by:
Dr. Christine Mangala Frost
Source: http://www.iocs.cam.ac.uk/resources/texts/m_frost_yoga_and_christianity.pdf
OODE
Dr. Christine Mangala was born a Hindu, a Brahmin, the highest and priestly caste in India. She was brought up on yoga. Her grandfather, in fact, was a personal friend of one of the expounders of modern yoga and Vedanta philosophy, the well-known Swami Sivananda, who is the founder of the Divine Life Society. She became a Christian at age 22, and later converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. She received her doctorate in English literature from Cambridge University, and has authored articles on literature and books of fiction, of which she has written several, as well as various spiritual subjects, including yoga and Christianity. She is married to Dr. David Frost, the director of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England with whom she has four children, and she attends St. Ephraim’s Russian Orthodox Church in Cambridge, UK, England.
I was born a Hindu, became a Christian at
the age of 22 and have been an Orthodox
Christian for ten years. I was brought up
with yoga. My grandfather was a friend of
one of the founders of modern yoga, Swami
Sivananda, who used to send his books on
yoga to my grandfather along with a
vitamin-rich sweet herbal concoction we
loved to eat. As children we were encouraged
to do certain postures and breathing
exercises, always with a clear warning that
there are different ways of breathing for
men and women as their bodies are
differently shaped. When I got married and
had children, I passed on to them some of
the ideas I had found useful from my
childhood yoga lessons. We lived on top of a
hill, and as the children walked daily to
school (we did not have a car), they had to
climb up a steep incline.
At times, they would complain about how their legs hurt. I would say, without thinking for one moment how odd it might sound, "breathe through your knees." Somehow they seemed to understand what that meant and did as told, and soon found it less of an effort to climb. Later on, as they grew up, they learnt to do postures from modern western manuals and benefit from the exercises. They were brought up in a Christian home and were in no danger of being led astray by esoteric Hindu spiritual ideas, such as "self-realization", which often accompany modern yoga. On a visit to India, when they met such ideas in an ashram, they were rather repelled by them as they were by the idolatrous, cultic atmosphere that prevailed in that ashram.
At times, they would complain about how their legs hurt. I would say, without thinking for one moment how odd it might sound, "breathe through your knees." Somehow they seemed to understand what that meant and did as told, and soon found it less of an effort to climb. Later on, as they grew up, they learnt to do postures from modern western manuals and benefit from the exercises. They were brought up in a Christian home and were in no danger of being led astray by esoteric Hindu spiritual ideas, such as "self-realization", which often accompany modern yoga. On a visit to India, when they met such ideas in an ashram, they were rather repelled by them as they were by the idolatrous, cultic atmosphere that prevailed in that ashram.
I recount this chiefly to emphasize that
there is more to yoga than mere exercise and
that we need, more than ever, the gift of
discernment when we attend yoga classes or
read about it in books. We need to have a
clear idea of what we are dealing with if we
want to use it without compromising our
Christian faith.
Yoga was once regarded with awe in India as
an esoteric branch of Hindu spiritual
discipline that required great physical and
psychological daring. It was sought by the
solitary spiritual seeker eager to ascend
the higher rungs of a Hindu ideal of
spiritual perfection. Such a seeker would
undertake an austere regimen of physical and
mental discipline strictly under the
guidance of a revered master, a guru of
spiritual discernment who would monitor his
disciple's progress vigilantly. The ultimate
goal of yoga was nothing short of
experiencing the divine within oneself.
Since the nineteenth century, largely due to
the relentless propaganda efforts of Hindu
missionary gurus such as Swami Vivekananda,
yoga has been stripped of its mystique and
complexity. It has been remoulded in the
idiom of American schools of self-help and
positive thinking and marketed as a safe and
easy pathway to bliss within the grasp of
all. Both in the East and West, yoga is now
a household word; a highly popular keep-fit
routine taught and practiced by large
numbers in church or school halls and
sports-venues. While some yoga teachers
promote it as a mere technique for ensuring
one's wellbeing, others advocate it as an
all-purpose answer to not only the ills of
modern life but to the ultimate questions of
life itself. Some yoga teachers and students
play down the importance of the Hindu ethos
in which the psycho-spiritual jargon of yoga
is anchored, others eagerly embrace that
very ethos, especially those who find the
creeds, rituals and demands of institutional
Christianity irksome. Many Christians
practice yoga untroubled by its spiritual
baggage while others feel some unease, and
often meet with disapproval from their
priests and bishops.
