Is Yoga contrary to our faith?

[Little Flower]

Is Yoga contrary to our faith? Thank you for your concise answers!

[Jim Blackburn]

While the physical aspects of Yoga can be beneficial, the spiritual aspects may be harmful as they flow into "New Age" religiosity. The Church’s reflection on the New Age, Jesus Christ: The Bearer of the Water of Life, warns us:

Yoga, zen, transcendental meditation and tantric exercises lead to an experience of self-fulfilment or enlightenment. Peak-experiences (reliving one's birth, travelling to the gates of death, biofeedback, dance and even drugs – anything which can provoke an altered state of consciousness) are believed to lead to unity and enlightenment. Since there is only one Mind, some people can be channels for higher beings. Every part of this single universal being has contact with every other part. The classic approach in New Age is transpersonal psychology, whose main concepts are the Universal Mind, the Higher Self, the collective and personal unconscious and the individual ego. The Higher Self is our real identity, a bridge between God as divine Mind and humanity. Spiritual development is contact with the Higher Self, which overcomes all forms of dualism between subject and object, life and death, psyche and soma, the self and the fragmentary aspects of the self. Our limited personality is like a shadow or a dream created by the real self. The Higher Self contains the memories of earlier (re-)incarnations.

Aspects such as these are certainly contrary to our faith!