Embracing the True Light: Mike Shreve's Journey from Kundalini Yoga to Christianity

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
This is the collective resistance podcast with your host leo and fabiola.
Music.
We will be discussing why we find ourselves resisting the narratives of the
common collective as well as why the common collective resists new information information.

(00:31):
All right, Fabiola, how are you today? I'm good, Leo. I'm excited for this episode.
I know we've got another fantastic guest. So without further ado,
let me go ahead and do that introduction. Okay.
So Mike Shreve is here with us today. And just to give a little bit of background
around Mike, in 1970, he was a teacher of Kundalini Yoga at four universities

(00:51):
and running a yoga ashram in Tampa, Florida.
Several hundred students were following his teachings at that time.
He was a passionate truth seeker. Then an amazing encounter with Jesus radically
changed his heart, his life, and his worldview.
For over five decades, he has traveled globally teaching the Word of God.
He has written 17 books, including three Amazon No.

(01:13):
1 bestsellers. One of his primary offerings for believers and seekers outside
Christianity is a book titled In Search of the True Light, a comparison of over 20 religions.
Mike Shreve also runs a Christian publishing company called Deeper Revelation
Books, based in the city of his residence, which is Cleveland, Tennessee.
Hey, Mike, we're so excited to have you here today. Thank you for joining us.

(01:36):
I am really excited to be with you.
So, Fabiola, where do you want to start the conversation? I know we've got a
lot to cover, and then we're thinking about maybe doing some additional episodes
as well with Mike, but where are we leading off today? Well,
Mike is such a wealth of knowledge in this field.
I mean, you've been around researching on different religions and with your ministry for how long?

(01:59):
Could you tell us, Mike, how long you've been doing this and a little bit of
your journey and also some details on your powerful experience with God?
Well, I believe the best place to start would be how I became a follower of Jesus.
And I prefer to title myself that way because the word Christian is so nebulous. Okay.
There is really so many expressions of Christianity, some of which,

(02:23):
many of which, I don't believe are expressions of what Jesus intended in the beginning. any.
I like to say there's two types of quote-unquote Christians,
professing Christians and possessing Christians.
For many years, I was a professing Christian. I professed faith in a historical Christ.

(02:45):
I believed in the virgin birth, the death on Calvary for the forgiveness of
sins, the resurrection, the ascension, but I did not know him.
And I believe the essential, the essence of true Christianity is knowing God.
Jesus said that. He said, this is eternal life that they might know you,

(03:06):
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Well, even though being raised Catholic, I was very fervent.
I was very passionate. I was at church probably three or four times a week. I was an altar boy.
I was going to parochial school, etc.
But I didn't know God. And that's why that vacancy, that emptiness in my heart was never filled.

(03:31):
Consequently, like many of us, as I became a teenager, I lost interest in religious things.
Eventually, I became a rock musician. Wow. And I was traveling.
Yeah, not a good thing. Okay, okay. I was traveling around the state of Alabama,
not Alabama, Florida, the state of Florida, playing in youth centers and youth gatherings.

(03:57):
And I thought it was a great life, but it opened doors to things that were very
damaging to me, especially experimenting with drugs.
And eventually, when I was 18 years old, I had a near-death experience because of a drug that was...
Apparently cut with poison or something. Several people died in the community

(04:20):
I lived in at the time. Wow.
That same drug, it seemed. Yeah.
And I came right up to the portal. I felt my soul, even my body,
going off into this throbbing, tunnel-like void, speeding up at an incredible rate of speed.
And I knew I was transitioning from time to eternity.

(04:42):
And that's a real shocking thing when you haven't made any preparations.
Yeah. And so all of a sudden, thankfully, I came out of that bad experience.
But I realized— It wasn't a good experience?
I'm not ready. What's that? It wasn't a good experience because,
you know, when you hear those things, a lot of people say, oh, he was light.

(05:03):
I saw God. Oh, no, I didn't have anything like that.
It was darkness and intensity and fear because I had no knowledge of what was on the other side.
And when I came back from that experience, I had a whole new set of values because
I saw how shallow my life was, how ego driven it was.

(05:26):
I saw how empty my goals were.
I had a double major. I hadn't decided between oceanography and orchestration because I loved music.
And I thought I could pursue either one of those to perfection and never find
out who I am and why I'm alive in this world.
And so much to the consternation in my family, I dropped out of college.

(05:51):
All my siblings are college grads with very professional degrees.
And I dropped out to study under an Indian guru.
I'm the guy in the family that's done way out things.
The lost sheep. Yeah, definitely.

(06:12):
But thankfully, later on, God used me to bring my family members to the Lord. Wow.
Most of them. But most of them have been achieved.
But anyway, I searched really hard. Mm-hmm. And...
It got to the point in the ashram I was in that I would spend 12 to 14 hours

(06:33):
a day in solitude from 3.30 in the morning to 5.30 at night.
I was doing mantra yoga, some kind of meditation, yoga asanas,
pranayama, which are the breathing exercises,
all of those things attuned toward this cloudy goal of awakening the kundalini.

(06:57):
Was supposedly something that would bring a person to God consciousness,
which was what I longed for, what I desired.
I didn't want, quote, unquote, religion.
I wanted reality, ultimate reality.
And I had some very strange experiences during that time, what seemed to be

(07:18):
out-of-body experiences.
One time I went into white light.
I won't go into that or spend much time. I have a different way of looking at
it now. I believe they were deceptive experiences, but thankfully, God got my number.
And it wasn't anything I did.
I didn't earn it by all of my religious or spiritual disciplines.

(07:39):
It was just his grace and his mercy.
The Tampa Tribune newspaper heard about what I was doing in Tampa.
As you mentioned in the intro, I was teaching at four universities.
I had about 300 students that were following my teachings who consider me their guru. Wow.
And the word guru comes from two root words, goo and roo. That makes sense, doesn't it?

(08:03):
And it means out of darkness into the light.
But you can't take someone there if you haven't been there yourself.
And I thought I was in the light.
But Jesus said, I am the light of the world.
And he who follows me shall not walk in darkness. And unfortunately,
I was not following him yet.

(08:25):
But anyway, the Temperature Tribune newspaper thought I was kind of an oddity.
So they wanted to do a story on what I was doing in the city.
The ashram I was running. And they sent a reporter out, and it was really a
big story, about a half a page of the Tribune, which was major.
And I thought all my classes were going to just mushroom, and we were going

(08:49):
to have not hundreds, but thousands.
However, what happened is it alerted a local prayer group, Christian prayer
group, to start praying for me.
And they cut that article out of the newspaper, penned it to their prayer board,
and they had a 24-hour prayer chain.
They assigned somebody to be fasting and praying for me every hour of every day.

(09:13):
Wow. What a gift. Yeah. That is not grace.
What is it? Wow. Yeah. The effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous person
avails much, and they were righteous people. They were good people.
They started praying for me that Jesus would reveal himself to me.
And one of the members of their prayer group just happened to be,

(09:36):
and I call it sacred synchronicity. It's not a coincidence. It's a God instance.
He just happened to be a former student of Yogananda.
And Yogananda was a guru I revered. I read the autobiography of a yogi probably
three or four times at least. Thank you.

(09:58):
And so he was a part of that prayer group, and he was praying for me every day.
Well, after about three or four weeks of being soaked with all of this intercession,
God started responding and moving in a miraculous kind of way.
There's a scripture in the Bible that says God is verily a God who hides himself. self.

(10:20):
And sometimes when he's moving, it's so subtle and behind the scenes, it's not blatantly God.
But in hindsight, you can see how he was putting the pieces together.
And what happened is an old friend of mine wrote a letter and told me that he had found Jesus.
He said he walked in a church and he heard an audible voice say, Jesus is the only way.

(10:45):
And he said the spirit of God came into him, and he was born again,
which was a phrase I had never heard because, as I mentioned,
I was raised Catholic, and they don't believe in that or teach it.
They teach that when an infant is sprinkled at baptism, that's when the child
is born again, which is not true.
I really pondered what Larry said

(11:08):
because it was a totally different perspective, And as a truth seeker,
I was willing to consider it because he talked about an external God that entered
into him, the Holy Spirit.
Well, I taught all of my students that the essence of divinity was already within
them, the kundalini essence, and to find God, you look within.

(11:31):
And I conceived of God as an impersonal force, not a personal God that would
enter into me and have a relationship with me.
So I thought there's inconsistency here, and it's not something that can fit together easily.
There's got to be something here I'm missing.

(11:52):
And so I prayed all day long. I said, Jesus, if you're the answer,
if this is true, if what Larry says is right, and if I can be born again, give me a sign today.
Give me a supernatural sign. I was expecting something like Larry got.
But God is a God of variety.
He doesn't always do things the same way. And I didn't get an audible voice.