As Orthodox Christians, what are we to make
of modern yoga?
Is yoga safe for Christians to practice? Or,
is it so counter to the Christian faith as
to be shunned totally? The conundrum posed
by modern yoga was brought into sharp focus
by a report in The Times (Friday, 31 August,
2007) which caused a stir. "Vicars ban
unchristian yoga for toddlers" so ran the
headline: "A children's exercise class has
been banned from two church-halls because it
is teaching yoga. The group has been turned
away by vicars who described yoga as a sham
and unchristian." The slant given in the
report seemed to suggest that the vicars
were being unreasonable, bigoted and unduly
alarmist. The yoga teacher Miss Woodcock is
said to have been "outraged" by their ban on
her "Yum-Yum Yoga class for toddlers and
mums". She claims that she explained to the
church that her "yoga is a completely
non-religious activity." She does, however,
concede that "some types of adult-yoga are
based on Hindu and Buddhist meditation but
it is not part of the religion and there is
no dogma involved."
"Exercise", not "meditation": in saying
this, this yoga teacher is drawing our
attention to the two major types of yoga
prevalent today: Modern Postural Yoga and
Modern Meditational Yoga. Realizing that
meditational yoga often takes one deep into
spiritual realms and goals incompatible with
Christianity, Miss Woodcock is eager to keep
"exercise" apart from "meditation." Is such
a defusing of yoga to make it "safe"
possible?
The vicars disagree: " The philosophy of
yoga cannot be separated from the practice
of it, and any teacher of yoga (even to
toddlers) must subscribe to the philosophy.
Yoga may appear harmless or even beneficial,
but it is encouraging people to think that
there is a way to wholeness of body and mind
through human techniques—whereas the only
true way to wholeness is by faith in God
through Jesus Christ."
Any reliance solely on "human techniques"
for achieving wholeness divorced from faith
in Jesus Christ is understandably castigated
by the vicars, one an Anglican and the
other, a Baptist. Their rejection stems from
a fear of nullifying the role of faith and
grace in salvation and of falling into the
heresy of
Pelagianism. Protestant tradition in
general tends to be nervous of any
suggestion of "spiritual effort" despite the
fact that St. Paul admonishes us to "work
out our salvation with diligence".
The concept of synergy
In the Orthodox tradition the role of human
freewill in responding to the divine call to
"wholeness" or "holiness" is beautifully
encapsulated in the concept of synergy. The
Incarnation of Christ as fully human and
fully God means that we now have a way
through Him for what St. Maximus calls
divine-human "reciprocity". God becoming
human makes possible our participation in
His life, a lifelong process which is
described as theosis (deification). Our
salvation is not an automatic result of an
initial assent, or a legal status of being
redeemed from our "slavery" to sin but an
"active perfection" in love to be realized
in the body of Christ, in his Church.
Therefore baptized Christians are urged to
fast, pray, give alms, repent, confess,
participate in the life and liturgy of the
Church; all these require an initiative on
our part, a willingness to prepare ourselves
to receive and respond to the grace of God.
Like the Prodigal Son, remembering God, "Our
Father," means setting our heart towards our
journey home back to Him. There is a subtle
symbiosis between human readiness or
willingness and the work of the Holy Spirit.
To adopt a telling image from St. Ephraim,
the human person is a "harp of the Spirit."
To play well the music of the Holy Spirit
our harp needs to be well tuned, its strings
neither too tight nor too slack. Yoga
techniques are primarily aimed at achieving
a psychosomatic equilibrium or poise. So we
may well ask, without falling into any
heresy, is it not possible to treat
yoga-techniques as means "to tune up" our
body and mind so that we become better
receptors of God's grace? Can Hindu yoga
help a Christian to fulfil the command heard
by the psalmist "Be still and know that I am
God?" What role, if any, can yoga postures
and meditation play in fulfilling the
commands of Christ : "Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind. . Love your
neighbour as yourself." (Mathew 22: 37-39)?
The Hindu-Buddhist Ethos of Modern Yoga
Before I attempt to answer these questions I
need to sketch in brief the types of yoga
one encounters today and the
Hindu-Buddhist ethos they are steeped in.
One writer cites four types: Hollywood Yoga,
Harvard Yoga, Himalayan Yoga and Cultic
Yoga.[1]
1. Hollywood Yoga , as the name implies,
aims at beauty, fitness and longevity.
2. Harvard Yoga sets its sights on mental
clarity, concentration and psychic calm.
