Christian Yoga

Part One

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Among the written teachings of Christ, we are told he said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Math 11.29).

At the time of Christ the word yoke referred to two things. It was a wooden beam to harness two oxen so they could be worked as a team. Also conquered armies were made to walk beneath a spear lashed horizontally to two upright spears called a yoke, as a sign of enslavement or subjection.

In Collins Concise Dictionary the Sanscrit word yoga is described as meaning ‘yoke’, while the English word yoke means to couple or unite. So one can truly quote Christ as saying “Take my yoga upon you, and learn from me... My yoga is easy.”

The beauty of yoga as it has developed in the west, is that each person has the opportunity of releasing or finding their innate and extraordinary potential in themselves in their own way. Yoga has always been associated with a personal discipline or techniques relating to self-help. So the words Christian and Yoga are here joined together not to suggest that Christians should practice Eastern yoga postures or breathing techniques, or even meditation techniques from the Far East, but to denote a path within Christ’s teachings that is a personal way for each of us to take. Eastern Yoga often suggests a renunciation of self, a killing out of the ego. The Christian Yoga leads to a transformation of the ego, a transcendence of the self, and a new life. Buddhism and many Eastern teachers suggest that life is dominated by pain, and the release is to lose the ego. The Christian Yoga says that pain exists because we have not accepted or claimed our heritage of spiritual life, and if we so do we can experience heaven on earth.

Christian Yoga is not Eastern postures or breathing techniques

Therefore, any present definitions of yoga in connection with Christianity must mention not only that it is a way of life attempting a particular discipline (or discipleship), but also that practitioners are not required to join a sect or denomination, or to accept dogmatic teachings. The aim is to open to an influence that can transform and heal. This way of Christian Yoga has nothing to do with the eastern yoga postures, the breathing techniques or the eastern meditations. I have nothing against these practices, having been a teacher of eastern yoga for many years, but Christian Yoga has its own path and its own disciplines. It does not need to borrow from the Far East. I repeat, its aim is quite different to eastern yoga. Whereas eastern yoga attempts to drop the ego, the Christian path aims at transforming the personality. Perhaps the very end results are similar, but the way there is different.

This Christian Yoga is described thoroughly in the New Testament when we look at the story of Jesus’ life as an allegory. It is a step-by-step way of transformation and the finding of a new life. As Jesus promised, this ‘heaven’, this new awareness of your life, is not far away. It is already yours if you know how to find it.

Yoga in the West

One of the interesting things about yoga in the West is that from its very beginnings women have played as large a part in its practice and teachings as men. In early Christianity women also played an important role, even though none were listed as apostles. In Acts 1:13-15 this is made plain. It says:

When they had come in, they went up into the upper chamber, where they were staying; that is Peter, John, James, Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord continued steadfastly in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. In these days, Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples (and there was a multitude of persons gathered together, about one hundred twenty) …

This passage clearly states that apart from Mary, the mother of Jesus, there were other women, and with Jesus’ brothers the gathering numbered about one hundred and twenty. It must be remembered that in this earliest group of Christians there was no organised religion, no creed, and no denominations. They were a hundred and twenty down to earth everyday people trying to live in a certain way, and trying to let something very wonderful into their lives. In fact, that original meeting was to allow what, in the gospels, was called the Spirit or Holy Ghost to enter their experience. This influence is at the heart of the Christian Yoga. The words Spirit and Holy Ghost are of course terms used by these ancient people. They may mean very little to a person educated in today’s world unless that person has direct experience. But these words will be examined as we proceed.

It is an unfortunate tendency in virtually all of the world religions that they become very insular and possessive. When people began to organise Christianity, to place dogmas and rigid rules around it, Christianity had the misfortune to be scarred with battles between sects, intolerance of other races and culture, and male authoritarianism. Nevertheless, I believe there is a real Christian Yoga that stands beyond that, and talks about universal principles. When Newton discovered the process of gravity he did not tell people they could only receive instruction in it if they belonged to a certain society or group. It was a principle universal in nature. Likewise, what the earliest Christians found is in a similar category.