(12:15):
And I didn't have the kind of experience I was expecting, like a vision or an
apparition or some type of manifestation supernaturally in the room where I
was praying all day long.
Oh, and incidentally, I made a commitment that I would not read any other sources

(12:36):
of information, any other supposed sacred books.
Usually every day I would read from the Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas and maybe
the Adi Granth or Tao Te Ching or something like that.
Well, that day, I said, nothing but the Bible.
And I started out with the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation, which is very strong.

(13:00):
I haven't tackled the Book of Revelations yet. It's a strong one for your initiation to the Bible.
Anyway, I did that all day long. I read the Bible, then I prayed for 30 minutes
or an hour, And then I read the Bible, and then I prayed for 30 minutes or an hour, 14 hours.
Jesus, if you're the answer, show me. That afternoon, I stepped out on the road hitchhiking.

(13:22):
And two miles away, that man that was a member of the prayer group who was a
former student of Yogananda's was walking in a laundromat to do his dirty clothes.
And God spoke to him. He felt this deep impression in his heart.
Don't go in there. there, get back in your van and start driving.

(13:42):
I've got a job for you to do.
Well, he thought that was quite strange that God did not want him to wash his dirty clothes.
But he said, whatever you want, Lord. And he got behind the wheel and started
driving and turned whenever he felt that impression and saw me hitchhiking.

(14:04):
And back then, I looked a lot different. I had long hair down to here and a
long beard. Yep. I saw your, yep. Yeah, you can see it. There you are.
That's actually an ink sketch that one of my yoga students did of me back in 1970.
But anyway, he said he never picked up hitchhikers, especially people that look like me.

(14:26):
Makes sense. So, yeah, it could be dangerous.
Yeah. But anyway, he felt that movement in his heart again. And so he felt compelled.
It was almost like invisible hands took hold of his wheel, he said.
And he pulled over, and I'm still praying.
Is it Fabby or Fabiola? You can call me Fabby.

(14:48):
Fabby. I was still praying, Fabby, that God would give me a sign.
And as I opened the door to his van, my heart jumped.
Because on the ceiling of the van was a picture of Jesus. And I knew,
whoa, there's something going on here. What a sign.
Could it be more clear?

(15:10):
And a few moments later, he began talking with me and witnessing to me.
And I found out that I had heard about him because I'd heard that this advanced
student of yoga in Tampa had dropped out of yoga and Eastern religions and become a follower of Jesus.
And we were all wondering why he had made this grand departure from the faith

(15:35):
and gotten hung up with Jesus freaks.
I'd heard about him and he'd heard about me. And so we talked a while.
And 30 minutes later, I knelt down with him in the back of his van,
gave my heart to the Lord.
And I kind of stumbled through a prayer because my mind was screaming out against it.
I thought there's so many things about Christianity I think are illogical.

(15:58):
But I thought I'm a truth seeker. I'm going to try this.
And I said, Jesus, if you died on a cross for the sins of humanity,
if you're the only avatar, the only incarnation of God that's ever come into
this world, and if you truly rose from the dead, and if you're the way,
the truth, and the life, come into my heart right now.
And it happened. It happened in a remarkable way, in a powerful way.

(16:23):
I felt this warmth inside of me, and I knew I had connected with God.
And it was so real and so undeniable.
I went back to all my yoga classes that week, told them unknowingly I had misled
them, that Jesus was the only way.
And I was shutting down my ashram and discontinuing my yoga classes.

(16:44):
Most of my students became Christians also. And so that's how I began.
And then long story short, you asked me for what I've been doing. I like the details.
For what I've been doing the past 53 years. I started out without any intention
of filling any kind of specific role.

(17:05):
I just had a passion to tell people about Jesus. So after living for about four
months in a Jesus commune, and we had church seven nights a week that lasted
from seven o'clock till midnight usually,
and we'd study the Bible and pray, I still didn't feel like I was doing enough.
So along with another brother in the Lord at that Jesus commune,

(17:30):
we gave away everything we own because Jesus said, except a man forsake all, he can't be my disciple.
So we wanted to be daring enough to obey.
And we gave all our money to the poor, all our possessions, and took off hitchhiking,
preaching on college campuses and downtown areas of different cities.

(17:51):
And I've never stopped traveling since. Since it evolved into also speaking
in churches and conventions and conferences and open air crusades overseas,
we've seen up to 30,000 people in an open field in India and many,
many, many Hindus coming and giving their lives to the Lord.

(18:12):
So I've been doing this for over five decades now.
And I'm ready.
Ready to keep doing it as long as God will allow. Incredible story.
That's awesome. Incredible story.
I just want to ask a quick question about what you were saying on the synchronicity,

(18:34):
right? Because that happens.
So me, in specific, I'm going to speak for me. I came from new age,
new thought, philosophy, everything mixed.
Mixed and so I felt for
a long time there were synchronicities there until I
started reading the word and realized okay like none

(18:55):
of these things that I've been experiencing or hearing seem
like they go with the word of
God and Jesus do you feel like there's a difference between did Did you experience
synchronicities when you were a yogi versus when you decided to become a follower

(19:16):
of Christ? And did he feel different?
Let me respond by saying this. If you notice, I used an adjective,
sacred, sacred synchronicities, Because I do believe there are false synchronicities
or false impressions or coincidental happenings that sometimes can lead people in the wrong direction.

(19:43):
Which happened to me.
Yeah. And it adds to their deception because they think it's an affirmation
that they're on the right path.
And so I don't believe that the Christian walk is devoid of what you would call synchronicity,
but I believe it's sanctified and purified and it's right because God moves

(20:07):
in subtle ways and he speaks in subtle ways.
And sometimes we have to be sensitive to those things that awaken realization in us.
This is God. This is the right direction to go. I'm making the right decision.
And I could go into many stories about times it's happened with me,
but it would take up the whole program.

(20:28):
And I know we want to go a different direction, but I think that's a sufficient
answer if it's good for you. Yeah, that's good. That's awesome.
So to start, the way I learned about you was I heard about your book.
I was listening to an interview with Stephen Benkards, and you're talking about,
I think he brought it up. He was talking about in search of the true light.

(20:51):
And I've been wanting to dive more into, okay, there's so many religions and
philosophies out there.
Why is Christianity so exclusive?
So in your book, you started talking, I mean, you dive into all the different philosophies.

(21:11):
Philosophies. You have so many sources, so many quotes from different gurus,
from different philosophers, including, you know, Rudolf Steiner,
which we would love to talk about it too in this episode.
But I just wanted to share a quote from your book. It's in the very beginning
that caught my eye and it was quite beautiful.
And if we can expand on that, that would be awesome.

(21:33):
But you said in the book, how insightful is that all living things,
the child in the womb, the embryo in the egg, and the tiny sprout in a germinating
seed, enter this world in a bowed position?
Maybe, just maybe, the subtle hint from the Creator, this is a subtle hint from

(21:58):
the Creator that we We have all been created for one main purpose,
to bow before him adoringly all the days of our earthly sojourn.
So in our society, you know, worship, like there are cults out there, right?
That were different. The story doesn't seem to end well, you know,

(22:21):
when you were bowing to someone claiming either to be God.
I think there's even someone currently I was looking at the other day that claims
to be an incarnation of Jesus.
So that bowing and that adoring word almost get a bed wrap.
And that is how I felt in the New Age, because I thought it was all about me

(22:45):
and all about the self. So I wouldn't be bowing to anybody.
I didn't feel like I needed a savior. But the question that came up for me before
my conversion would be, why would the God that created everything,
created us with a desire to worship?
And I was wondering what your thoughts were on that. I believe that worship is loving communion.

(23:09):
It's not groveling in the dust, if you know what I mean.
It's not the Creator demanding fear-filled subjection.
That's not what I intended by that, and I'm sure that's not how you interpreted it.
No, it was not. But I do believe that worship connects us with the heart of God.

(23:35):
And while we're worshiping him, he's enveloping us with his love and his power.
And so it's not one sided.
At all. It's a divine connection between us and the Creator.
And of course, as I mentioned earlier, when I was a yoga teacher,
I had a different concept of the Godhead, that Brahman was ultimate reality.

(24:01):
And I might insert here this two different kinds of Hindus.
There are dualists and monists. There are those who see things all as one unified whole.
They believe in pantheism, and I probably need to bring that out.
And then there's those who believe in a more dualistic approach that you can

(24:23):
have a relationship with God.
But those who have that monistic approach believed that we are God,
because everything is God.
Again, it's based on pantheism, and pantheism comes from two root words,
pan and theos, that means all is God, and God is all.

(24:45):
So a pantheist and a monist, or someone who believes in monism,
believes that the universe is not a creation of God,
but an emanation of God, that all material things emanated out of the Godhead.
So all of it is spirit manifested.
The tree is God. The cat is God.