3. Himalayan Yoga goes way beyond the other
two and aims at a mystical state known as
samadhi (absorption).
4. Cultic Yoga centres round a charismatic
guru. Enlightenment is said to be
imparted by the mere touch of a guru to a
disciple who worships him or her as God.
5. Purist Hindu practitioners claim to
follow the guidelines provided in the
original Sanskrit text, Patanjali's Yoga
Sutras; their teaching follows the
"eight-limbed" (ashtanga) yoga. Doing
postural exercises is a relatively minor
matter in an agenda that lays stress on
mental and moral purification and a
harnessing of psychic powers for spiritual
perfection. The "eight-limbs" consist of :
"five restraints" (yamas) "five disciplines" (niyamas) "physical postures" (asanas) "regulation of vital force" (pranayama) "sense organ withdrawal" (pratyahara), "concentration" (dharana), "meditation" (dhyana) "absorption" (samadhi).
The first two "limbs" aim at cultivating
virtues such as truthfulness, selflessness
and non-violence. Some Hindu teachers of
yoga regret that the third, "physical
postures", is now widely taught without any
reference to moral perfection. They insist
that the poise attained by the practice of
postures is meant to set the yogi on a
journey whose ultimate goal is spiritual, a
state of permanent bliss known as samadhi or
"absorption".
Absorption into what? This meets with
different answers depending on what you
believe.
If you are a Hindu who believes that there
is no difference between his Self (atma) and
the Supreme Self (brahman), "absorption"
means arriving at an experience of
undifferentiated oneness with brahman. Such
a Hindu sees the ultimate spiritual reality
as Impersonal and strongly contends that
belief in the Impersonal is superior to any
belief in a Personal God.
If you are a Hindu who worships God as a
deity, a theist who cultivates a personal
relationship of love with his or her god or
goddess, and seeks liberation by the deity's
grace, "absorption" means a drowning of self
in the Godhead.
If you are a Buddhist and do not believe in
a Creator-God (as the Dalai Lama reiterates
often) "absorption", means entering nirvana,
a "blowing out", an ultimate extinction of
self.
Though the ambitious spiritual program of
Patanjali's Yoga morphed into keep-fit
routines in Western Yoga classes and
manuals, one still meets some mutation or
other of the complex, inter-dependent
psycho-spiritual concepts from the original
author. Underlying them all is the view
derived from a system of philosophy known as
samkhya. According to samkhya, our ordinary
psychosomatic self is a by-product of
biophysical processes and that by the
disciplines of yoga, one peels oneself like
an onion to reach the core where one finds
"pure consciousness." As one yoga teacher
explains: 'once the individual grasps that
he is essentially pure consciousness
different from and separate from
psychophysical processes, he is disunited
from his false notions. At the same time the
individual is also united in his thoughts,
feelings, emotions and actions to his real
self.'[2]
"Pure Consciousness" or Kingdom of God?
 |
| St. Symeon the New Theologian's First Vision of Uncreated Glory (here) |
It seems a questionable claim that a
systematic severing of contact with the
external world creates an integrated human
being. On the contrary, as R.D. Laing has
shown in his The Divided Self,
embarking on a radical withdrawal from
external reality may well render one
schizoid. Not only does the yogic inward
journey run the risk of mental illness, but
the goal of such yoga raises some serious
problems for a Christian. Jesus admonishes
us to seek the Kingdom of God within, not
"pure consciousness." When a Christian
prays, "Thy Kingdom come," he is
paradoxically envisaging the reign of God as
an external as well as an internal
happening. Even in the Christian monastic
traditions, which recommend withdrawal from
the world, from the objects of sensual
experience, the monk is in search of an
"inner kingdom" (cf. Metropolitan Kallistos'
choice title for his writings). In this
"inner kingdom", God the Holy Trinity, our
God who has "revealed" Himself to us in
Jesus Christ reigns supreme. We recognize
Him and commune with Him in the power of the
Holy Spirit and by the power of the same
Spirit we call upon God as "Our Father." In
countless parables, Jesus describes what
that phrase, the "Kingdom of God" means.
Among other things it stands for a "life
abundant" here and hereafter; and it
encompasses the whole of creation. As
Patriarch Ignatius IV reminds us, 'The
Kingdom of God is nothing other than the
glorified Body of the risen Christ, in which
each day humanity enters into communion.'[3]
The Christian goal of "the Kingdom of God"
is a far cry from whatever one understands
by "pure consciousness."
