Perhaps the most common practice advanced by Eastern occultism is some form of yoga and/or meditation. In our critique of New Age medicine, Can You Trust Your Doctor?, we have documented the multiple dangers of most meditation practice. Here, we will concentrate on yoga.

Although many Americans practice yoga as mere exercise, few have any idea of where such practice may take them. In the literature we have read numerous accounts of yoga or meditation-induced insanity and demonization even from seemingly innocent practice. But again, the altered states that yoga/meditation produce—even the periods of madness—are now frequently defined as positive spiritual experiences capable of leading one to religious enlightenment.¹

For example, that yoga practice can break down the mind and body is not surprising. The true goal of yoga is to destroy the person (who is only a false self, an illusion) so that the impersonal Brahman (the alleged real self) may be experienced.

Yoga authorities Fuernstein and Miller identify "the Yogic path as a progressive dismantling of human personality ending in a complete abolition. With every step (anga) of Yoga, what we call ‘man’ is demolished a little more."²

Moti Lal Pandit observes:

Because yoga is ultimately an occult practice (e.g., it characteristically develops psychic abilities), it is not unexpected that the characteristic hazards of occult practice—for example, physical diseases, mental illness, and demonization⁴—could be encountered. We believe that these hazards are encountered because yoga is an occult practice and not because yoga is allegedly performed in an incorrect manner.

Most people (including most Western medical doctors) wrongly assume that yoga is harmless. They rarely consider yoga per se as relevant to any illnesses they may encounter in their patients. But we are convinced that many perplexing physical conditions, including some deaths, are related to yoga. For example, Swami Prabhavananda warns about the dangers of yogic breathing exercises:

Shree Purohit Swami’s commentary on Pantanjali’s Yoga Sutras warns:

Perhaps such phenomena explains, in part, why many yoga authorities openly confess the dangers of yoga practice. As noted, these dangers are often said to arise from "wrong" methods. But, in fact, no one has ever objectively identified the specific mechanics of "correct" or "incorrect" yoga; "incorrect" yoga practice in one tradition is often "correct" practice in another.⁷

Below we cite some of the hazards of yoga as noted by yoga authorities.

United Nations spiritual adviser and spiritist⁸ Sri Chinmoy, author of Yoga and the Spiritual Life, observes: "To practice pranayama [yogic breath control] without real guidance is very dangerous. I know of three persons who have died from it."⁹

Yoga authority Hans-Ulrich Rieker admonishes in The Yoga of Light: "Yoga is not a trifling jest if we consider that any misunderstanding in the practice of yoga can mean death or insanity," and that in kundalini yoga, if the breath or prana is "prematurely exhausted [exhaled] there is immediate danger of death for the yogi."¹⁰

Gopi Krishna, another yoga authority, also warns of the possible dangers of yoga practice, including "drastic effects" on the central nervous system and the possibility of death.¹¹

The standard authority on hatha yoga, The Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Chapter 2, verse 15), cautions: "Just as lions, elephants, and tigers are tamed, so the prana [breath; actually prana is the alleged divine energy underlying the breath] should be kept under control. Otherwise it can kill the practitioner."¹²

Hindu master Sri Krishna Prem cautions in The Yoga of the Bhagavat Gita: "As stated before, nothing but dangerous, mediumistic psychisms or neurotic dissociations of personality can result from the practice of [yoga] meditation without the qualifications mentioned at the end of the last chapter."¹³ He warns, "To practice it, as many do, out of curiosity... is a mistake which is punished with futility, neurosis, or worse [‘even insanity itself’]."¹⁴

Swami Prabhavananda’s Yoga and Mysticism lists brain injury, incurable diseases, and insanity as potential hazards of wrong yoga practice;¹⁵ Ulrich-Rieker lists cancer of the throat, all sorts of ailments, blackouts, strange trance states, or insanity from even "the slightest mistake."¹⁶

In The Seven Schools of Yoga, Ernest Wood warns of "the imminent risk of most serious bodily disorder, disease, and even madness."¹⁷

In conclusion, those who practice the occultism of the East also warn of its dangers. This is why those who seek the so-called "wisdom from the East" frequently get more than they bargained for.