“Yoga, even when practiced only as a gymnastics, does its job, unlocks the kundalini energy” – assured Fr. Jacques Verlinde a guru in India. Yoga is not exercise, it is spirituality.
Also Father James Manjackal (a Catholic clergyman who was born into a Catholic family in India) reports that he met many people who had dealt with yoga, Reiki, the philosophy of reincarnation and various Eastern practices, and as a consequence experienced spiritual slavery.
Yoga is inextricably linked with the entire philosophical and religious system of the East and is incompatible with Christian spirituality and mysticism.
Fashion for yoga is often associated with the belief that the Eastern heritage is a wealth that can be freely used, or that it is possible to assimilate selected elements of it without harming Christian practice. This is wrong thinking.
Saint John Paul II wrote: “It seems appropriate to warn Christians who open up enthusiastically to various suggestions from the religious traditions of the Far East, concerning, for example, techniques and methods of meditation and asceticism. In some circles it has even become a kind of fashion that is taken over indiscriminately ”(Crossing the Threshold of Hope).
Pope Benedict XVI, still as Cardinal Ratzinger, pointed out in more detail the fundamental difference between Western and Eastern mysticism: “A characteristic feature of this kind of mystic [yogi] is the experience of identity: the mystic drowns in the ocean of” complete unity “[…]. In the last stage of this experience, the mystic will not say to his God: “I am yours”, but his formula will be: “I am you” “(Faith – truth – tolerance).
It is also worth quoting here the words of Sr. Michaela Pawlik, who worked for many years in India: “The effects of Western and Eastern mysticism are completely opposite to each other. These are not different paths leading to the same summit, they are reaching completely opposite heights: the height of humility and the height of pride! Some come to the Truth, others to the illusion. “
Yoga through a special positioning of the human body, controlling breathing and repeating mantras (words of entrusting oneself to one of the Hindu deities) aims to open the chakras and unblock the kundalini energy.
Thanks to yoga exercises, the energy dormant at the base of the spine is supposed to increase and pass through the chakras that are opened successively, i.e. seven consecutive places in the body where energy channels intersect, and reach the top of the head. As a result, man is to experience an explosion of consciousness.
The operation of yoga is often neglected and is sometimes propagated simply as an exercise.
This distortion obscures a completely different reality: “Physical exercises in yoga are not only technical, but also symbolic (initiation), regardless of the intentions of the adept. So they are not neutral. Christian prayer, on the other hand, is not a technique but a relationship. By practicing the postures and breaths of yoga, he reactivates and invokes an ancient spiritual tradition ”(Rev. Aleksander Posadzki, SJ, Dangerous Yoga).
The goal of yoga is to change the state of consciousness, which in fact means a state of trance, during which one becomes susceptible to the action of demons. It opens itself up to evil forces, the actions of which it is unable to predict or control. The consequence may even be the possession of an evil spirit.
The practice of yoga assumes that a person can save himself and work out a better version of himself. It is completely different in Christian mysticism, which is based not on technology but on grace. “
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Andrzej PaloSanto