Influential Hindu missionaries like
Vivekananda and his followers deploy certain
yoga techniques to promote a pop-mysticism
based on the notion of
"Self-realization." which has become a yoga
buzz-word. The path to
"Self-realization" through yoga is presented
as of universal appeal, free from dogma and
strictly non-denominational. However, a
close scrutiny of Vivekananda's writings
reveals a strong bias in favour of one
specific Hindu tradition, that of the
non-dualist, (advaitin) Vivekananda
bowdlerized the subtle metaphysics of Hindu
non-dualism (advaita) and championed its
cause in the marketplace with the ardour of
a philosophical imperialist. Random quotes
from his writings illustrate his reckless
syncretism and the audacious, often
preposterous claims he made for his mode of
"Self-realization."[4]
"All is my Self. Say this unceasingly. "
"Go into your own room and get the
Upanishads out of your own Self. You are the
greatest book that ever was or ever will be,
the infinite depository of all that is."
"I am the essence of bliss. " "Follow no
ideal, you are all that is. " "Christs and
Buddhas are simply occasions upon which to
objectify your inner powers. We really
answer our own prayers. "
" We may call it Buddha, Jesus, Krishna,
Jehovah, Allah, Agni, but it is only the
Self, the 'I'."
"The universe is thought, and the Vedas are
the words of this thought. We can create and
uncreate the whole universe. "[5]
When Vivekananda realized that he needed
something more than loose philosophical talk
for his brand of "Self-realization," he
wrote his seminal work, Raja Yoga, which is
a practical manual for those seeking the
so-called "Self-realization."
"Know thyself": in Yoga and Christianity
There are many reasons why the spiritual
ethos underpinning modern yoga is
incompatible with Christianity, chief among
them being the inordinate focus on self.
Self-deification, from a Christian point of
view, is at the very root of evil. In
Christian understanding, the very Fall of
Man is a turning away from God towards a
misguided, rebellious reliance on self. This
rupture of communion with God results in sin
and death. Commenting on the Socratic
dictum, "Know Thyself," (which is also a
message of modern yoga), Orthodox theologian
Mantzaridis writes: 'If there exists
something that man can and must seek and
find within himself, it is not the self
which deviated but the new man in Christ,
born through baptismal grace and the other
Church sacraments. Man's return to himself
can only truly exalt him provided it takes
place within the life in Christ.'[6]
The Christian goal and
the means to that goal are succinctly put by
the same author in his explication of St.
Gregory Palamas: 'Direct and personal
knowledge of God is achieved through a
mystical communion with Him. Man gains true
knowledge of Him once he is visited by
deifying grace and united through it with
God. The more man accepts the divinizing
transformation worked within him by the Holy
Spirit, the more perfect and full is his
knowledge of God.'[7]
St. Paul reminds us, to know God is to be
known by him, that is, to be loved by Him.
Love implies a relationship, a communion,
not annihilation nor "absorption", least of
all "self-absorption".
Christian Yoga?
Given that the spiritual ambience and goals
of yoga, by and large, are incompatible with
Christianity is there any way a Christian
can disengage it from its Hindu ethos, use
its techniques and still remain a committed
Christian?
Some Christians believe that this is
possible. A notable example is the
Benedictine monk, Dechanet, who argues that
yoga can do a great deal for Christians,
well beyond improving our physical
wellbeing. He believes that yoga can help us
to be better Christians, provided we
practice it within a framework of Christian
prayer. In his book Christian Yoga
Dechanet takes up the challenge of
Christianizing yoga. This he does, with an
acute awareness of the counter-Christian
ethos of traditional yoga. He states
emphatically how the two are dissimilar:
'The Christian starts from faith, and
reaches a certain experience, in divine
charity, of the God of Revelation,
experiencing "Emmanuel", God with us, God
with me. The Hindu has only empirical data
to guide him and at the end of his road
discovers a sublime but almost savage
isolation.'[8]
Dechanet gives careful guidelines as to how
one can do yoga to be a better Christian: in
prayer, worship, in one's love of God and
love of one's neighbour. He presents a set
of yoga exercises and advice on breathing as
ways of presenting ourselves to God with
integrity and sincerity: 'Our whole aim is
to bring calm and peace to the whole being;
to make a good and faithful servant of the
body; to free the soul from anxieties and
problems that are all too common; and to
finally to arouse the spirit.'