(25:09):
The dog is God. And so there's no quantum leap of logic to say every human being is God.
But when I'm explaining I show the illogical nature of that view because.
If you say everything is God, the next step is to say we are God,
but that little pronoun we,

(25:33):
represents two different groups, W, the worst of the human race,
E, the most excellent of the human race.
So when you say we are God, that goes all the way into the extreme of darkness
and embraces individuals that are so corrupt, like Adolf Hitler, say for instance.

(25:55):
Or it goes all the way to the other extreme and embraces those that are just
unbelievably sacrificial in giving of themselves to others.
Like maybe Mother Teresa or the poor of Calcutta, India.
So if that be true, if everything is a manifestation of God, therefore we are God.

(26:18):
God, therefore we includes the worst and the most excellent of the human race,
then the necessary step that you must take after that in the line of logic is
that God is both evil and good.
God is both darkness and light. And that's exactly what this symbol right here represents.

(26:43):
Represents that's the symbol of taoism an
ancient chinese religion it's called the yin yang symbol most
people are familiar with that it's very popular on jewelry even among people
that are not spiritual minded at all they know what they yin and yang yeah they
think it just represents male female duality well it represents duality in every

(27:04):
way and and it represents the idea that is,
the foundation of most Eastern religions that on an ultimate level,
God is both darkness and light, both evil and good. But.
The Bible says God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

(27:27):
And another scripture says the Lord is righteous, and there is no unrighteousness in him.
Well, if that's true, then pantheism cannot be true.
Instead, theism has to be the correct worldview. view.
And theism is the opposite view that God exists apart from physical creation.

(27:52):
Pantheism is physical creation as a manifestation of God, but theism is that
God exists apart from physical creation,
yet he loves to interact with those that he has created.
And so he comes into creation and expresses himself within creation,

(28:13):
but he's not bound by creation.
And so it's a completely different view. Either pantheism is true or theism
is true, but they can't be true.
Right. They can both be true. That's a huge point because people involved in
New Age spirituality tend to say, well, you can have your truth and I can have

(28:35):
my truth and we can be right. Mm-hmm.
Not only is that theologically wrong, it's logically wrong because you can't
blend those two views together.
One has to be right at the expense of the other being wrong.
And I like to compare it to this, that, for instance, there's been many views

(29:01):
of the nature of the solar system.
In the second century, Ptolemy was an astronomer who taught that the Earth was
the center of the solar system and the sun revolved around the Earth.
About a thousand years later, Copernicus came along and said, no, it's heliocentric.
The sun is at the center and the Earth revolves around the sun.

(29:23):
Well, both of them can't be right.
One has to be right. They could both be wrong.
But if one of them is right, one has to be right at the expense of the other
being wrong, because those are incompatible with each other, those concepts.
And I had to come to grips with the fact that all the things I believed as a

(29:45):
yoga teacher and taught as a yoga teacher were incompatible with the biblical revelation.
And so after I came to Jesus, met him first, And then I just dove into studying
the word of God. I thought I've got to understand this.
And I would read all night long till three, four o'clock in the morning.

(30:05):
I'd wake up in the morning with the Bible laying on my chest because I fell
asleep reading because I thought I've got to understand the difference between
these worldviews because that the tolerant way of looking at it is that all
religions are different paths to the same God. Right. Bye.
In John 14, verse 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life,

(30:32):
and no one can come to the Father but by me.
And I've often said those words are either being spoken by an egomaniac and
a deluded person, or Jesus really was who he said he was, the Savior of the world.
And I believe he was. Buddha did not die on a cross for the sins of humanity.

(31:03):
All right, so let's dive into that. That was the elephant in the room question, right?
What inspired me to try to get you on for this episode is because I was having
a discussion with someone, and we ended up starting to talk about God.
And this person turned to me and said, which God?

(31:25):
Question mark. And then the conversation just died right there.
So I'm like, I want to look more into that. So as you said, we have Buddha, right?
That was one of the biggest cases I had against Christianity, right?
The claim of exclusivity, you know, the past through Jesus was the only one.

(31:47):
And I was like, what about the other religions or leaders like Buddha,
Gandhi, Dalai Lama, Mohammed, all the gurus out there, Yogananda being one, which I had his.
There was a two-part book I had from him. And for some reason,
I could never get to read that book.

(32:09):
And I think it was called The Second Coming of Christ, I want to say.
Yeah, he wrote quite a bit about Jesus. Yeah, I did.
Of all the gurus, he was the one that was most capable of interjecting Christian
terminology into a Far Eastern worldview,
and thus making it more acceptable to people that were a foundation of Christianity in their lives.

(32:35):
So I picked out that book just when I started questioning things.
And the first few sentences I read in the book is that Jesus was misunderstood,
that actually Jesus came to him and they had a dialogue.
And then I was like, oh, OK, that's why I haven't been able to pick up this
book, because it sounds much like some other religions like Islam,

(33:00):
Muhammad connected with God, he said, with Allah.
But again, these seem like to be not good, sacrificial people.
Mother Teresa being one of them, right, devoted her whole life to take care of the poor.
There's Gandhi, you know, for world peace, the Dalai Lama that got kicked out of Tibet.
So they seem like wise people, you know, like world leaders for peace.

(33:27):
So why do you feel the worship of one God is in Christianity that's so exclusive?
I know you said you had this experience, right? But were there other logical
factors you took into it to say, hey, I can trust the Bible,
I can trust the word of Jesus?
What would you say to people that struggle with this? Well, I don't blame them

(33:50):
for struggling because I struggled in the beginning.
Because at that point in my life, I did not want to just accept something because
someone influenced me theologically,
intellectually, and tried to persuade me of a concept.
I wanted a supernatural connection that would verify what I was believing was correct.

(34:15):
And so God gave me that supernatural connection to begin with,
and then I was able to sift through the differences between different religions
and understand why they had commonalities and also understand why,
ultimately, they're incompatible with each other.
And I'd like to answer both ways.

(34:37):
First of all, let me take the latter view that.
I guess the best way to launch into it is to say this, that whenever I share
the gospel with a Hindu, and I love talking to Hindu people,
they're usually very tolerant, very kind,
very gentle-hearted, and very open to anything and everything.

(34:58):
And that's both good and bad. Right.
But usually when I talk with a Hindu person, the first thing they respond with
is, there is only one God. And for a lot of Christians, that's a hurdle they
can't get over because they think, well, that's true.
There is only one God. So this person believes the same thing I believe.

(35:20):
No, that's a very short statement. There is only one God. Five words.
And yet it can mean two radically different things. All right.
Yeah. As a yoga teacher, I said there is only one God. But what I meant is that
there was an underlying divine influence that manifested in a variety of different

(35:45):
religious expressions.
But when you go to the extreme root of it all, it's all the same.
And so it's a unifying statement.
And quite the contrary, when a Christian says there is only one God,
it's an exclusive statement.
As you mentioned, you use the word exclusivity, that Christianity is saying

(36:09):
there's only one God to the exclusion of all others, while a Hindu is saying
there is only one God and it's all inclusive.
And so which is right? Well, I think logic needs to kick in here.
I've already talked about the concept of Brahman. Now, not all Hindus believe
in the monistic view that I had when I was a yoga teacher.

(36:32):
You have some that believe in Devada, Vedanta Hinduism, which is dualism,
and you have some that believe in...
The point of view that I used to embrace, Advaita, A-D-V-A-I-T-A,
Advaita, Vedanta, Hinduism.
But anyway, you have that extreme where this impersonal life force,

(36:57):
which is ultimate reality,
manifests in the traditional number is 330 million gods and goddesses. That's a lot.
It could be personally worshipped. That's quite a few to choose from, right?
Yeah. Then on the opposite end of the pole, you have Islam that believes that

(37:21):
Allah is God and none other.
In fact, one of the worst sins you can commit in Islam is called shirk, S-H-I-R-K.
And that's attributing divinity to anything or anyone other than Allah.
And so Allah is absolutely one to the exclusion of all other claims to divinity.

