I was born and brought up in India. During my teens in the 1960s young Europeans and Americans began arriving in India looking for meaning, spiritual enlightenment and kicks. I was fascinated by these foreigners as I had lived most of my life in small town India among Indians and knew nothing of the culture of these newcomers.

I joined with them for a while and embarked on my quest for fun, truth, reality and spiritual significance. I experienced the power of Sadhus (Hindu mystics) and the electric like surges of power coming from their eyes and radiated by their presence. I visited places like Hardwar where my body and mind felt like it was on the edge of a vast spiritual cosmos beckoning with promises of ultimate spiritual consciousness and enlightenment.

Writers such as Jack Kerouac and Timothy Leary provided many of us with vague but totally compelling directions. However many of the seekers got no further than cheap and easily available marijuana and settled down to a succession of sexual encounters, living in ashrams with people they initially felt were brothers and sisters on the same path to experience and enlightenment. Many lost their way in a haze of drug impelled unreality and without any reference points they ended up broken in spirit, and aged before their time. There were frequent stories of death, suicide and mysterious disappearances. My first excitement began to falter when I saw many of these searchers begging in the streets and others lining up to sell their blood at medical centres.

I had given my life to Jesus in 1963 and although by the late 1960s I was excited by changes in Western youth, culture, music and the apparent dawn of a new age of spiritual enlightenment, I could also see a different picture.

Later when in the 1970s and 80s I stayed and travelled around India on business, my heart went out to the young empty-eyed seekers I met and spoke to. I discussed with many the road they had taken and tried to show them what love I could and point them to life through Jesus alone. Many seekers had risked everything in an attempt to find truth, enlightenment and nirvana only to be dashed to the ground by a series of rejections, deceptions, finally waking up to the fact that they were being exploited by their gurus.

These experiences opened my eyes to many aspects of Hindu mysticism. Few Christians realise that for thousands of years gurus have operated with gifts of healing, miracles, gifts of knowledge, and intense displays of spiritual consciousness as they stretch out and connect with a cosmic power which, though demonic in origin, is very real. The power of some mystics and their reported miracles exceeds that which is generally claimed by Christians today. Many Hindu gurus claim that they can undertake spiritual journeys which unite them with the god-head of their cosmic power source. It is commonplace to find gurus worshipped as divine beings by their followers who claim that these gurus are no longer mere humans but have by a process of transformation been changed into gods (avatars).

Over the past 30 years there has been an increasing acceptance in the West of the new consciousness being taught by the more well known gurus. The New Age (of Hindu Mysticism) has crept upon the West like a glacier with its progress hardly perceived but increasingly accepted. Brought to attention by the first visits of the Beatles to India in the 1960s, a wind of spiritual change is sweeping through our society. People are buying into these new philosophies unaware of their occult origins. The acceptance of the Natural Law Party ideology by some of the most intelligent and influential people in the UK is only one testimony to the lure of New Age consciousness rooted in Hindu mysticism and Yoga.

Hunger for blessing, significance and spiritual experience now grips many westerners in one way or another. The desire in people to search for and find a place with the divine presence grows every day as the traditional anchors, structures and securities of the past are broken. The material benefits of our society are proving insufficient to meet the deep rooted longing for blessing and significance and this is evident by the dramatic usage of all forms of mystical New Age practice and therapy.

Many professing Christians are at the forefront of the search for supernatural experience and meaning. Few realise the similarities between practices they are being encouraged to adopt and the practices of mystical Hindu yoga. The practices, methods and manifestations of Siddha Yoga go back a long way in time. I will describe some of them using their Sanskrit names.

The meetings which mystic Hindu gurus hold are called Dharshan. At these meetings devotees go forward to receive spiritual experience from a touch by the open palm of the hand, often to the forehead, by the guru in what is known as the Shakti Pat or divine touch. According to the teaching there are seven spiritually significant places on the body of a person called chakras. Followers are initiated by the direct experience of the spirit of the goddess Shakti who is the consort of the god Shiva.

