Yoga & Christianity: Why I cancelled all Yoga teaching

well actually when i was 19 years old i had a near-death experience and that caused me to begin to think more deeply about life about what's going to happen in this transition from this world to the next world i was raised in a nominal church where i heard about a historical christ and i heard the basics of christianity but i never had a real experience of god and so at that time it was 1970 it was very trendy in western society to turn toward far eastern religions and i met an indian guru and began studying under him to the point where i dropped out of college and was doing it full time every day involved 12 hours at least of meditation various yoga sessions and reading the scriptures the bhagavad gita the vedas and other relevant books i was very deep in it eventually i became a teacher at four universities in florida and i was running a yoga ashram and then the pivotal moment in my life came yeah the tampa tribune newspaper did a big article on me i thought it would increase my class attendance instead it alerted this prayer group in town to start praying for me they had a 24-hour prayer chain and they assigned someone to be praying for me every hour that god would reveal to me the reality of jesus christ during that span of time where i was being prayed for an old friend wrote a letter and told me that he had been born again which was a term i'd never heard and he explained that it meant the spirit of god entered into you from without well being of a uh hindu and new age spirituality mindset i thought god was already inside of me and inside of everyone else and the whole concept of god being external apart from physical creation and that i could ask him into my heart was very unique i want to go back to this world of yoga and what that was like because you saw positive things happening there was a sense of peace you know you talk about this detachment from the world out of body experiences spiritual dreams tell me about that well during meditation uh and and i did it for lengthy periods of time i would start every day from 3 30 till 5 30 3 30 in the morning wow meditating and chanting hindu mantras and uh i had some out of body experiences where i experienced what they call astral projection and one time i went into white light and so i felt that i was getting legitimate experiences on this path to my ultimate goal which would be union with god in fact the word yoga is related to the word yoke and it means union and the implication is union with god the whole purpose of yoga is not just tuning up your body many westerners have reduced it to that but the philosophical aspect of yoga is all about coming into what they call god consciousness and so that was my goal that was all i cared about i didn't do anything else is what is the attraction to yoga why why do people so many people love because i mean it's it's the thing i everywhere i turn people are doing yoga well i think one of the primary reasons people turn to the spiritual aspect of yoga is they have become disenchanted with a form of christianity that is filled with rituals and ceremonies and traditions but no supernatural reality that's not always the case but sometimes it is and then at other times uh people have involved themselves in drugs and they've had these strange experiences through drugs these hallucinations and things that made them think maybe there's a supernatural world out there that i can explore and so they begin to dabble in the occult or dabble in in other other types of approaches to try and penetrate that world well yoga promises the ability to be able to penetrate the spiritual worlds and to experience them and so that was the attractiveness of it to me i i wanted to know who i was why i was alive and most importantly what the future held for me when you you quit as you said you quit college started your own ashram there were you know hundreds of university students that were flocking to your to your classes um what was that like as you saw all of these young people who were actually encouraging you to move this to another place because it was becoming so popular a lot of young people are gravitated to yoga right and and i was fulfilled in that i was helping some of them get off drugs and get out of a very negative lifestyle and get more focused on spiritual values but the problem was i had not yet encountered god myself i was very much a lover of god i loved god so much i never watched television never went to movies never dated all i did was from 3 30 in the morning till 4 30 or 5 o'clock at night it was a spiritual regiment it was a monastic kind of existence almost and i i couldn't think of anything worth seeking for in life more than that wow and then it happened yeah and let's go to that now so this church is praying for you you don't know you're totally clueless to this and you get this letter from your friend as you said so you decide that you're going to put aside a day where you are just going to seek after jesus right and so what happens well i dedicated that entire day to him to the point where i said i'm not going to use any other method i'm not going to chant mantras i'm not going to meditate all i'm going to do is pray to the lord jesus christ and all i'm going to read today is the bible no other scripture of any other religion and so for about eight hours eight to ten hours that's all i did that day and that afternoon i was hitchhiking i had to hitchhike because i had made a commitment not to own any material things so i walked or hitchhiked everywhere and i was still praying while i was hitchhiking to the university of south florida to teach that night jesus if you died on the cross for the sins of humanity and if you really are the only way to experience eternal life give me a supernatural sign today one of the members of the prayer group was two miles away walking in a laundromat with an arm full of dirty clothes and all of a sudden the holy spirit spoke to his heart and said don't go in there i've got a job for you to do get back in your vehicle and start driving he thought it was just completely ridiculous that god did not want him to wash his sturdy clothes he thought what you know why why is god even interested in this but he got behind the wheel and started driving and felt led to turn two different turns and then saw me hitchhiking cardinal rule he never picked up hitchhikers but he felt this inner compulsion so he pulled over i opened the door and looked in and my heart left inside of my chest because on the ceiling was a picture of jesus that he had taped there and i knew this is not coincidence this is a god incident and a few moments later he said friend have you ever experienced jesus coming into your heart i said no but when can i and he looked at me with shock that i would respond so quickly he said you can come to our permit tonight i said i don't want to wait till tonight i'm ready now. so we knelt down in the van and i prayed a very simple prayer and i said jesus i accept you as lord of my life come into my heart wash me clean from all my sin by the blood you shed on the cross and for the first time maggie for the first time i had an encounter with the true spirit of god and i knew i had locked in on something that i'd been unaware of in the past so i went back to all my yoga classes that week and told them that unknowingly i had misled them and that jesus really is the way to a relationship with god and to eternal life my last question to you is why didn't you go back to yoga why because that doesn't take you to a true experience of god there's many different reasons why jesus is the only way of course as a christian now i believe he was the only manifestation of god on the earth the only time god ever came into physical form was in the form of the lord jesus christ now hindus would call it an avatar a manifestation of god on the earth but he claimed that when he went to the cross he bore the sins of the entire human race and paid that price off so that we don't have to suffer the consequences of those sins eternally and that's phenomenal no other religious leader of any other sect or group or religion can claim having done that or their followers can't claim that that was accomplished and then three days later of course he arose from the dead which is completely different than what i used to believe i believed as a yoga teacher in reincarnation but jesus taught resurrection there's so many unique contrasts between a christian world view and a far eastern world view that there was no way to merge the two you

