By Danion Vasile
At any rate, I did not really perceive the presence of the evil one except on very rare occasions… During our meditation sessions, they would play a very nice, soft ambient music, but once they played a horrible music that seemed to come from hell… a music that would put rock-and-roll to shame… I was shocked to hear it but I thought I was not sufficiently evolved spiritually to know how to integrate it… Some other time I meditated in front of the mirror by candlelight, trying to catch sight of my aura… I was rehearsing for a meditation that I was going to take up in the Jewish cemetery next to the place where I was living at that time, but I did not have to take the trouble to reach the cemetery… While meditating, I suddenly felt a demonic presence next to me. I did not actually see it, mind you, I just sensed it so vividly that I was very scared.
Still, my most intense contact with the devil came as a result of my initiation into tantra yoga. Although at the time it occurred I thought it was a revelation, a moment of contact with the Absolute, after becoming a Christian I understood that my revelation had been of a demonic origin. Here is how it happened…
I was at the beach with a girl, and there were yogis all around us. We were sitting on the sand in a meditating position, facing each other and touching our palms and our kneecaps… Suddenly I simply forgot that I was human. I perceived the Universe like a being with seven energy centres and I felt that my seven energy centres were connected to the energy of the universe. I do not know how long that ecstatic state lasted but when I came around I thought,
“What is the point in taking up fasting when by practicing tantra yoga I can progress much more easily?”
Therefore, I made up my mind to practice tantra yoga…
Although I had taken up yoga in order to get rid of the spiritual misery that the sexual sins had left in my soul, I started having sex again – only that this time I was firmly convinced that I was doing the right thing. Each night I said ‘Our Father’ three times, asking God to forgive all my trespasses and to give me the strength to do only good. The thought that I was sinning by having sex did not even cross my mind; I thought that if I had given up having orgasm, everything was clean… My conviction that tantra yoga was a good thing was so strong that I wished that the master had sex even with my sister, who was a virgin and was around fifteen years old. At a time, the master had sex with my girlfriend each week and she told me that other girls were queuing in front of his room, waiting for their turn; they were all eager to have a tantra yoga training session with the master…
I would not want you to think that yoga had become a pastime for me… I was fasting and I even thought of giving up food altogether – that is, I was thinking about living without eating anything at all…
I started by not eating at all for a day, two days and then even three days in a row… Then, I managed to fast for an entire week; I just drank water and that was it. I was not even eighteen at the time, which means that I was still growing up – so that it was very hard for me when I decided to fast for another week, but with no water this time. I fed on air and on energy from the evil one… It was during Passion Week in 1992. I remember asking myself at the beginning of the Great Lent of that year,
“Whom shall I ask for help: Bivolaru or Christ?”
I chose to ask Christ to help me first and then if He did not help me, I said to myself, I would subsequently appeal to my guru.
I had great confidence in the forces of my guru. We had been informed of a special form of yoga, called Guru Yoga, which was conditioned by a complete obedience to one’s master. There was a story too, which everybody believed was true, of a man who had thrown himself into a precipice because his master did not accept him as his disciple; he broke his arms and legs and his master put them back in place and then resurrected him… Such stories made me trust my master even more. I even had a vision about him, which I realize now was a demonic vision: the universe was full of millions of cells and my master was sitting in a lotus position in each one of them. I was breathing in those cells – inhaling them as it were – and then when I exhaled the cells came out, but my master remained inside me…
A friend of mine that I had invited to attend a conference delivered by Bivolaru told me that she saw rays of light coming out of him…
Since I had such a great confidence in the guru’s powers, I think that God put in my mind the thought of fasting and asking for Christ’s help just to offer me a way out of the trap I had fallen into.
During that week of fasting, I read excerpts from the Philokalia for the first time. I did not realize that my meditations on Shiva or on Milarepa had nothing in common with the spiritual teachings contained in the Philokalia… I had my moment of weakness when I thought I was going out of my mind because of the fast, but I asked for Christ’s help and I succeeded in overcoming it; true, I was a yogi, but I had not given up Christ. Moreover, each week the master asked us to meditate with Christ’s conscience… So, standing in front of the crucifix, I was praying like this:
”God, I received baptism by water in childhood and it did not help me at all. Baptize me with fire now…”
I really thought that Christ would help me progress along the path of yoga…
On Good Friday, I admired the sunrise in a park, meditating in front of a big stone crucifix… Although I did not go to church on Easter, preferring to meditate at home, my relationship with Christ became much more powerful after that period of fasting.
Nevertheless, my relationship to Christ did not disengage me from my commitment to the Hindu deities. I liked to meditate with Kali, one of the cosmic powers, the national goddess of Tibet, pictured with a chain of skulls around her neck, holding a knife in one hand and a skull in the other one, and with her tongue full of blood. It is said that she is frightening for all those who do not know her, but very close to those who worship her. Here was how I prayed to her: ”Oh, Kali, make me yours! Make love to me. Come inside me and let me come inside you. I want to be one with you. Give me the strength to defeat death, give me the strength to master time. Make me yours.” I perceived Kali as a huge woman, with overwhelming powers. I felt bound to her, but I also felt bound to Christ.
That was why I was surprised when I asked Bivolaru after a yoga class about the connection between Christ and the cosmic powers (we were writing our questions down and sending the slips of paper to the master), I heard his answer:
”What connection? There is no connection…”
If he had answered, “Christ is a great conscience that looks after our planet, while Kali is one of the beings that keep the universe in existence, and although Christ is not as important as Kali, they are familiar with each other” – I would have believed him. But he said that there was no connection between Christ and the cosmic powers, as if there were two parallel truths, totally unrelated to each other, and I could not accept that. It was for the first time that I seriously doubted my master’s wisdom. Then I asked him, aloud this time, which yoga path was higher, the path of asceticism taken to extremes, or the path of tantra yoga, which involved a very sexual active life. His answer was that each individual should choose the path that suited him the most, but before he gave me that answer, most people in the audience burst into peals of laughter; the very idea of sexual asceticism was received with such heavy irony…
Those peals of laughter, as well as the master’s answer, made me wish to find the truth elsewhere.
But was that not in fact a very accurate statement by the guru that “there is no connection between Christ and Kali” ?
Time and time again I noticed that my Yoga instructors were EMPHATICALLY against Christ.
Do Orthodox “yoga;”DO full body metanioes (prostrations!)