(37:46):
While on the opposite extreme, Hinduism embraces all expressions of divinity.
Those are incompatible. You can't say that the God of Islam is the same as the God of Hinduism,
because the God of Islam is a personal God that exists apart from the physical

(38:08):
universe and apart from human beings.
And also the concept in Islam is that God has no sons.
God has no son and that God is not a father. There's 99 names for God in the
Quran and not one of them is father.
Wow. Because the concept of God making us into sons and daughters and having

(38:29):
a father-child relationship with us.
So you have this distant, aloof God called Allah.
And then you have this underlying, impersonal essence called Brahman.
Those are not the same thing. And in between those.
Those two extremes, you have Christianity that presents a different view of

(38:50):
the Godhead than is found anywhere else in world religions.
And that's the concept that there is one God.
However, he has expressed himself in three individual ways, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and that there's interpersonal relationships between
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

(39:11):
However they are all mysteriously
one god you don't find
that anywhere else and so if i
say that the christian the biblical point
of view is right necessarily i have
to say islam is wrong hinduism is
wrong the vedas are wrong the bhagavad-gita is wrong because they're They're

(39:35):
inconsistent with the biblical revelation or they're incompatible with the biblical
revelation of who God is and how we come back to him, how we come into a relationship with him.
Because you won't find the biblical view anywhere else in the Bible.
We see Jesus as the son of God, crucified, absorbing all the sin of the human

(40:00):
race into his body and into his soul.
His soul was made an offering for sin so that he becomes the composite of all
the evil that's ever been committed or ever will be committed. It all came into him.
And then he suffered the consequence of sin, which is death.
But he did it in identification with us because he was not deserving of death himself.

(40:23):
So he tasted death for every man, the Bible says.
And then, of course, three days later, he rose again.
Well, Buddha died of food poisoning when he was 80 years old,
and he's still in a death state. His body was corrupted.

(40:44):
It turned back to dust.
But three days later, after his
crucifixion, which was far worse than food poisoning, Jesus rose again.
And so he makes claims and the Bible makes claims about him that set him apart
altogether because he's.
Only Jesus can be the manifestation of God in this world. He's not one of many ascended masters.

(41:10):
He's not just another great world teacher.
Because Mehir Baba claimed to be God. He wrote a book called God Speaks,
but he died and he's still in the grave, right? Right.
All these other gurus of Swami's that claim to be avatars,
or some have even claimed to be reincarnations of Jesus Christ,

(41:32):
I've been told by some former kundalini yoga teachers and students that Yogi
Bhajan confided in them that he was Jesus come back again. Well, he's still in the grave.
And since his death, some real scandals have come out about him morally.
Also, Baba Muktananda, right? There were some scandals.

(41:57):
The Shaktipa guru.
And he's still dead. And he's still dead.
And since you brought up Muktananda, may I kind of divert into something right
now that I think would be real valuable? Yes, please.
In the book, In Search of the True Light, if I can find it, hopefully I'll be able to find it quickly.

(42:17):
In part four, he talks about his experience with the Kundalini.
And it's in a chapter called What Really Is the Kundalini?
I think it's chapter 12. Let me see. I think I looked into that question also.
No, that's not the chapter. It's not chapter 12.
Chapter 15. Uh-huh. Okay.

(42:41):
This is Muktananda's description of the awakening of the kundalini.
Now, that was my goal as a teacher of kundalini yoga, as a person that was committed
to that worldview. view.
It was not just a temporary awakening of the kundalini, but to live in that
God-conscious mindset.

(43:02):
That was the goal. And the word kundalini strangely means serpent power.
Yeah, that's what I thought.
I should have known enough from my Catholic upbringing to know,
hey, now there's something Something fishy going on or serpentine going on. Yes.

(43:26):
That that's a symbol of evil. But in New Age spirituality, a serpent is a symbol
of esoteric wisdom, that the serpent enlightened Adam and Eve concerning their own divinity.
Right. So that's kind of a Gnostic twisting of the truth, right? Yeah.
Well, anyway, the word kundalini means serpent power, and the whole concept

(43:48):
is that this essence of divinity is in a dormant state in every human being
like a coiled serpent at the base of the spine.
And through asanas and pranayama and meditation and chanting mantras and all
the other things you do, it's supposed to awaken the kundalini so that it merges with the crown chakra.

(44:10):
And Shakti and Shiva merge at that point. And bam, you go out into God consciousness.
But it's something that's already inside of you. And I was warned.
I was warned by the guru I studied under, and I read warnings from other gurus
that if there was a premature awakening of the Kundalini, it could drive you insane.

(44:36):
It could awaken dark occultic powers that would get uncontrollable.
You might even have manifestations of demonic beings if you didn't precede the
awakening of the Kundalini with an extremely disciplined yogic lifestyle.
Wow. Well, there's no account in the Bible of anyone having an encounter with

(45:01):
the true God that went insane as a result. Right.
Or that had dark occultic powers awakened as a result. So where is this power
coming from, right? Right.
Listen to Muktananda's description, how he experienced the kundalini to begin with.
The world-renowned, and this is page 227 in Search of the True Light,

(45:25):
the world-renowned Swami Muktananda recounted his experience with the awakening
of the kundalini. He encountered.
A naked ascetic blissfully meditating on a pile of human excreta.
I guess he did that to try and overcome aversion to something like that and
have a higher meditative state of mind.

(45:48):
But anyway, he's meditating on a pile of human excreta.
And this Hindu holy man invited Muktananda to come and sit on his lap and lick
his head, lick his head. And the ascetic then proceeded to initiate Muktananda into kundalini yoga.
Later that day, he explained, my mind seemed deluded. I felt I would soon become insane.

(46:15):
My entire body started aching and the tongue began to move down the throat and
all attempts to pull it out failed.
My fear grew. I felt severe pain in the knot below the navel.
I tried to shout, but could not even articulate.
Next, I saw ugly and dreadful demon-like figures.

(46:38):
I thought them to be evil spirits. Suddenly, I saw a large ball of light approaching
me from the front. It merged into my head.
I was terrified by that powerfully dazzling light.
Wow.
And that's supposed to be an awakening into God consciousness.

(46:59):
And yet it's filled with fearful descriptions of weird and strange things happening to him.
That was not a true experience of God.
When you meditate, when you chant mantras, when you do yoga,
just when you're doing the most basic kind of yoga, Hatha yoga in a hot yoga

(47:20):
studio or something like that,
are opening yourself up to a spiritual realm.
I had no idea. Yeah.
If you have not gone the way God has designed,
then you're opening yourself up to grand deception by demon spirits that will

(47:42):
gladly impersonate an experience with God and give you a false supernatural
experience that will mislead you the rest of your life.
And I grieve. I grieve over people that I knew back in 1970 that are still doing
Kundalini yoga, that are still meditating,

(48:02):
that are still chanting that chant we used to chant, which instantly,
that would be a good thing for me to touch on right now.
Now, if God is an impersonal force,
chanting makes sense because then through this repetition of this sound,
you can achieve a certain energy level where you can manipulate this impersonal

(48:27):
force into doing what you want it to do and taking you where you want it to go.
But it's all very mechanical and it's all very insulting to the intelligence of God.
Because if God is a personal being, you don't approach God by saying the same
thing 2,000 times, right?

(48:48):
Yeah. What if in our conversation— That would be very annoying.
Yeah. What if I started off in a droning kind of sound saying the same seven-word
statement over and over? You'd say, cut.
Yeah. You would have ended the interview right away. And you don't even know
what you're saying, too.
I mean, I don't know. oh, maybe Hindus knowing Sanskrit know what they're saying,

(49:10):
but like... Well, we were told what we were saying, and very strangely,
what we were saying, if it was interpreted from a biblical worldview, was right.
Ekankar Satnam Sriwa Guru was the main chant that we chanted in Kundalini Yoga,
and that chant means there is one God, and there's different interpretations of what the chant means.

(49:33):
Others may differ with me, but back then we were told it means there is one
God truth is his name and the spirit is our teacher.
But the one conceived to be the spirit was an impersonal force.
And truth is, that's a Sikh idea. Satnam means true name.
And that name is given to the Godhead in Sikhism.

(49:56):
And Yogi Bhajan was a Sikh. And there is only one God, but we've already covered that.
There's two ways of looking at that statement. So that's how deceptive it can
get. The very chant was true, but only true if interpreted from a biblical point of view.
But what I wanted to bring out is many people say that Jesus,

(50:20):
during the hidden years from 12 to 30, studied under gurus in India.
That's what I heard, and I thought it was totally true.
And yet there's differing accounts that contradict each other.
Like the Aquarian Gospel says something completely different than what Edgar
Cayce said in his hypnotic state where he described the same thing.

(50:42):
But anyway, they said that he utilized those kind of methods to awaken his Christ nature.
And then once he was in an enlightened being, he came back to tell others how to do it. Right. Right.
Well, if so, if he awakened his Christ nature and came to enlighten us with

(51:03):
the rest of his life and ministry and teaching,
why did he launch his first sermon, the Sermon on the Mount,
in Matthew chapter 6, saying, use not vain repetitions like the heathen do?
Right off from the beginning, he says, that's a wrong method.