Channel: 100huntley

Views: 354,643

Rating: 4.6426806 out of 5

Keywords: Christian Yoga, christian yoga flow, yoga, beginners yoga, yoga for beginners, should christians do yoga, holy yoga, christians and yoga, yoga and christianity, hinduism, new age to jesus, new age to christianity, christian yoga, yoga christian, origins of yoga, christian yoga meditation, astral projection, astral projection meditation, meditation, finding jesus, eastern religion, eastern religions, spiritual warfare, buddhism, hindu, eastern philosophy, can christians do yoga

Id: CaG_Xlux1L0

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dattajana95]

I guess in Christianity being healthy and relaxed is a sin

[u/83Bm]

Christianity is a dying religion in the west. People like him perceive Hinduism and Yoga as a threat and thus resort to vitriol.

The sad and concerning part is, the Modi government is trying to decouple Yoga from Hinduism just as they're saying Hinduism is not a religion but a way of life. This would allow monotheistic religions to introduce Christian Yoga, Muslim Yoga etc and leave place for Buddhism to claim Yoga as its own as they've started claiming Karma as part of Buddhist philosophy.

[u/GiediHarkonnen]

2 things

1: Why do we even care what these ppl say about Hinduism & spirituality
2: This miracle / supernatural is not what makes Hinduism nor does a Hindu is Hindu because they saw some supernatural or miraculous phenomenon. The whole of Christianity is standing on miracles performed by x,y or z

[u/ProPlayer1558]

the thing is that these frickin ret@rds can't handle anything like cultural diversity they are just people who come talk about Jesus and gain publicity to bol raha hu inko reort krne se inki hi reach bdh rhi h

[u/thatlankyfellow]

The problem isn't some cracker saying Hinduism is a false religion, the problem is Hindus not being able to defend their stance on why it is.

Not related to this clip, just saying!

[u/DD9949]

These ret@rds can run their filthy mouths all they want. Fact remains that their cult is false and Sanaatan Dharm is the Eternal Truth.

[u/Darpan727]

No body gets to say anything against son of God https://youtu.be/Vbzc8rOgMsA

[u/nasadiya-sukta]

What is a true religion though? Religion is like a collective opinion. And the ones who don't change overtime get left behind.

[u/chu-man-tar]

Christianity is myth