[9]
A Critique of Dechanet
I must confess to being somewhat troubled by
that last phrase, "arouse the spirit". This
is the language of a Hindu yogi who believes
in "arousing" dormant powers by masterful
self-effort; and therefore it is not
suitable to describe a Christian experience
of the Spirit. Our Orthodox prayer to the
Holy Spirit, "O Heavenly King, Comforter,
Spirit of Truth . .' makes it very clear
that, as fallen creatures, what we need most
urgently is an infusion of new life. So we
ask to be cleansed and purified by Him who
is "everywhere present and fills all
things." This prayer clearly positions us as
supplicants seeking the Spirit's abiding
presence within us.
When I started work on this essay, I decided
to test out Dechanet's recommendations, and
practiced some basic yoga postures during my
morning prayers; and I found that with some
conscious effort and concentration it was
possible to synchronize my petitions, praise
and thanks with the postures. It certainly
curbed the level of anxiety, and I could
tell myself that I was able to "consider the
lilies of the field", as our Lord commanded
us to do, a little better than I normally
do. The breathing exercises infused a sense
of wellbeing and increased my ability to
deal with the turmoil of the day.
However, there was one thing that troubled
me somewhat in combining yoga with prayers.
I found myself much more aware of myself
praying. There was a degree of self-
consciousness I felt uncomfortable with: I
would rather have forgotten myself while
saying the words of prayer or entering
silence. Instead, I seemed to be watching
myself praying. I decided that the sense of
well being I had experienced was genuine
enough but it was the result of the
exercises, which were clearly beneficial. I
decided to revert to my old habit of keeping
the exercises separate from prayers.
My conclusion:
1. Incompatibility.
Christians undertaking yoga should be fully
aware that its Hindu-Buddhist spiritual
ethos is incompatible with the Christian
faith. For example: even the Dalai
Lama's commendable guidelines on cultivating
compassion focus on "self-effort," for he
frankly admits that he does not believe in a
Creator God. For a Christian, love of one's
neighbour (compassion) is inseparable from
love of God, and, both are kindled in the
human heart by the Holy Spirit.
If a yoga teacher introduces concepts and
goals incompatible with being a Christian,
one needs to resist them. For this one needs
to have a good and clear grasp of what it
means to be a Christian. If you are well
grounded in Christian thinking, prayer and
Christian living, it should be possible, by
the grace of God to take what is good in
yoga and discard its alien ethos. Attempts
to Christianize yoga are commendable but may
prove distracting.
2. Yoga to keep fit
It is perfectly feasible to use yoga as a
keep-fit routine to tune the body, and make
it a fit instrument for Christian prayer. We
should be grateful that the modern teachers
of yoga have reduced it to a gentle form of
exercise.
[OODE
note:
Even
though the respectable author of the
article regards that Yoga can be used
purely for exercising, there are
nevertheless other Orthodox students and
authors who disagree and believe that
even in such a case, it can still create
problems in a person. Further down, you
will see that even "Gurus" assert that
Yoga has negative side effects on the
body. On the basis of this and
everything else that you will read
further along, we would recommend that
the reader resort to other kinds of
physical exercise... after all, there
are several other kinds, which do not
have religious roots]
3. Caution
I would, however, sound a note of caution.
It is important to make sure that you are in
normal health before you undertake postural
yoga. A medical check-up is a good idea. For
example, if you have blood-pressure problems
certain postures should be avoided. Some
postures stimulate the thyroid, and if you
have any problems relating to that gland,
again, you need to be careful. Some
difficult postures like the headstand should
be done only for short spells. One Indian
guru, who rejects yoga, mocks its claim to
enlightenment with the remark that too
many headstands damage the finer blood
vessels in the brain, even cause partial
brain damage, and the consequent stupor is
hailed by some Hindus as a state of
enlightenment!
Even greater caution is necessary with what
is taught as "meditation." Some advanced
forms of meditation-exercises change one's
brain rhythms and lead to a sense of
euphoria, which can be addictive. As with
other addictions, when the effect wears off,
one may end up in depression.
4. Psychic Danger
Breathing
techniques aimed at rousing what is called
kundalini, dormant sexual energy, which is
sublimated into spiritual energy, are
particularly dangerous, as they expose one
to psychic forces beyond one's control.
Here it is well to remember Jesus' parable
about the unclean spirit (Matthew 12:
43-45). A purified, heightened consciousness
without the presence of God is a dangerous
state to be in.
