According to Scripture, the entire human race is enslaved by the fear of death:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death (Hebrews 2:14, 15 NIV84, emphasis mine).

This means that our natural selves, the life we inherited from Adam, is the life of fear, the spirit of fear, and our individuality, or sense of who we are, apart from Christ is a slave to this self-centered motive. We all fear death! We are all naturally concerned for self and are terrified of non-existence. This fear is the driver of every false religion and obstacle that interferes with salvation. This inherent fear of death causes us to seek to save self, protect self, advance self, comfort self—to do anything we can to deny, control, repress, and evade this fear.

There are entire schools of psychology that explore the impact on mental health and human functioning that the fear of death causes and how we respond to it. This is called existential psychology.

People defend against this fear by doing various things to keep something about them alive—such as living on through their children, creating works of various kinds (books, art, music) that keep existing after they die, or building parks and statues or having buildings named after them. (This is one of the reasons that motivates legacy fundraising, offering big donors the opportunity to have their name on things so they will be remembered after they die.)

The Fear of Death and Eastern Religion

This fear of death is also the foundation and cause of Buddhism and Eastern forms of meditation.

Buddhism teaches that as a young man, Buddha saw a sick man, a decrepit old man, and a deceased man being carried to his funeral, and Buddha became aware of his own mortality—in other words, he became afraid of death.

He wanted to escape death, but instead of turning to Jesus, to God the Creator, to receive a new, eternal life through faith, he instead turned inward to self and began meditating until he experienced a euphoria and emotional peace termed “nirvana.”

What is actually happening in this type of meditation is the suppression of the brain’s reasoning, thinking, and comprehending circuits; it suppresses the part of the brain in which your individuality and identity reside, so that one loses their sense of self. While in this meditative state, one’s ability to reason and think is suppressed and one experiences a powerful emotional euphoria and often a disembodied type of experience in which they no longer feel as an individual but as part of something larger. This self-induced emotional distortion of reality in which truth is avoided (and, in fact, while in this state the brain cannot comprehend truth) is believed to be transcendence into a higher state of being that connects one with the cycles of energy, which are said to purify them from moral corruption so that they can live on in new forms in a better and higher state of existence when they are reincarnated.

The devil is such a good liar that he has led people to call this state—in which thinking is turned off and the brain regions that comprehend truth are inactive—a state of enlightenment, but it is, in reality, a state of darkness, for no truth can be comprehended in this state.

The adherents of this religious practice believe that a person’s individuality and life energy are one merged unit and cite the first law of thermodynamics, that energy is neither created nor destroyed but simply changes forms, as a proof of their religious claims. They assert that at death, the energy of a person still exists and, through this meditation, one can purify their energy to ensure that when it re-forms into a new physical being, they come back with a better, more positive existence than the life they previously had—or if one doesn’t do this, they come back as a more degraded physical being.

There are multiple problems with this religion:

1. It denies how life actually works and what constitutes a living human being. Specifically, it merges individuality (soul) and life energy (spirit) into a single element. That would be like saying your computer’s software and its energy source (electricity) are one and the same and that whenever the electricity used by your computer reemerges into another form, so does your software.
2. It is inconsistent with science and evidence on the difference between energy and information.
3. Its meditation method is contrary to Scripture and focuses the mind away from truth.
4. Rather than leading one to life, it actually cuts people off from life while simultaneously numbing their conscience so they do not experience the conviction of the Holy Spirit that would lead them to repentance.
5. It is just another means of seeking to save self. Cleansing one’s energy is another way of saying cleansing one’s spirit from sin, from fear and selfishness. In truth, the spirit we have inherited from Adam is corrupt with fear and selfishness, and nothing we can do can cleanse it—we can only surrender it, die to self, and be reborn with a new Spirit, the Holy Spirit, who brings us the Spirit, life, of Jesus.

Eastern meditation practices trick people into retaining their terminal spirit of fear and selfishness while causing them to feel as if they have transcended beyond it.

Deconstructing the Deception

Jesus and the Bible teach that operational human beings are composed of three parts, in the same way an operational computer has three parts:

• Soma—hardware—body
• Psyche—software—mind/soul
• Pneuma—electricity/energy-breath of life/spirit

Again, Eastern philosophies merge the spirit and soul into one entity and teach that when energy recycles, so does the individual, the soul.