You do not have to believe in and apply a lot of rules and dogmatic regulations described by organising bodies to use the principles of electricity. But many of us see Christianity as needing to live rigid rules and regulations laid down by the organised church. But the underlying principles are about universal processes. Even if we believe the idea of a personal God, it is strange that a being that is said to have created the universe limits any approach to itself to a particular organisation or sect. Strange also that the three great religions who have as their central belief a personal God, and are therefore monotheistic, are often at loggerheads. If I say hello to you, and someone else says hola, and yet another person say buongiorno – we are surely all greeting each other, but speaking different languages. It seems that Allah, God and Jehovah are surely the same thing in different languages.

The Christian Yoga being described here is about universal processes of life, of your mind and heart. If you use these principles certain results arise that you can understand and test. They do not rely on beliefs in standards set by other human beings. The only thing required of you is a sense that underlying your existence is something you do not fully understand. You perhaps need to feel that life itself is a grand mystery that you want to experience or explore more fully. The aim is to open to and explore that Mystery.

Christian Yoga is an ancient path

Christian Yoga has been known for centuries, and practised by individuals and groups who were frequently persecuted by the organised church. In fact, the power and love that touched the early Christians has been innate in men and women from the beginning, and is lying dormant in each of us. We can think of this inner potential as the Mother Church, not build with bricks, not connected with any form of organised religion. We enter it and are transformed by following the Christian pathway, the Christian Yoga.

In this incredible universe there are possibilities that we only vaguely understand -- or do not understand at all. In my own lifetime I have seen the emergence of radio and television into an everyday part of most people’s lives. They arose from the use of natural principles that were previously obscure or unrealised. There are also things about the human body, the human mind and soul that remain obscure or unknown for many of us, despite the enormous amount of research undertaken in the realm of physics and psychology.

Christian Yoga is about unfolding some of these wonderful possibilities we each hold latent. It is about possibilities so amazing that many early Christians were willing to die in support of keeping a doorway open for other people to claim them. So what are those possibilities, and how can we claim them?

Is this all there is?

How many of us have at some time reached a point in life where we ask, “Is this all there is – this depression, this labouring on and on, this struggle, this emptiness at the end of even a rich life? Do we do everything that we do only to have all wiped out in death?”

The early Christians said they had found the doorway to eternal life. They also demonstrated extraordinary healings of body and mind. Having talked this over with a number of my peers, it has become obvious that there are a few set responses to this in the modern mind. A few people believe, for instance, that perhaps those things happened 2000 years ago, but those were extraordinary people, and they can’t happen in today’s world. Others believe that those stories are a sort of folklore or mythology, and must be seen in that light. Many believe the statements are pure exaggeration made by people who were religious zealots.

Most of us have heard of Albert Schweitzer who went to the Belgian Congo in Africa to start a hospital. The native people who came to him for help at first were very resistant to his ‘magic’ as they thought of it. One of his first patients was a tribesman suffering from appendicitis. Schweitzer anaesthetized the man, cut him open, took out his appendix, sewed him up again and revived him. All this was done in an old converted chicken house that Schweitzer was using as his operating theatre. Other tribespeople and the man’s relatives were watching the operation through doors and holes in the roof. They carried the news far and wide that Schweitzer had killed the man, cut him open and removed his innards, then sewed him up and brought him back to life. He was seen as a miracle worker.

I tell this story because it illustrates the enormous difference in perspective of those tribespeople and of our own. Describing the event as a miracle and as a resurrection does not in any way change the fact of Schweitzer’s operation on that man. Neither do the gospel descriptions mean those events did not happen simply because we would not describe them in that way. It is only in very recent years that the medical profession as a whole has acknowledging the link between the mind, emotions, and physical illness. At one time illness was never seen as emerging from stress or grief. Dealing with these torturous emotions can bring about remarkable physical change. Although I have quoted this elsewhere, the following story is worth repeating because it illustrates this so well:

Many years ago a woman who could hardly walk came to stay with my wife and I. She hobbled along using two sticks. Within a week, without any treatment, she could walk normally. She told us with great enthusiasm that she now knew what had caused her illness. Three years previously her son had married and had asked if he and his new wife could lodge in his parent’s house for a few weeks while they looked for a house of their own. His mother felt resentful that he and his wife had stayed for years and made no effort to move out. But being a Christian woman she kept her feelings to herself. She ended the story by saying, “Being on holiday away from the situation has allowed me to be free of the resentment, and this has healed my legs. So I know what I am going to do when I get home. I am going to tell my son and his wife to pack their things and move out.”

