Chicago, Illinois, writes:
A Christian monk, J.M. Dechanet, wrote two books,Christian Yoga and Yoga in Ten Lessons, which have guided me well. As long as a person avoids yoga's meditations and relations to deity, and uses the breathing and physical exercises, it is safe and helpful.
The follow-up letter is from Charles Borromeo, Shawnee, Kansas, who writes:
Peter's article has provided for greater understanding of the true nature of Yoga, a pagan practice. I would like to add but one point. In addition to the dangers Peters listed, there is the danger of demonic possession. Yoga is a diabolic practice ("For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils" -- Psalm 95:5, Douay-Rheims). The danger of Yoga results from violating the First Commandment.
I am aware of one individual who was so devout in the practice of Yoga that he spent a year in India to study it. Within months of returning, he fell into despair. Through one of his Yoga techniques, he invited a "snake" to crawl up his spine into his mind, where it took control of his body, by his own account.
Through this, he found his damnation: while giving false worship through Yoga from atop a bridge, he was flung to his death from the devil which had dwelt within his body.
Yoga's "transcendence" causes the soul to withdraw from the body enough that devils have an opportunity to fill the void.
The "snake" is the kundalini of Tantra.
