For many people, meditation has become a part of life. Busy professionals escape to mindfulness retreats to relieve stress. Students use meditation apps on their phones to try to cope with school pressures. Doctors prescribe meditation to treat insomnia, addictions, high blood pressure, depression and chronic pain. Companies provide daily mindfulness breaks and on-site meditation classes, seeking to enhance the problem-solving capabilities of their employees. Success coaches advise their clients to meditate as a way to try to make their dreams come true.

Superficially, all this meditation might seem like a smart idea. We live in a very high-pressure, fast-paced world. Meditation is often plugged as a way to “find relief from stress or suffering” or to “boost health and well-being.” If meditation can calm us and help us meet the demands in our daily lives, why not do it?

To answer that question, it really depends on what is meant by meditation.

There’s the kind we read about in the Bible. We’re told of numerous godly individuals who practiced and advocated meditation, including Isaac (Genesis 24:63), Joshua (Joshua 1:8), David (Psalm 19:14), Paul (Philippians 4:8-9) and Timothy (1 Timothy 4:15). God clearly wants us to meditate too. In Psalm 1:1-3, we’re encouraged to meditate on God’s law day and night. The Hebrew word used here for meditate is hagah, meaning to “consider, ponder, reflect or muse.”

To meditate entails thinking deeply and carefully about Scripture, trying to better understand God’s underlying intentions for His commands, why these precepts are important and how to apply them to our lives. It can also involve reflecting on God’s awesome glory and strength, His promises and blessings, and the ways He’s intervened in our lives, all of which provides us with real peace of mind and deepens our dependence on Him. Biblical meditation is vital to our spiritual health.

That said, the type of meditation that’s become common in modern Western society is totally different than the kind of meditation the Bible endorses. Popular meditation techniques like mindfulness, Zen meditation, transcendental meditation, Vipassana, energy healing, focused breathing and guided imagery all fall under the umbrella of Eastern meditation. They are rooted in Asian mysticism, not in the Bible.

Some of the more “hard core” meditation websites and books state the goals for their techniques as, “to achieve spiritual freedom or nirvana,” “to attain an alternate state of consciousness,” “to awaken physical and spiritual energies” or “to enter a state of oneness with the universe.” We should be able to tell, just by reading these goals, how blatantly unbiblical these practices are. That should motivate Christians to stay clear of them. And even when popular meditation techniques are promoted more innocuously, perhaps as a way to achieve well-being and relieve stress, we need to realize there’s a lot of “bad” attached to what might sound “good.”

So while we should meditate on Scripture, it’s equally important that we avoid the practices and methods associated with Eastern meditation—even when they’re offered at seemingly innocent venues like resorts and community colleges. To really understand why we should take this approach, consider the following five ways popular meditation differs from biblical meditation:

1. Mindfulness: Eastern meditation seeks to cultivate “nonjudgmental awareness”

Being non-judgmental is a defining feature of most forms of Eastern meditation. In the Mindfulness Revolution (Shambhala Publications, 2011), meditation teacher Jan Chozen Bays characterizes mindfulness, one of the most well-known meditation practices, as “awareness without judgment or criticism . . . When we are mindful, we are not comparing or judging. We are simply witnessing the many sensations, thoughts, and emotions that come up” (p. 3). Popular meditation practices generally teach people to let thoughts pass into their minds without evaluating them or reacting to them in any way, and just “allowing them to be.”

There is a danger in doing this. When we stop making judgments, we are in effect setting our spiritual defenses aside, which opens us up to all kinds of deception. Misleading, dangerous or sinful ideas and concepts that have “popped into our heads” go unchecked, are not fought-off and can start to influence us—in very harmful ways.

Instead of being laid-back or inattentive about what goes into our minds, God wants us to be actively alert. We’re told to guard our hearts (Proverbs 4:23), “search out and examine our ways” (Lamentations 3:40), and bring “every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). If we have sinful thoughts, God wants us to purge them—not be indifferent to them.

When we meditate the way the Bible teaches, we evaluate our thoughts, attitudes and actions by biblical precepts, which shows us where we fall short and what changes we need to make in our lives. Biblical meditation actually motivates us to repentance, whereas popular meditation stops at simply being aware of thoughts and feelings.

2. The best popular meditation can offer is a temporary “fix”

Eastern meditation seeks to take away emotional pain and distress by inducing altered states of consciousness (also referred to as the “meditative state” or the “state of enlightenment”). Individuals are told to “detach the mind” from their physical surroundings, in effect disengaging from reality to provide an escape from the very real problems in life.  

Often, Eastern meditation does make people feel relaxed and undisturbed. But it’s only a temporary reprieve. Because it involves no self-evaluation or assessment of what’s really happening in a person’s life, the root causes of distress are not addressed. Thus, once individuals “return to their realities,” all of the sadness, anxiety and negative emotions come rushing back in.