(51:24):
Yes. Because God is an intelligent and personal being, and you're going to bore
him to death if you, in mantra-like fashion, monotone in your voice,
repeat the same thing hundreds of times.
Prayer is personal communion, and it's a flow of worshipful ideas and statements

(51:44):
toward God, and it's interaction with God.
It's not manipulation of the Spirit of God through some kind of incantation.
It's a completely wrong approach.
Totally wrong. Would you say that the Rosary in Catholicism would be similar?
Yes, same thing. Same thing. And, of course, I've got a book that just came

(52:05):
out called The Beliefs of the Catholic Church, and I see it's on your shelf.
Yeah, it's next on my list of reading.
And the subtitle is 25 Questions Comparing Doctrines, Practices,
and Traditions to Scripture.
And one thing I cover in there is repetitious prayer.
And I would bring out one particular point about that with reference to Catholicism,

(52:30):
because I used to pray the rosary every day,
probably every day, or I tried to pray it as often as I could as an altar boy.
And yet it didn't dawn on me until years later,
many years later, how logistically impossible it was for Mary to receive that

(52:51):
kind of prayerful connection from people because.
There's 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, or 1.3 billion people who profess
to be Roman Catholic. 2.6 billion Christians.
Half of them are Catholic.
Wow. And I would say, let's give a very fair estimate.

(53:15):
Let's say 10% of them pray one prayer to Mary, pray the Hail Mary prayer one time every day.
Well, if you do the math on it, and if you divide the number of people, 130 million, by 1,440,

(53:36):
which are the number of minutes in a day, you'll find out that over 90,000 people
are talking to Mary simultaneously.
Wow. No human being can converse with over 90,000 people at a time. It would be impossible.
In order to handle that much input supernaturally, even in a heavenly state,

(54:02):
she would have to be omniscient and omnipresent.
The reason she would have to be omnipresent is because many times people pray
the Hail Mary prayer in reference to an individual or a situation that they're
concerned about, and they want Mary's intervention.
Intervention so it's not just something

(54:23):
she can be involved in from a distance she has
to be personally involved so she has to be present in
over 90 000 places at one time right well
that that's is that only god is omnipresent omniscient what were you well that's
what i was going to ask and and we know obviously that that that god has that

(54:46):
that power you know because he has all powers But when we talk about Mary,
and this is what I—I grew up Catholic, but this is what I don't know, is that— Oh, wow.
Is that what Catholics believe in some of their other doctrine,
that she's granted these additional powers?
Or do you know?
You know, I don't think most of them have ever even pondered the logistics.

(55:09):
I hadn't until you were up on the phone when we were on the phone the other
day, and I was like, yeah, that's
true. But I never thought about it so mechanically, you know, before.
So do you feel like these prayers just, and I know we're going to touch on Catholicism
on its own episode, but do you think these prayers are just going to limbo or
they're just, you know, God is just not here?

(55:31):
They don't mean anything. They're a waste of time,
but people feel a semblance of peace because in that repetitious mode of repeating
the same prayer over and over again or repeating the same mantra over and over again.
You clear your mind of what Easter mystics sometimes call monkey chatter. Okay.

(55:54):
Monkey brain. Yeah, I subscribe to that.
All the things that go on in our minds, the stressful things that we're facing
every day, by repeating the same mantra-like statement over and over again, it calms the mind.
So you feel a certain kind of peace that you can misinterpret as the peace of

(56:14):
God. But there's nothing to compare with the peace that comes from Jesus.
So much so that in the Bible, he's called the Prince of Peace.
Yeah. And that's a beautiful thing.
Do you think it would be opening yourself up? Because I know meditation,
when you're emptying yourself up, maybe you're opening room for other things to come in.

(56:37):
Do you think that would be possible of repetitious prayers in the Catholic faith? or the mantras?
Well, I do believe that they, I don't believe it's as dangerous,
but I do believe it's as fruitless as a Hindu chanting a mantra.
Okay, so fruitless. But when a Hindu is chanting a mantra, he is minded or she

(57:04):
is minded toward God in the role of a Hindu being or Hindu entity.
And so that's a greater level of deception than a Catholic who has the proper
view of the Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
To a certain degree, I believe they have a proper view, but they're still approaching him the wrong way.

(57:30):
And Jesus said true worshipers worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Truth okay and one of the ways you become a
true worshiper is by using true or correct
methods to reach god and so
i was not a true worshiper when i was a catholic because i was doing things
that were non-biblical i was going to confession on saturday night i was saying

(57:54):
the rosary i was and i won't go into catholicism because we've got to cover
a lot more territory right for sure we're talking about.
But true worshipers use correct methods. And I could...
Fit that in with our conversation about Eastern religion, that meditation was not a correct method.

(58:14):
Doing kundalini yoga was not a correct method. Chanting mantras was not a correct method.
Just the mudras associated with meditation was not a correct method.
Because when I put my hands like this, when I was meditating,
that's something Hindus call a mudra, which is a spiritual meaning associated

(58:36):
with a physical act, usually with the hands.
And what this means is they envision the forefinger representing Atman,
which is the human soul, and thumb representing Brahman.
And so first, on a fundamental level, we were taught that that made the energy
flow through your body better and aided you in achieving higher states of meditation.

(59:00):
Well, it's not that mechanical. The communing with God is much more relational and beautiful.
But anyway, it was also a statement that Brahman would come and take me over,
or not come from outside of me, but come from within me and take me over and fully manifest.
And that's what that symbolic mudra meant.

(59:23):
Do you think that, talking about the kundalini and how dangerous that could
be, do you think this could be dangerous as well?
Well, yes. Yes, definitely. Because it opens you up to spirits that impersonate
a true experience of God.
And I never would have believed in evil spirits when I was a yoga teacher.

(59:46):
I would have thought, well, that's, you know, that's Christians talking on a
real less level of consciousness. righteousness.
I don't emphasize that when I talk, but still, I know that after I became a
Christian, I had an encounter with an evil spirit.
And some of the people who asked me to find the Lord told me that might happen.

(01:00:09):
They said, once the evil spirit has left you, that it won't give up on you and
it may re-inhabit your body.
And they said, if that happens...
Claim the blood of Jesus. And so I was laying in bed one night reading the Bible,
and it was shortly after I gave my heart to the Lord.
And I was just reading the scripture and meditating on what Jesus said.

(01:00:34):
And I looked up and saw what appeared to be about the size of a large grapefruit,
a little smaller than a basketball, a cloudy or black thing come through the wall.
And all of a sudden, very similar to Muktananda's experience,
that thing slammed into my forehead and started trying to suck my soul out of my body.

(01:00:58):
And I know this sounds outrageous and weird and strange.
So I don't talk about it much, but maybe I'm- I understand. Thanks for sharing it with us.
But I had this horrifying realization. If it gets me out of my body this time,
I knew it was the same spirit I'd yielded to when I tried to do astral projection.

(01:01:20):
And I thought, if it gets me out of my body this time, I'll never get back in
again. Really? I just knew that intuitively.
And incidentally, over in India, in the asylums, there's many people that may
hear Baba called MASTS, M-A-S-T-S, that are people that got locked into meditation.

(01:01:41):
That is a real thing? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I believe this is what happened.
They became completely demon possessed.
And so I couldn't talk. I was paralyzed.
But I, in my mind, started thinking the blood of Jesus be upon me,
the blood of Jesus be upon me.
And about the third or fourth time, I thought that whatever that was ripped

(01:02:04):
away from me and hovered in front of me angrily.
And I could speak then. And I said, the blood of Jesus be upon you.
And it fled from the room. Wow.
It has never been back. And that manifested away.
And maybe somebody needs that.
Because maybe somebody who listens to this interview is making a transition

(01:02:25):
from Eastern religions to Christianity,
and you may have a demonic fight on your hands where the enemy will not give up on you easily.
Well, just remember to claim the precious blood that Jesus shed on the cross.
Okay, that was beautiful.
So I wanted to touch again, and I know we talked about this already a little

(01:02:46):
bit, but But just to drive the point home, you were talking about the difference
of Brahman and the personal God of Christianity.
And in your book, you talk about the importance of definitions.
So I wanted to share a couple of quotes you had on the book that really also got my attention.

(01:03:07):
One of them was the motto of the Theosophical Society, which they say,
there is no religion higher than truth.
And another one is Mayor Baba, which you talk about earlier,
and his quote was the real meaning of religion is to know God,
to see God, and to be one with God.

(01:03:30):
Everything else about religion is an exercise in rites and rituals.
And for a person that is, you know, familiar with religion of God,
that sounds pretty, it kind of sounds Christian in a way.
Both of those statements are true. Yeah, okay. Yes, yes.
So tell us, let's go back to definitions there.

(01:03:55):
But of course, Madame Blavatsky, who wrote The Secret Doctrine and started the
Theosophical Society...
Said there's no religion higher than truth, but her concept of truth is different
than my concept of truth.
And so the statement is a right statement, it's a correct assessment,

(01:04:16):
but her interpretation of it is a universal way from mine.
What was her interpretation, if you could enlighten us? She really was one of
the primary people to usher in New Age spirituality into Western culture.