Jesus and the Bible do not teach this. Instead, they teach that the life energy (spirit/pneuma) originates in God and is distinct from individuality (soul/psyche), and at death, the body returns to dirt from which it was made (Genesis 3:19; Psalm 104:29), the life energy (spirit/pneuma) returns to God (Ecclesiastes 12:7), and one’s individuality (soul/psyche) is safe with Christ in heaven in a state of sleep, a state of suspended animation. Then, at the resurrection, God brings these three together again (hardware, software, and energy) at the Second Coming (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18).

So, the first two problems with Eastern philosophies are that they are contrary to how life is built by God to function and they deny science.

The third problem is that the focus of Eastern meditation is on nothing, the opposite of Scripture, which always focuses our meditation on some aspect of God—His character, law, creation, providences, actions in history, sacrifice of Jesus, etc. In other words, biblical meditation calls our minds to think, contemplate, focus, attend, and engage upon subjects larger than self, that are awe-inspiring, to lead us to connect with our Creator in interactive conversation so that, ultimately, we open our hearts in trust to Him and receive a new animating Spirit and, via the law of worship and truth, we are transformed by this process.

The fourth problem is that the internally focused emptying of the mind via Eastern meditation, rather than enlightening and ennobling, both enfeebles and enslaves. Eastern meditation does not free people from their fear of death; they are enslaved by it and must continue to do this type of meditation in order to manage their anxiety.

This form of meditation is a self-comfort measure that actively interferes with salvation—why?

Escaping the Fear of Death

Because biblical meditation leads one into truth—truth about God, about themselves, about their terminal sin condition, about the solution for sin and the source of salvation, which leads the person meditating on God and His truth to decision points, places where they have to choose—will they surrender self, the fear-based, self-centered, survival life and all its self-developed coping and comfort strategies and be reborn in love and trust through the indwelling Holy Spirit, or will they continue to choose distrust and self-centered, fear-based survival strategies?

Functionally, this means that when one follows the Spirit of truth and love, they will be led by their Shepherd onto the path of righteousness for the glorification of God by restoration of their soul into Christlikeness, and where the Shepherd leads them is into the valley of the shadow of death. This is not the valley of death, but the valley of the shadow of death. This is the valley that every sinner who wants salvation must go through; it is the place where it feels like one is dying, where one comes face to face with their own self, their own spirit of fear, their own desperate desire to protect and save self, and they must choose—do they trust Jesus their Shepherd and surrender their life to Him and are reborn with a new life, a new spirit of love and trust, or do they run back to their dysfunctional coping strategies? This is the valley Jacob entered the night he wrestled with the angel, the valley David entered after being confronted by Nathan and then wrote the 51st Psalm, and the valley Peter entered after denying Jesus.

It is the valley where we must die to selfishness and be reborn—and in that valley, the Shepherd’s rod and staff comfort us; the rod beats back the wolves, and the staff with the crook lifts the sheep out of the ditch when they fall into it. He prepares a table of spiritual food to nurture our souls in the presence of our enemies, anoints our heads with the oil of the Holy Spirit to enlighten, transform, and cleanse, and God’s love and mercy will pursue us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell in God’s house forever.

Being reborn with a new life through faith in Jesus is the only true solution and way to escape the fear of death. We escape the fear of death because we escape death through God’s grace when we surrender to Him in trust and exchange our terminal life inherited from Adam for the life of Jesus. We become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4); it is no longer our old self animating us but Christ in us (Galatians 2:20), and we no longer live in fear of dying (Revelation 12:11).

Eastern meditation cheats people from salvation, as it teaches them that when they start to feel existential anxiety, that terrible valley of the shadow of death, don’t turn to Jesus, don’t face the reality of our own terminal sin condition, don’t trust in our Creator, but instead, to turn to self, turn inward, begin suppressing all truth, all thinking, until you alter your brain function enough that you cause yourself to feel a sense of euphoria and peace, and then you can pretend you have transcended the reality of your terminal condition.

Understand clearly, Eastern meditation treats the symptoms, the anxiety of our mortality, our terminal sin condition, but it leaves the person dying in sin. Biblical meditation leads to a trust relationship with Jesus that cures the problem!

If you haven’t read our Meditation Guide, the difference between biblical and Eastern meditation, you can get free copies mailed to your U.S. postal address, or download one to your device and share it with others.