The raising of the spiritual experience is called raising Khundalini and has to do with raising the spirit of the god Shiva who lies like a coiled snake at the base of the spine of a person. The practice is quite intricate but is brought on by Shakti Pat in conjunction with the repetition of mantras or religious phrases and by holding physical positions for a long time. After a period when the devotee has reached a certain spiritual elevation they begin to shake, jerk, or hop or squirm uncontrollably, sometimes breaking into uncontrolled animal noises or laughter as they reach an ecstatic high. These manifestations are called Kriyas. Devotees sometimes roar like lions and show all kinds of physical signs during this period. Often devotees move on to higher states of spiritual consciousness and become inert physically and appear to slip into an unconsciousness when they lose sense of what is happening around them. This state is called samadhi and it leads to a deeper spiritual experience. Most of this spiritual experience is attributed to a goddess called Chiti. The teachings on her power are rather frightening and it is claimed that she appears in many guises at any time in history wherever she can glide in unnoticed and be welcomed unawares.

Mystic yoga is widely acknowledged to be a system of practices and methods which can be superimposed on any religious belief including Christianity and Islam. Many eastern gurus teach that a sincere belief in Jesus benefits their practices and methods, and helps practitioners attain the desired results.

Today Christian leaders are being offered a new wave of power practices and methods obtained from the latest places of Christian pilgrimage. While many claim this will lead to revival, I see parallels with things I have witnessed and described above.

Christian leaders are travelling to new centres of enlightenment to bring It back (a new consciousness?) The experience is transmitted down authority lines (the guru-chela line) to specially selected and qualified followers. In close encounter sessions open hands search out significant places (chakras) on the bodies of followers. Leaders and followers cry out for power, more power. An experience of increasing spiritual consciousness (khundalini) is raised, sometimes through power touches of the opened palms of the hand or dramatic waves and whole body actions (shakti pat). Followers are encouraged to shut off their minds (samadhi-yoga) and drink deeply from refreshing rivers, sometimes in highly charged spiritual encounter sessions to feel, see and experience the waves of high voltage spiritual power, with the accompanying physical manifestations of all kinds (kriya), sometimes collapsing into a mindless, motionless blissful trance like state (samadhi).

The promoters of these new teachings have struggled to provide unambiguous Biblical evidence to justify the methods, practices and manifestations of this New Age of spiritual experience. Whether this matters or not may be of little importance to those promoting this, since it is stressed that God is not bound by the limitations of human minds or the traditions of the past, and that what we are witnessing is altogether new, a Second Pentecost.

These new teachings have taken centre stage in the preaching and evangelism of many Christian groups. It is claimed that the way to experience spiritual rebirth is by a direct encounter with the Holy Spirit. Where previously the historic Gospel was preached based on the exercise of faith in the substitutionary and atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins, resulting in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, one is now offered spiritual regeneration simply through an experience often accompanied by physical manifestations. Sometimes this has been said to have happened even before a word is uttered in the congregation.

Those Christians who fail to respond to these teachings or object have at times been threatened with the damnation of Korah, with the fate of the Israelites who because of unbelief did not enter the promised land, or with having the mark of death on their faces. They are warned that they will miss out on Gods blessings. Shut off your mind, the mind must lie fallow, it must be bypassed! Do not question what is going on! Just lie back and let it waft over you! Here it comes! I can see it over here! Now its over there!

Leading New Agers in the UK are reported to have welcomed the arrival of the new spiritual dynamic among some Christian groups. They claim it will help overcome one of the greatest barriers to the acceptance of the coming New Age Messiah. The aroma of New Age Mystic Hinduism is here. Its new formula fragrance is attractive and compelling. It promises to meet the needs in all human hearts and lead to peace, blessing and self assurance. Or is this an anaesthetic sent by the the serpent god to draw men and women of every nation and religion into a New World Order in readiness for the appearance of Antichrist?

Robert Walker.

(Copies of this article are available in leaflet form on request)