Guru's book claims Jesus practised yoga

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.

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.

Yoga is also great exercise. People who tell you it's a fast doorway to the occult are full of it. There is, in fact, no doorway to the occult since it simply doesn't exist.

That's no less a dogmatic statement than his that yoga positions are tributes to obscure deities.

Yoga may indeed be "great exercise," but the fact remains that by its nature, it cannot solely be healthful and athletic -- its practice calls upon the participant to buy into its inherent mysticism.

As a Christian, I prefer Pilates, which doesn't ask you to adopt elements of a religion you reject.

I disagree. You can practice yoga postures - certainly at the simple "I need to stretch" - without buying into ANY of its mysticism.

In martial arts, some debate the tie between the religious training once associated with it & its pure atheletic movements. Most would agree it depends on how you wish to learn it - some will only teach it associated with its religious roots (meaning no Christian can accept learning there), while others divorce it from its religious past and teach it simply as self-defense/sport.

I believe Christians should understand yoga and oriental martial arts have a religious root, and that some teachers will teach religion under the guise of physical fitness. But it is wrong to say I cannot learn, say, judo without buying into oriental philosophy (religion).

I joked earlier about watching the video only to check out the cute girl - truth is, when I follow the stretching, I see good improvement in my flexibility. As taught in the video I've got, there is NO - zero, nada - religous overtones. Just "Bend over holding the chair edge thus, keep your back straight and slowly move your shoulders..."

Actually, the Magi were the priests of the Parthian Empire, which was distinctly Persian rather than Indian. They held the right to name the kings of the Parthians, which is why Herod and the rest of Jerusalem got nervous when they showed up asking for "He who is born King of the Jews." They thought the Parthians, the Romans' largest rival, were trying to stir up a border incident. (The fact that the Magi wouldn't have come without a small army to protect them probably didn't help either.)

In all likelihood, these Magi were familiar with the prophet Daniel, who had been the head of their order at one time. They would have known the birth of the Messiah was close from his prophecy of the Seventy Weeks. I would imagine that either one of them received a prophecy concerning the star, or they had written prophecies of Daniel that have since been lost to us about the Messiah's birth star that led them to seek Him out in Israel when it appeared.

This link
- http://www.stephen-knapp.com/jesus_taught_bhaktiyoga.htm
outlines the specific types of yoga teachings Jesus learned and adapted to his teaching in the middle east.
Over a period of 15 years I studied a form of yoga, Raj Yoga (royal union), which includes an understanding of bhakti (worship) yoga and karma (action/consequence) yoga.
Having been raised in a christian household, over time I asked some of the senior yogis about Jesus abilities. Their answers provided a significant understanding for me.

To help people understand those answers here I first need to provide three of the principles of Raj Yoga regarding the soul, re-incarnation and karma, and I offer a small expansion to help understand each

1/ the nature and form of us, the soul - is an infintessimally small point of conscient light (re- the bible- this is how we're 'made in God's image' God being light) dwelling in the pineal gland of the brain (hence the hindu recognition with a bindi/dot in the middle of the forehead, where we, the soul, reside - also known as the third eye, or eye of spiritual knowledge).

2/Reincarnation. We the soul are eternal, taking birth after birth in a new body (no rocks, trees or animals note), 'selecting' our parents each time according to our and their karmic vibration at the time of conception.

3/ Karma - responsibility for our physical & spiritual actions as cause and effect. Jesus taught it as reaping what we sow. The modern description - we get back what we give out.

There are a number of particularly interesting things about Jesus and his role with regard to this.

Jesus was a seeker of spiritual truth, hence his travel and study of yoga in India. It was through spiritual study and practice of meditation he achieved the degree of enlightenment specific to him understanding his role and his karma. He knew his role in this birth, and his future. His inevitable role was to rectify his karma, which was not good (persecution by his own people, crucifixion), from previous births by teaching the sowing of the seeds of love and compassion toward eachother, and understanding the only liberation to achieve this comes through God.

His role came to prominence around age thirty (his saturn return for those who understand the astrological significance)when he hosted the pure, Christ soul for the three years of his teaching and performing miracles. Jesus knew he was the vessel, and that his karma was inevitable (he'd be sacrificed for the work of the Christ soul). Jesus was the soul who showed a human nature - anger, fear, sorrow. The Christ soul, so powerful and pure of vibration dis-ease was healed by 'touching the hem of his garment', ability to 'cheat' death, manipulate matter, etc, enabled Jesus to rectify his karma within the space of those three years. Both Jesus and the Christ soul are still here with us going through their individual incarnations - according to the law of reincarnation, and subject to the physical law, as we all are, known as entropy (increasing disorder of matter, decreasing purity of the soul).

What's to come is even more interesting, and we all have our 'take' on it according to the story tellers of our chosen religion. And the most profound thing within the cycle of time is, for us all, that our happiness is inevitable.

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