(01:04:37):
And Hitler was very enamored with her. Really? Extremely enamored with her occultism. I know.
And she's very, very non-Christian and non-biblical in her worldview.
In fact, I quote her in this book, In Search of the True Light.
Let me see if I can get to it quickly.

(01:05:01):
Yeah, I know. We've talked about her at length and her relationship to Rudolf Steiner specifically.
Because, you know, we've got a lot of Steiner fans in the community we live in.
Waldorf schools are very popular.
Strangely. You have a lot of his followers there? Well, we've been in Waldorf education.

(01:05:23):
Our children, in particular, our older children have been in Waldorf education since the beginning.
So Rudolf Steiner is revered in this community.
And I think the hard part is that here we are, you know, as parents trying to
do the best we can to offer a good holistic education for our children.

(01:05:46):
And Rudolf Steiner brought this philosophy of education in the early 20s, I want to say.
And so it's a group of people that are usually...
Enlightened, you know, or that we can see, we usually consider ourselves awake,

(01:06:07):
you know, we know what's going on in the world, we know about the evil in the world.
And we want something different for our children is, I mean,
the idea of educating your children based on their development milestones was very appealing to us.
And so it's good families that, that want the best for their children.

(01:06:29):
I know everybody wants the best for their children.
It's a little hard to explain.
We wanted something different than what was being offered by public education.
So people that are intelligent and people that are pro-freedom,
you know, pro, you make your choice of what goes in your body as far as pharmaceuticals.

(01:06:49):
And we want our children to learn to question things, not just accept them.
So that, you know, is a community of that mindset.
And so it was hard for me when I started studying Steiner and to find how he
came up with this philosophy and all this information and the goal of all their education as a whole.

(01:07:12):
It was hard for me to reconcile it with this transition we're going through right now.
So that's why I asked the question about her definition of truth.
Well, I want to address that in a specific way.
I mentioned at the very beginning of our interview and never got to it.
I told you I wanted to cover two different things and I only got to the first one.

(01:07:35):
But before I do that, I want to give you a couple of quotes of Blavatsky who started Theosophy.
And incidentally, Theosophy means, in a sense, the study of wisdom or the wisdom
of God rather than the wisdom of God.
But it's not the wisdom of God. And incidentally, many years ago,

(01:07:58):
I went to the headquarters of the Theosophical Society up in Chicago,
the international headquarters, when I was writing the book In Search of the
True Light, because I did not want to misrepresent any worldview.
And I wasn't really familiar with theosophical ideas.
I'd read a lot, but I wanted to verify what I'd written.

(01:08:19):
So the vice president, the international vice president of the organization agreed to meet with me.
And I told him I was a religious researcher, which was true.
And I never tried to interject my ideas.
For two hours, I just interviewed him on what theosophy really stood for.
Then after two hours, he said, well, what's your worldview?

(01:08:42):
What do you believe? And by that way, we kind of formed a friendship.
And so it was an antagonistic exchange of ideas.
He said, well, what do you believe? I said, well, I was a teacher of kundalini
yoga at four universities and ran a yoga ashram, but now I'm a follower of Jesus Christ.
He looked at me shocked. He said, why did you change?

(01:09:05):
And for the next hour, I talked to him about the biblical worldview, and he got intrigued.
And he invited me to lunch, and I spent the next hour or two at lunch with the
international vice president and the international youth director and the international
treasurer of the biggest new age,

(01:09:26):
what I would call cult, in the world. Yeah.
And they were very open-hearted about Jesus. I don't know what came from it,
but I know that they listened to me very closely.
And I believe you can talk with people that are of an opposite mindset without
getting into an argumentative tone.
Yeah. without getting hostile and angry because truth is too beautiful to argue over. Yeah.

(01:09:53):
Then we should discuss but not argue. But anyway, this is a quote of Helena
Blavatsky who founded Theosophy.
She said, concerning...
Let's see, Annie Besant, who was also another leader of the Theosophical Society,
she taught that seekers after truth should surrender all the fallacious ideas

(01:10:16):
of forgiveness, vicarious atonement, divine mercy,
and the rest of the opiates which superstition offers to the sinner,
which was a back-of-the-hand slap against Christianity.
And then co-founder Helena Blavatsky also insisted that such beliefs are dangerous

(01:10:37):
dogma and that in all reality, every ego becomes its own savior,
which I believe is the absolute opposite of the truth.
But these were the people who had as their motto, there is no religion higher than the truth.

(01:10:59):
And yet their religion stated that your ego is your own savior.
Well, that's not the truth. Jesus is our savior.
So how could they get something so right and get something so wrong at the same time?
Great question. Yeah, and I'm kind of weaving that in with the question you asked me a while ago.

(01:11:21):
It's because of something I call conscience, or something the Bible calls conscience.
Conscience is that inward sense of what is morally right and what is morally
wrong, and it carries with it the desire to do what is morally right. Right.
The conscience is the only part of the human spirit that is functional in a fallen state.

(01:11:45):
Human beings are triune in nature, made up of spirit, soul, and body.
And each one of those parts is triune in nature. The body is made up of flesh, bones, and blood.
The soul is made up of mind, will, and emotions.
And the spirit has got three functions also.
And those functions are communion with God, revelation from God, and conscience.

(01:12:09):
And prior to being born again, and the experience of being born again is where
the Spirit of God enters back into you.
And that's our whole problem because we spend our lives separate from God,
and we're groping, we're searching, we're longing, we're thirsting for something
that will fill this is whole in our hearts.

(01:12:30):
And the only thing functional in our spirit, which is according to Ephesians
2, verse 1 and 2, our spirits are dead in trespasses and sins.
Well, it's speaking relatively.
It's not completely dead, or we would never want anything good or anything God. Right.

(01:12:51):
And so related to what Adam and Eve had in the beginning, it's almost completely dead.
The only thing left is a flickering coal, like a coal that's barely burning
at the bottom of a fire that's been covered up with dirt and sand.
And you find that burning coal that's still got a potential for fire.

(01:13:12):
That's what the conscience is like. It's a barely burning evidence in us of
divine involvement in our lives.
It's not the divine essence. Okay.
And conscience is not God inside of a human being, but it's what he's left with
us as a reminder of what we can have.
Okay. And so anyway, I was living a very pure life as a yoga teacher.

(01:13:39):
I never did anything but pray and meditate and read sacred scripture.
I never read a newspaper, never went to a movie, never dated.
Wow. All I did 14 hours a day was seclude myself in a room and seek after ultimate reality.
And then at night I was teaching in four universities.

(01:14:01):
And so all I did was oriented towards spiritual matters. and I'd purged out
of my life all the uncleanness that was in my life prior to my near-death experience.
I was a very sensual, driven person.
So what made me that way? Because I wasn't saved yet. I wasn't born again yet. I didn't know God yet.

(01:14:25):
It was because I acted on that thing called conscience.
And conscience was beginning to lead me the right way by purging from my life
the things that were immoral and ungodly.
And I like to say it this way, and this is very important, and I believe this
will take us to a different layer in this conversation, that a lot of people

(01:14:49):
say, well, aren't all religions just the same? Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity.
Islam, aren't they all the same? But usually the similarities and the commonalities
are at the foundation of religion,
which involves character development or the system of moral boundaries you place in your life.

(01:15:13):
Character development, things like forgiveness, humility, kindness,
compassion, passion, love, goodness.
These are all things that every positive religious approach promotes because
the conscience is something that all human beings are gifted with.

(01:15:37):
And if we yield to the conscience, we can become better human beings,
more forgiving, giving, more loving, more compassionate, more humble,
more kind in our dealings with others, which seems to be increasing our level of spirituality.
But when you get into the higher degrees of theological thinking,

(01:15:59):
like the nature of God, the nature of salvation, the nature of the universe,
the nature of the future destiny of the universe and the destiny of all souls,
then religions take every imaginable kind of path. They diverge from one another.
They're united at this base level, which is character development.

(01:16:20):
And so that part is good. But that part is initiated in us by becoming sensitive
to the conscience that I ignored as a teenager.
I pushed it aside and did what I wanted to do, regardless of what my conscience said was right or wrong.
But then when I started trying to be spiritual, that became a guiding light to me.

(01:16:42):
But it was not an indication or indicative of a relationship with God yet being restored.
But it was leading me that direction. And I said all of that to say this.
I believe people like Blavatsky and Annie Besant and others that are involved

(01:17:02):
in yoga and meditation and Buddhism.
Buddhism is different because it's atheistic at its base. It doesn't have a
concept of a creator God. Right.
But still, they have basic principles like compassion that they emphasize. And...
The greatest quote on compassion I have ever found came from a Buddhist.

(01:17:24):
I mention it in chapter one. You do. I saw that.
In chapter one of In Search of the True Light, I quote Sharon Salzberg,
who is a Buddhist teacher.
And she says, compassion makes the narrow heart wider than the world or as wide as the world. Yes.

