Posted on 12/18/2004 5:54:58 PM PST by nickcarraway
The three wise men who came to worship the Christ child hailed from India and named him Isa, or "Lord" in Sanskrit - a name that became Jesus in the Bible.
Later, Jesus travelled to India, where he practiced yoga meditation with the great sages some time during his "lost years" from age 13 to 30, a time of his life scarcely mentioned in the Bible.
As Christians immerse themselves in the Advent season to prepare for Christmas, such assertions might sound like blasphemy or pure fantasy. But they come from a renowned Indian guru, the late Paramahansa Yogananda, in a newly published work that is being praised as the first detailed interpretation of the four Gospels by a Hindu.
Compiled from decades of Yogananda's speeches and writings, the book is being published by his Los Angeles-based Self-Realisation Fellowship 52 years after his death.
The Second Coming of Christ: The Resurrection of Christ Within You, offers startling ideas about the deeper meaning of Jesus's teachings and their essential unity with yoga.
AdvertisementAt 1642 pages, the intricate discourse on various Gospel passages is not expected to be a bestseller.
But it has been praised as a groundbreaking work by scholars.
Robert Ellwood, a University of Southern California professor emeritus and world religion expert, called it a "bridge-building book" that could change the way people see Jesus.
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I think there is an Eastern influence in Christianity, but I think it comes through Greece, not some lost years of Jesus.
Watermelon.
wow slow news day on FR
Greece is to the West of Jerusalem.
Although I haven't read the yoga master's book as yet, it's about time the Hindus recognized the most recent appearance of the Messiah. This book may well precipitate a flood of quite intresting shifts in Hinduism.
The Silly Season is upon us.
"thru" Greece, from the East. After Alexander...
Yes, interesting. There may have been a great deal more cross-pollination than usually thought.
Students of Yogananda, Swami viva KAnanda, yoga know that each and every movement in the performance of yoga is in reverence to a Hindu god. There are 32 million gods in hinduism. Each position is reverential to one of their gods. The sick part is one of the places where these techiques are taught is the YMCA (Young Mens Christian Association) They are taught it is exercise, but those who teach it know very well it is a technique taught to get into a altered state of consciousness, which is the doorway to the occult. I am told by those who immerse themselves in yoga it is the fastest way to an altered state. Faster than drugs, biofeedback, sensory deprivation via "witches cradle", hypnosis, or any other technique. I do not believe it is compatible with the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Wild stuff.
In earlier times, no doubt, there was a bit of overland to get to the Red Sea, but there was no reason to have to take the whole trip on foot.
Alexander the Great did it backwards upon leaving India.
http://nabataea.net/ships.html provides a brief on this ancient Indian ship design popularized by Arab traders.
They mentioned the crucifiction and suggested that the water flowing from the spear wound in the side and the story about the Centurion who was partially blind and cured by the liquid flowing from Jesus's chest might signify an Eastern to wit Yoga experience!
Go Figger!
That doesn't mean Satan is not real, just that evil is not done except by the hand of man exercising free-will.
Your source that advises you that Hinduism has 32,000,000 gods is also full of nonsense. There are, in fact, as many religions in India as there are people. Some of them share gods, some don't. Many of them are as focused as any Christian group on monotheism, although there are many others that are purely Trinitarian.
They don't call the Subcontinent "the Mother of Religions" for nothing!
No way. If Jesus was into yoga and wanted us to be He would have told us. Just another way to deceive people.
I can't see how Yoga would be anti-christian, the only way to reach the altered states you talk about is to clear your mind of everything. I used to practice meditation and am thinking about getting back into it.
I've got a DVD on Yoga for inflexible people.
Guess I missed the part on demons - all I saw were bend like this, stretch like that.
I don't do it, but have watched it a time or two for the cute girl stretching...
Come on now, I've heard the "everything strange is of the devil" crap since I was a little kid. I was raised in a VERY fundamentalist household, went to a Chrsitian school, and had friends that were more fundamentalist than I was. Monopoly was considered from Satan because you played it with dice.
A bunch of exercises are NOT going to lead you to hell. I've done Yoga exercises for years for my back and I haven't grown horns yet.
You're worried about an "altered state of consciousness"? Have you ever seen Holy Rollers, Snake Handlers, Tent Revivals? Those people make Hindus seem positively tame by comparison. Some Christians are just as wacky as any Hindu.
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