5. Mantras and Jesus Prayer
Some yoga teachers encourage chanting of
mantras as a means of eliminating
disturbance. Mantras are abbreviated
invocation of Hindu deities; a mantra's
sound vibrations are said to activate
unexplored levels of consciousness.
Christians need no such mantras. Rather than
enter unknown and potentially dangerous
psychic realms through such chanting, we
can stabilize ourselves by saying the Jesus
Prayer. We have in the Jesus Prayer the most
perfect invocation of the Divine Name, which
we are called to "hallow," that is hold
holy. Moreover, our cry is grounded in a
sober awareness of our own spiritual poverty
as sin-prone creatures; hence, like the
blind beggar we say, "Lord Jesus, Have
mercy!"
Vocal or silent repetition of the name of
Jesus acts like a mantra yet the Jesus
Prayer is not a mantra. The Jesus prayer,
unlike a mantra, contains in a nutshell the
basics of the Christian faith. Unlike a
mantra, which works more like self-hypnotism,
the Jesus prayer marks a movement to and
from God as it embodies a relationship in
faith and love. Unlike Hindu mantras, whose
ambit is what Christians would see as the
"old Adam", the ultimate aim of the Jesus
Prayer is, to quote St. Paul ,"to put on the
new man." In the writings of the Desert
Fathers, of St. John of Damascus, especially
in the hesychast tradition so soundly
defended by St. Gregory Palamas, and in the
works of modern commentators like Bishop
Brianchaninov, Metropolitan Kallistos, monk
Porphyrios, we have invaluable guidelines
for the practice of the Jesus Prayer. As
Bishop Brianchaninov puts it, "In the name
of the Lord Jesus quickening is given to the
soul deadened by sin. The Lord Jesus Christ
is life. And His name is living; it revives
and quickens those who cry by it to the
source of life.'[10]
Having sounded these warnings, I still
believe that a modest yoga regimen can help
us to stay supple in body and mind,
spiritually alert and vigilant and
ultimately live a Christian life with
greater zest and joy. We can take our cue
from the early Church Fathers. The
Cappadocian Fathers were trained in pagan
schools of rhetoric and logic but discarded
the pagan ethos and deployed the techniques
of their learning to brilliant effect in
their Christian spiritual theology.
Similarly, we too can deal with yoga without
being swamped or led astray by its alien
ethos, provided we entrust ourselves to
Christ our Lord, and our God.
NOTES
[1]
Ashok Kumar Malhotra,
An Introduction to Yoga Philosophy:
an annotated translation of the Yoga
Sutras,
Ashgate, Aldershot, 2001, p. 15
[2]
Ibid.,
p.4
[3]
Ignatius IV , Patriarch of Antioch,
The Resurrection and the Modern Man,
translated by Stephen Bingham, St.
Vladimir's Seminary Press, New York
1985, p. 71
[4] For
a informative and penetrating
analysis of the hybrid origins of
modern yoga see, Elizabeth
DeMichelis,
A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali
and Western Esotericism
Continuum , London, 2004.
[5]
All these quotations from
Vivekananda's
Complete Works
cited above are from DeMichelis,
A History of Modern Yoga
, pages 121-122.
[6]
George I Mantzaridis,
The Deification of Man: St. Gregory
Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition,
translated by Laidain Sherrard, St.
Vladimir's Seminary Press, New York,
1984. pp 82-83. Italics mine.
[7]
Ibid.,p.114
[8]
Dechanet,
Christian Yoga,
London, Burns & Oates, 1956,1964,
p.121
[9]
Ibid., p.85.
[10]
On the Prayer of Jesus,
translated by Father Lazarus,
London: John M. Watkins, 1965, p.27.
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African Americans and Orthodoxy
SONGS OF FREEDOM: The Rastafari Road to Orthodoxy
Filmmaker Hopes To Capture the Orthodox Spirituality of Alaskan Natives
SONGS OF FREEDOM: The Rastafari Road to Orthodoxy
Filmmaker Hopes To Capture the Orthodox Spirituality of Alaskan Natives
Orthodox America - By Issue Number
Orthodox England
"The Orthodox World" Saint Herman Press
"Death to the world" (& about)
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Ευχαριστούμε θερμά.
Στην ενότητά μας "γιόγκα" θα βρείτε αρκετές καταχωρήσεις, κυρίως στα ελληνικά (έτσι θεραπεύεται και το αίτημα φίλου αναγνώστη για μετάφραση των ανωτέρω).
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