(01:17:46):
Passion makes the narrow heart as wide as the heart. In other words,
your heart reaches out and embraces the pain of all people.
So beautiful. What a beautiful statement coming from someone who doesn't even
acknowledge a creator God. Yeah.
Yeah. It is just mind blowing.
Yeah. To think that another another great quote you had talked about.

(01:18:13):
I think it was a Hindu guru that was talking about avatars and how avatars never lied.
Died and if Jesus was an avatar, he had to be speaking the truth, right?
Which leads me to this other question, because in the book you talk about the

(01:18:34):
Bible being the touchstone, the source of irrefutable and eternal truth.
So could you share a little bit of how you came to be confident in the Bible
versus all these other religious texts that you have read?
Absolutely. Well, strangely, the one who said that to me was Yogi Bhajan,

(01:18:56):
the guru I studied under.
In one of his talks, satsang talks, he said, because Jesus was an avatar,
he could only speak the truth.
So we need to inspect what he had to say.
And that kind of stuck in my head. And it was right before this transitional
stage in my life where I became a follower of Jesus.

(01:19:19):
And during that time, I started thinking, well, what did Jesus teach about reincarnation?
Or what did Jesus teach about the divinity of human beings?
Or what did Jesus teach about this idea or that idea that I embraced as a New
Ager and a yoga advocate? And I found out that what he taught was an extreme

(01:19:42):
departure from what I was teaching.
Just one little thing. He told someone who came to him and asked,
which is the greatest commandment of the law?
And he said, the greatest commandment. No, no, I'm sorry.
Someone came to him and said, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
And he said, keep the commandments.

(01:20:03):
Well, the commandments start out. Well, the first one is, I am the Lord your
God. You shall have no other gods before me.
The second one is, you shall not make any graven images. Well...
I broke both of those commandments because I was recognizing gods that were

(01:20:26):
not the same as the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
And I had no problem with images of Shiva or images of Buddha or images of some
other Hindu god in the yoga class where I was at or the yoga ashram where I was at.
And yet, that was a departure from the truth that Jesus himself endorsed.

(01:20:51):
So anyway, that's... Can we touch a little bit on reincarnation?
Because we were just having a conversation yesterday with someone about how
I came to realize that the idea of Jesus being the perfect sacrifice and us
needing a Savior because because we have a fallen nature.

(01:21:14):
And it said that none is good but God. Jesus said those words.
So we need a savior because we can't save ourselves, which is a very liberating thought,
versus you coming over and over again and evolving maybe every time or devolving and evolving.

(01:21:35):
Evolving and she she felt like it is
possible to weave this these two ideas together and
i just couldn't yeah well that eternal life was this opportunity to just keep
coming back and improving and getting closer to experiencing christ every time
every time we come and deepening that relationship what are your thoughts on that.

(01:22:00):
Well, it would take an hour to fully explain. Right, right, right. I know.
I don't think we have. Cliff notes. I will mention on my website,
and thank you for telling me that you're going to put my website underneath in the notes.
But on my website, thetruelight.net, I have an article on, I think it's 15 Reasons

(01:22:22):
I No Longer Believe in Reincarnation.
And I have a couple of interviews that I did with different people on that particular subject.
And so if somebody really wants to dig into that, they could go to the website
and get a real full round view of what I say.
But again, I covered in the book and I want to explore it because it's really

(01:22:48):
hinged on the whole idea of karma.
And the concept of karma and reincarnation is a self-achieved salvation,
which comes right back to what you just said a moment ago, that all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God.
So we're all incapable of saving ourselves.

(01:23:08):
No one is perfect. All these gurus that have been revered as such holy men,
most of them have had gross immorality revealed in their lives after their departure
from this world, and dishonesty, dishonest business practices, all kinds of scandals.
And so all these people that are being revered as the most perfected human beings

(01:23:30):
sometimes are quite the opposite, quite the opposite.
But karma is a stalker. It's a horrible stalker that demands payment.
And in order to escape the cycle of rebirths in Hinduism, which incidentally is quite lengthy.

(01:23:51):
Most Hindus that are serious about Hindu theology believe that you're going
to be reincarnated in this world over a million times on your journey from the
lowest. Hopefully the earth will stay around so that can happen.
And that's on your journey from the lowest form of life into higher forms of life.

(01:24:13):
But But I've got a chapter in here, I guess you can see it, 13 Reasons Why I
No Longer Embrace the Related Doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma.
And one thing that I want to bring out that is really powerful.

(01:24:34):
First of all, I want to bring out that it's impossible to pay off the karmic debt.
It's impossible to resolve the whole process because I wanted to find the exact
place where I bring it out.
But for instance, let me just sum it up this way.
If you rob people a hundred times in your life, you have the mentality of being a thief.

(01:25:04):
In your next life or subsequent lives, you have to be robbed a hundred times.
But then the robbers of the robbers of the robber have to be robbed.
And then the robbers of the robbers of the robber have to be robbed.
And it just keeps growing exponentially.

(01:25:25):
You're multiplying the robbers.
It's a chaotic mess where there's never any resolution to that.
And then you've got to think that if you have to pay off your karmic debt,
say, and you have to be robbed a hundred times, did karma control a person and

(01:25:45):
make that person rob you?
And then is it unjust that that person who robbed you incurred karmic debt himself?
Yeah or did karma search
through the human race and finally find somebody minded toward robbing anyway
and picked you out as the victim what a complicated mess that gets very complicated

(01:26:08):
but how did you what was your thought process i guess when you did believe in karma.
Can you even put yourself back in that space? I thought I had to become a perfected
human being to escape rebirth.
So you didn't really think about the details?
No, I didn't really think about the details. It was just like a concept.

(01:26:29):
As much as I have now. Now I've gone back and explored it in depth and in detail.
But at the time, it just sounded logical. In fact, I told the man who won me
to the Lord, I said, listen, before we pray, I've got to be honest with you.
There's some things about Christianity I can't handle.
I said, there's one thing about Christianity I can never accept.

(01:26:51):
He said, what is it? I said, I can never accept reincarnation.
And he just looked at me and smiled, a great big, joyous smile.
He said, don't worry about that.
Just try Jesus. I said, well, there's something else about Christianity that bothers me.
I can never believe the Bible is God's inspired word.

(01:27:11):
He said, don't worry about that. Just try Jesus.
He knew that if I had an encounter with Jesus, that the spirit of God in me
would then begin to lead me into all truth.
And I no longer believe in reincarnation, not because I tried to logically figure
it out, but because God showed me the falsity of it and that it's a self-achieved salvation.

(01:27:37):
Where Christianity offers a gift of salvation.
All Eastern religions, the yogic disciplines, it's all designed toward achieving
a higher state of mind spiritually, becoming God conscious.
But Christianity is based not on achieving, but receiving.

(01:27:59):
Receive the gift of salvation. You receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
You receive the gift of eternal life.
You receive forgiveness of your sin. And it's all based on believing the promises of God.
It's a much different approach. Yeah.
Okay, so if we're going to go back full circle, we were talking about how then
you receive the Spirit, And then you started reading, you said you read John,

(01:28:24):
and then you read Revelations, is that right?
And you just came to trust the touchstone, which is the Bible.
So you compare all the other philosophies that you have studied against what the Word was saying.
If Jesus was the true avatar, he wouldn't lie.

(01:28:45):
And his words were in there. Yeah. But I think that the hardest thing for that
I have found, even for myself, when I think about it, you know,
I believed I was a good person.
I believe that, you know, I treated people with respect. I did charity.
I was loving. I was kind. I was thinking of all these things that I did.

(01:29:06):
And for sure, I was going to go to heaven to be with God by my I guess by my
own works, works because we think that's what it means to be a Christian.
A lot of people believe that what it means to be a Christian is for you to be
a good person and for you to believe in Jesus.
Although like believe that Jesus came, I don't know, there's a disconnect there.

(01:29:27):
But for those that believe that all you need to do is be loving,
you know, love and light.
And that is, you know, being kind to other people. And that's it.
What would you say to them with your knowledge of all these other religions
and philosophies and finally becoming a follower of Christ.

(01:29:48):
What would be your advice, I guess, that would be my question.
I never really fully answered your question about the statement that Yogi Bhajan
made that Jesus, because he was an avatar, could only speak the truth.
When I started inspecting what Jesus said, major doctrines began to surface,
like Yogi Bhajan taught the need for chanting mantras.

(01:30:12):
Jesus said, use not vain repetitions like the heathen do.
Yogi Bhajan said that Jesus was just an illegitimate child, that he was the
product of some type of sexual relation Mary had with someone outside of marriage.
But the Bible and the story which Jesus, I'm sure, endorsed was that he was born of a virgin.

