Testimony of Reinhard Reichert
I was raised in a Christian Mennonite family. During my teenage years I was ought to put this kind of faith aside. I wanted to evade from the pressure of being trained by my Christian parenthood. This pressure had been very strong and at a certain instant I did not want to know anything about Christianity and from that time on I did not see any point to believe in the existence of God. Thus I began to follow my own route going by my own thoughts and beliefs. As I became adult it was also my turn to decide to believe in something because I could not realize anymore that everything that exists only consists of matter without anything secret behind it.
At this point I delved into cosmic consciousness (New Age), began to aspire to spiritual heights by letting go internally (Bhagwan-/ Osho-meditation) and came to the conclusion that a soul can be transferred into a better life after death by leading a life on a spiritual regime (reincarnation!). Bhakti Yoga was tought to me by the Hare Krishna – movement as the spiritually most optimal offer including monasticism with a fair share of ascetiscism and a consciousness that has to aim thoroughly and entirely on godhead named Krsna which is additionally enhanced by the chanting of the Hare Krishna Mantra in Indian language (Mantra = a talking chant, similar to a prayer). Through this training one supposedly shall make his or her step forward aiming at an eternal life beneath the material world in the spiritual divine realm thus the soul will not have to be born again in a material body after this life; instead it will leave the ongoing cycle of birth, death and rebirth.
At that time I often pondered the idea of becoming a monk but as I took my time thinking about this decision I luckily and I never ended up giving me this kind of treat.
At last I also tried Scientology. Over there I had the pleasure to pay a five-digit-amount and after I left I claimed my due and took this case to court and successfully managed to redemand the amount. In those days back then as I had started getting interested in esoterics I also sensed my passion for Oriental (Asian) martial arts. And as the passion for fighting gave me the big kick I finally got my eagerness satisfied in the Chinese Kung-Fu, the grandmother of all Asian martial arts.
Besides fighting forms performed with or without weapons there are the distinctive categories of the external and internal styles of martial arts. The external fighting styles are performed in a hard way applying tense muscles as the internal styles are performed in a way that one remains soft, eases to the power of the opponent, deflects and leads it into nothing.
By then I started with a style of Kung-Fu, called T’ai Ji Ch’uan (T’ai = infinite-dimensional, Ji = inexorably forward, Ch’uan = fist) which is ought to be attributed as an internal martial arts style.
And by the time at the beginning of the year 1999 I pondered my dilemma with Scientology which I just had overcome feeling as if I had been saved by some kind of protection. At this particular period of my life I was married to my wife Ute already for one and a half years and enjoyed the marital bliss with her. At this time I finally also turned to Jesus Christ.
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Few years later I abruptly quit Tai Chi and Chi Gong (which I used until then as a “warm up”) after 16 years of experience, abolished it from my life and for that reason I even short-term-cancelled my Tai Chi division at my local sports club.
To this I got influenced by a Chinese Christian, named Xiao Guang, who used to be a master of Chi Gong and he also wrote a book about his experience with Chi Gong picturing one “horror” after another with Chi Gong:
”I usually practiced at night with the lights out. I closed my eyes and could still see the outlines of my hands with a layer of white light. Sometimes I woke up at night and saw clearly the outlines of my shiny hands with my eyes closed. I felt I saw them with my tianmu.
Another inexplicable phenomenon bothered me. While I practiced one day, the power failed in my room, and I thought it was general power failure. I looked outside and saw there was light in all the other rooms. Yet the lights in my room were on the same circuit as others and were not burning. A few hours later, the lights in my room suddenly lit up. This happened several times. This was another qigong phenomenon and one I found hard to control. Every time it happened, I had to sit in meditation for a while before I could have the light back in my room. My life was made inconvenient in this way.“
And since Tai Chi – practitioners focus on an energy, called “Chi” (Qi) just as they do in Chi Gong, any Christian person has to realize that anyone doing this kind of exercise, enters into occult, satanic territories. Some characters may claim that Tai Chi can be practiced as mere gymnastics without obtaining the ‘Chi’.
But this is like having high possibility of wetting one’s shoes when one walks too close to the river. The evil spirits have a lot of opportunities to intrude, even though one practices these exercises just as he/she would do physical exercises.”1
Jesus is the one who came from the Kingdom of God and through HIM God was manifested as a human being.
During my quest for God in which I walked within the reach of cosmic consciousness I had to assess that I found cults and rites that were financially not always affordable for a person like me (I am occupied as a gardener). Thus these cases do not give most ordinary persons a chance to get started to put the principals into action for the intention to become one with nature and cosmos. There is also the fact that people after their accomplishment of climbing up the steps of spiritual advancement are the ones ought to be floating on a superhuman level seeing a purpose in living for transmigrating into a spiritual universe by following a path of good virtues and meditation exercises while minor poor creatures unfortunately did not make it and continuously wander from one material body to another.
However, the highest almighty authority, the creator of the universe, was willing to become an incarnate poor human creature like us about 2000 years ago, through his son Jesus Christ, to let us know who HE really is. HE is love and righteousness himself in person which he had not only preached but also proved as he got executed on the cross, a sentence HE endured as an innocent victim. No man can dig their way into God’s kindom themselves without making use of the sacrificial dedication of Jesus Christ since their propensity for doing evil would entirely have them ending up in hell and only the appeal to Jesus’ death on the cross is our assurance that we once and for all escape hell and find eternal life with God.
Every human being seeks salvation because no one has the desire to suffer. And even if experts and ordinary practitioners of Asian martial arts partially claim that “the soul could be dangled in the air”, in exact “it could get a break from everyday life” by the practice of physical exercise the soul itself will only experience an alleviation of suffering in spite of physical fitness; the plain truth is that the soul is only safe in the presence of God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. HE became the centre of my life and from that time on I still continued practicing Kung-Fu but only as a hobby and I don’t do it for the purpose of self-discovery anymore, instead I do it on a standard of physical body training which I furthermore enjoy. This is what I want to pass on to all practitioners of T’ai Ji Ch’uan and Kung-Fu and to all other martial artists, as well as everyone who is interested in martial arts and/or fight oriented sports.
My favourite Bible verse:
John 14, 16: Jesus Christ said: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Xiao Guang wrote: Nowadays, many who practice taijiquan or taiji swordsmanship practice them as health-improving exercises without obtaining the "qi." But this is like having high possibility of wetting one’s shoes when one walks too close to the river. The evil spirits have a lot of opportunities to intrude, even though one practices these exercises just as he/she would do physical exercises.
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(1)Hsiao Guang: Breaking Through the Barriers of Darkness: Recognizing the Cult of Qigong for What It Is, http://www.chinaforjesus.com/resources/qigong/index.htm