In contrast, biblical meditation is not a temporary “fix,” nor is it meant to be an escape from difficulties. When we reflect on biblical truths, it helps us see what we need to do to to resolve difficult situations, which can bring about a real end to our problems. And when we face long-term hardships that cannot be quickly resolved, biblical meditation is not meant to be a way to flee our troubles, but rather is a means to help us pursue a closer relationship with God—which helps us confidently face and endure these difficult periods in life. God wants us to confront trials head-on, knowing that He will help us get through them (1 Corinthians 10:13).

3. Eastern meditation relies on techniques to accomplish its goals

The altered states of consciousness mentioned in the previous point are cultivated using various techniques, all of which can seem rather mysterious. Typically, individuals meditate sitting cross-legged on the floor, with their eyes closed. They will focus their minds on a particular concept or idea, until a trance-like state is reached (at which point they will no longer be responsive to external stimuli).

Additional techniques used include breathing manipulation (consciously taking long and deep breaths or breathing in specific patterns), silently repeating mantras (words or phrases with special meaning), chanting aloud what they believe are sacred sounds (like “ohm” and “aum”), and visualization (imagining themselves in tranquil and beautiful settings or accomplishing particular goals)—all to achieve a meditative state.

But with biblical meditation, we don’t have to master particular techniques in order to do it, neither does it require any kind of mysterious maneuvering. We just need to direct our thinking on God’s Word, with our minds fully-engaged. The only preparatory step that we might want to take is to pray that God will guide our meditation, to help us discern truth from error and see the significance of biblical teachings.  

4. Eastern meditation steers people away from God

While biblical meditation draws individuals closer to God, Eastern meditation takes its devotees away from God and steers them to nonbiblical belief systems. The reason that happens is because of what was stated in the introduction: Eastern meditation has direct links to Asian mysticism—in particular, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Taoism.

These mystical belief systems teach that human beings have the power within themselves to find peace and achieve “spiritual enlightenment.” They do not acknowledge the true God nor see the need for a Savior, but rather their focus is to obtain “oneness” with the universe. Eastern mystic religions are generally pantheistic, meaning they’re built on the idea that the universe and all that’s in it collectively comprise God (who is seen as a non-personal “divine essence” and pervades everything in existence). Therefore, the thinking goes, human beings, as part of the universe, are a component of God. Meditation, then, becomes one of the primary ways they seek to “awaken their inner divinity” and become unified with the “Universal Energy” (or “Higher Power”) that permeates the cosmos.

If it sounds like New Age philosophy, it is. The New Age movement is also rooted in Asian mysticism, and adherents to its teachings are generally very big on Eastern meditation. On the flipside, it’s common for individuals who start out doing practices such as mindfulness, who initially may not hold to New Age ideas, to gradually become drawn into that belief system as they get deeper into Eastern meditation. So many of the methods used in popular meditation, like balancing chakras (supposed “energy centers” in the human body), chanting Hindu holy words as mantras (like “ohm,” “rama,” “ham,” and “yam”), and “breathing in positive energy and clearing out negative energy,” are New Age in nature and ultimately have pagan roots and meanings (and promote a false theology or are part of the worship of false gods).

Some will insist they personally don’t practice meditation in a religious manner, but it doesn’t change the origin of the techniques. These maneuvers aren’t suddenly “sanitized” when they’re taken out of an overtly pagan setting and practiced at a community recreation center. The Bible makes it clear we are to worship God alone and not borrow any religious practices from other religions (Deuteronomy 12:30-31). That alone is reason enough to stay clear of Eastern meditation.

It can become idolatry in a more general sense too. An idol is anything that is put in the place of God. Individuals have been known to stop praying to God after they were introduced to Eastern meditation, because they found it to be “more relaxing.” Or, people can become addicted to the “high” they experience when being in a meditative state, and start needing the fix at an increasing frequency. Anytime we look to something other than God for the strength and help only He can give, that qualifies as idolatry.

5. Being in a deep meditative state can invite demonic attacks

One other very serious way Eastern meditation differs from biblical meditation is that it can solicit contact with evil spirits. This is something the Bible strongly warns against (Leviticus 19:31, 20:6; Deuteronomy 18:10-12).

What happens is being in a deeply meditative state turns off a person’s critical thinking and decision-making skills, which makes him easy prey to evil spirits. Other times individuals will intentionally use meditation to activate an astral projection, which is when the person’s consciousness leaves the body and enters a dark spiritual dimension known as the astral plane. The danger is encountering demons that reside there.

One former meditation practitioner told me that her mindfulness instructor actually encouraged students to “step outside” of their bodies. “I did it once,” she admitted, “and it was very frightening. I started wondering who—or what—took over my mind when I ‘stepped out.’ I felt like I had this strange energy running through my body and that some outside force was controlling me.”

Contact with evil spirits can lead to actual demon possession, as well as demonic oppression (e.g., having disturbing nightmares and sleep paralysis, seeing hallucinations, hearing voices, and experiencing psychosis or paranoia).

The bottom-line is Eastern meditation is dangerous and should be avoided. However, we should meditate on God’s Word each and every day, perhaps while we do our Bible study. When we meditate God’s way, there are no negative side effects. Biblical meditation only leads to a sounder mind, a closer relationship with God, and genuine peace—all good outcomes, and exactly what we need to face our increasingly high-stress world.