(01:30:36):
And Yogi Bhajan taught that Jesus' death on the cross was just the tragic death
of a good man who was willing to die for what he believed in and what he proclaimed.
But Jesus, as he passed the cup at the Last Supper, said, this is the New Testament
in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
He didn't say it was just a tragic death that I'm going to die because people

(01:30:59):
oppose what I'm teaching. He said it was for the forgiveness of sin.
Yogi Bhajan taught reincarnation. Jesus taught resurrection.
He said, I am the resurrection and the life, and he who believes on me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live.
And so every major thing that Jesus taught was contrary to the Far Eastern counterpart

(01:31:24):
of that doctrine or the opposite view in that particular area.
And so I thought, well, something's wrong here. There's a disconnect.
Either Jesus was not an avatar or he was the only avatar. There's really no middle ground.
And so that's when I said, and now I'm going to answer your question.

(01:31:47):
That's when I said, Jesus, I need to get this direct from you.
So I dedicated one day to Jesus sincerely.
It wasn't frivolous on my part. It was sincere and passionate.
I wanted to know if he was the truth.
And there may be some really intense, passionate people about knowing truth

(01:32:08):
listening to this conversation.
And I would urge them to go to the Gospel of John.
That was the main book I read as my introduction to the Bible.
And I read through the Gospel of John, and I prayed all day long, Jesus, show yourself.
Come into my life and show yourself and reveal yourself. self.

(01:32:29):
And I didn't really understand to ask him into my heart at that point.
But when the guy picked me up hitchhiking, who led me in a prayer of salvation,
I prayed a very simple prayer.
I said, Jesus, I believe that you rose from the dead.
I believe you died on the cross for the sins of humanity. And I believe you
rose from the dead three days later.
And I believe you are God eternal.

(01:32:52):
And I believe that you will come into my heart and cleanse my sin.
I invite you to come in because Jesus in the book of Revelation said,
behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man open the door, I will come into him and I will have a feast with him.
And so I invited him into my life. I didn't know how to invite him into my heart

(01:33:15):
yet, but I would urge people, just pray, get alone, get by yourself,
go down, sit next to a lake somewhere and just.
Remind Jesus of his words. He said, he who believes on me out of his belly will
flow rivers of living water.
And he was talking about the Holy Spirit dwelling within us and say,

(01:33:35):
Jesus, if this is true, be Lord of my life and fill me with your Holy Spirit.
Let it flow out of me like a river of living water.
And he promised those who come to him would not be cast away. way.
He said his particular promise was, he who comes to me, I will in no wise cast out.
And so he will come to you. If you come to him sincerely,

(01:33:59):
not flippantly, not in a shallow way, but if you come to him truthfully and honestly,
and you bear your heart, and you repent of your sins, and you invite him to
be Lord of your life, he will destroy the yoke of religious deception.
It happened to me in one day's time. I shut down my yoga ashram immediately

(01:34:21):
because I knew I had finally encountered the true God.
What you're looking for. That's what I would encourage people to do. Oh, that's beautiful.
That is beautiful. That is beautiful. And then for people that would say,
okay, Christians, they received the Holy Spirit, but they continue to sin.
Did they really receive the Holy Spirit? what would you say?

(01:34:46):
I would say only God can be the judge of that.
I think when babies are born, sometimes they have to have their diaper changed for several years.
Unfortunately, baby Christians don't act very mature, and they're not representing

(01:35:06):
Christianity correctly.
And sometimes they didn't really get saved to begin with, and that's why they
continue you with a lifestyle that is very ungodly.
So I'm not the judge. I don't know which one of those scenarios is true,
but I do know if someone is a Christian, they should begin to line up with God's word.
Because Jesus said very clearly that if he said he did...

(01:35:33):
Would claim to be his disciple, he said, if any man would be my disciple, he must forsake all.
And that means forsaking every sinful, rebellious way in your life to be a true disciple.
And not everyone that claims to be a Christian is a true disciple.
Right, right. Well, this has been such a wonderful, beautiful conversation.

(01:35:54):
Thank you so much for being so patient and answering all our questions about God.
You're pretty awesome, Mike. So are you. And you are so sharp,
too. I mean, how do you remember all of these things?
Let me tell you a little joke about that word you just used. You said I was awesome.
Not long ago, I pondered about that word. I thought, wait a second.

(01:36:17):
The word awesome means some awe, but the word awful originally meant full of awe.
So if you really want to compliment me, tell me I was awful.
You were awful, Mike. You were awful, dude. You were awful.
It still doesn't work, doesn't it? It's ingrained in our thinking.
So for people that are listening now and wants to connect with you,

(01:36:41):
know more about your work.
Your ministry. Your ministry, where can they find you?
Well, I have three main websites. websites and that's
first and foremost of all betruelight.net which
is where i have my podcast episodes posted i have a podcast called revealing
the true light i forgot should i say should i say it's an awful podcast because

(01:37:06):
i listen to it it's indescribable it's so awful,
But it's Revealing the True Light, and I have the video aspect of it logged
in an archive of the podcast there on the website, thetruelight.net.
And also, we have a YouTube page, youtube.com slash Mike Shreve Ministries,

(01:37:27):
where all of my podcasts are hosted as well as TV shows.
And I would also encourage people to go to the writings section of the truelight.net
because a lot of things that people still might have questions about,
I address in articles that are posted there on the truelight.net website.

(01:37:53):
Also, they can download this book free in 12 different languages,
The Highest Adventure Encountering God.
And I go into a little bit more detail about my journey to Jesus in this booklet
than I've covered in the interview.
And I also have another booklet that is really a stronger presentation called
Seven Reasons I No Longer Practice Yoga.

(01:38:14):
And that gets into a little bit more intense. I read that one.
That will be our next episode with you. Which I'm very excited about.
All right. But I answer every email that comes in on our website. Oh, sweet.
I don't delegate that to somebody else. I answer everyone because usually it's

(01:38:38):
involving ideas and concepts that most people don't know about.
And so I take care of that. Even the hate mail?
Mail no if somebody is
just trying to lash out at me i
don't respond yeah okay so they
don't deserve your time and attention your awful time and attention i that's

(01:39:02):
gonna stick with me now for several weeks it's gonna really throw you into a
terrible place you're not you're never gonna be able to use the word awesome
again yes that's right well we are so grateful that you're here.
Should we say a little prayer? Do you want to say a little prayer for our listeners? Sure, sure.
Father God, I thank you so much for this precious, precious time we've spent together.

(01:39:25):
And anyone who's listened to this entire conversation is certainly a seeker
of truth and a seeker of God.
And I pray that the Holy Spirit will go out to them in a remarkable way,
and that you will fill the hearts of those who are hungry for you,
who are thirsty for a relationship with God.
And just at the mention of the name of Jesus,

(01:39:48):
may they feel the reality of who you are, Lord, that you truly are a Savior
who loves them with an everlasting love, and your longing is to wash their sins away.
And just when they say, oh, Jesus, come to me, may you supernaturally manifest
yourself and destroy every yoke of false religious ideas and spiritual deception.

(01:40:14):
May it all clatter to the concrete around them, so to speak,
and may they be set free, because you said, whom the Son sets free is free indeed.
And may true spiritual freedom come to any person and every person that sincerely calls on your name.
And I pray it, believing that it will come to pass. Amen.

(01:40:37):
Jesus name amen amen that was
powerful so powerful well thank you
i pray for you guys that god will use you mightily and powerfully
in his servant and we for you yeah thank
you so much mike for this lovely time together and
we'll see you for part two he's gone bye all right man that was a powerful interview

(01:40:59):
that was my yeah what are not unraveled there any major takeaway you want to
you want to comment on, you just want to stew a little bit on it.
And then, but we are, we are looking to do some, some additional episodes with Mike.
So we will get those scheduled and, and we'll share again, all the notes and

(01:41:20):
all the links in the show notes.
If you guys enjoy Mike, I've been listening to his podcast, which is 30 minute episodes.
Like, yeah, so they're pretty quick hits. Yeah. They're quick hits and,
but they are really profound.
And I mean, he is studied a lot.
I mean, I highly recommend his book, In Search of the True Light,

(01:41:41):
because he approaches other religions with such a humble heart.
Yeah.
And just really recognizes that as he was in this journey of searching for the light,
that all these other gurus and followers of these religions were doing the same thing.

(01:42:04):
You know, they really want that relationship with God. They yearn for that.
And when you finally find it, nothing compares to the other experiences.
And I think that was the message of this interview. Yeah, definitely.
All right. Well, again, we'll get that next episode scheduled.
We appreciate you joining us and smash that like button if you enjoyed what you heard.

(01:42:28):
Thank you for listening to the Collective Resistance Podcast.
We'll see you next time.
We'll be right back.

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Embracing the True Light: Mike Shreve's Journey from Kundalini Yoga to Christianity

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