Taking the path of Christian Yoga can lead to healing of the mind and body. But perhaps even more important than that, it can lead to the discovery of what at the moment is only a potential within you. Also, it promises a spiritual life in which you transcend death.

Those are heady claims, and therefore need to be looked at in terms of modern language.

In Christian terminology the word Spirit is used to describe the source of healing and the spring from which the sense of eternal life arises. It is therefore helpful to have some grasp of what this word means in a way we might be able to observe in our daily life. This is said because Christian Yoga is not about things we cannot see or experience in our ordinary everyday life. We do not need to believe in the strange or occult, or even to accept things on someone else’s say so.

Who are you really?

For most agnostics any talk about the eternal in our obviously short spanned life is a sign of mental weakness. They perhaps say, “Point it out to me.” The strange thing is that it is easy to see, but it is usually discounted. For instance, what is it you most closely identify as yourself? Is it your body? Is your body you?

People can lose an arm, both legs, even mobility, but they still have a clear sense of themselves, of being a person. Perhaps it is not as easy or as comfortable having no legs, but there is still a strong sense of being a person.

Or maybe you identify with the way you look, your face, your hair or the shape of your body. But this changes with age, sometimes radically, and old people often say, “Although I look in the mirror and the person I see appears incredibly different to how I looked years ago, inside I still feel as if I am about 20 or 30 years old.”

If you identify your body as yourself, then you are faced by the tragedy of enormous change and the certainty of death. Even so, up until the moment of your death your body has been eternal. Think on it. Your body is the result of two living cells merging and subdividing, and subdividing, over and over to form the mature body. But those two original cells have an unbroken line of subdivision rightthe way back to the beginning of life. In that sense you personally have a connection with eternity. Even the material your body uses in its growth was formed in the beginning of the universe, is from the stars, and is billions of years old. So there is another connection you have with eternity. In fact what is there around you and within you that does not involve eternal existence? However, what we focus on most of the time is the changes taking place within this background of eternity.

Again, this is like identifying your hair, your limbs, or your looks as being you. What Christian Yoga is suggesting is the discovery of the part of you that does not undergo change.

But let us explore this question of what you identify with a little further. Maybe you identify with the way you feel, your emotions, or perhaps your thoughts. But from one moment to the next these are not the same. They are constantly shifting and moving, and undergo more variation than your body. If you identify with your thoughts and emotions you can become lost in their swirling and shifting storm. Believing you are your thoughts or emotions can be at the root of depression and confusion.

Losing an arm or leg, losing your physical beauty in age, may affect your thoughts and feelings, but those things do not in any way deplete from your sense of existing. Do you in fact believe that your ever changing thoguhts are your essential self? Do you believe that your emotions, that can be manipulated by what somebody says about you, or by events, is your essential self? If you observe yourelf for a while, although you feel the swing of your emotions and thoughts, don't you also have a sense of yourseelf as being soemthing more permanent, something thay has a sense of continuity through the years? Where is that continuity arising from? It certainly isn't from the ever changing body or thoughts?

So if your body, your thoughts and emotions are not YOU, then what or who are you? What is it you can most securely identify with? What is it that is not shifting and changing and capable of being lost?

R. D. Laing, in his long poem The Bird of Paradise, said that, “The truth I am trying to grasp is the grasp that is trying to grasp it.”

The problem with recognising your fundamental, and perhaps eternal self, is that you are so immersed in it, like a fish in water, that it is difficult for you to recognise. In the Old Testament the following conversation is reported between Moses and God:

And Moses said unto God, “Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?”

And God said unto Moses, “I AM THAT I AM”: and he said, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” (Exodus Book 2 3:13-14)

Christian Yoga Part Two