This is the question I am often asked. Many people get attracted to Yoga or meditation believing that they can attain psychic powers through these practices. Many a Gurus became well known either because of their psychic claims, or through their autobiographies in which they give a long list of mystics they have met in their lives who displayed psychic powers.
It is easy to totally rubbish such claims the way James Randy and similar skeptics do. But psychic powers have such a long history that is difficult to deny them totally.
When it comes to Yoga, one of the main goals of Hata Yoga is to attain psychic powers. Even Patanjali Yoga Sutra has an entire chapter that discusses Psychic powers. Even ancient Indian spiritual literatures talk about ‘Sidhdhis’ which are actually different types of psychic powers. Buddha who never encouraged going after psychic powers, did believe in their existence.
Buddha even says that at certain stages of one’s meditative practices one could attain psychic powers even without wanting them. But Buddha stresses that such psychic powers are not very useful nor are they indicative of one’s progress in the spiritual path. A highly advanced meditant may never attain any psychic powers at all! That does not make his progress less important.
If you look at western religious scriptures, Bible for example, is replete with various psychic powers exhibited by Godmen like Jesus Christ. It is a different matter that Jesus Christ never claims those powers to be his own but always attributes them to God. But the fact is that he does display several of them.
Is it just an indication of human desire to acquire supremacy over the nature? Is it an outcome of longing to free oneself from all human limitations and equate oneself to God?
Even if the skeptics brush it aside as figments of human mind, it is also a fact that not so long ago, the American Government spent Billions of Dollars, in the hunt for psychic powers! I am talking about the highly secretive ‘research’ that went on for almost 2 decades in some of the top US Universities to study psychic powers.
It was in the early 1970s when rumors of Russians using psychic powers against their arch rival namely America, began to spread. American defense did not want to lag behind and convinced the American government to invest billions of dollars in studying psychic powers and their possible use in defense!
Well known scientists were involved in this highly guarded secret research project, the details of which were never made completely public. It went on for two decades. Tall claims were made. Hot seller books were written. One of the scientists in this project even confidently declared that existence of psychic powers is beyond doubt. According to this scientist, what now needs to be understood is how these psychic powers actually work. Many research papers were published discussing highly mathematical theories to explain the psychic phenomena!
What happened at the end? The US government set up a committee of academicians and well-known intellectuals to evaluate the work done in over two decades. What was the outcome of the evaluation?
There was almost a 50-50 disagreements among the committee members. Finally, the verdict was –
“there seems to be some anomalous happenings observed in these experiments. But this anomaly could well be due to experimental errors or wrong observations, even though it may not be intentional. The outcome of the research does not conclusively prove the existence of psychic powers but only points to some anomaly that needs to be further studied. In any case, the claimed strength of psychic powers is too feeble to be of any use for defense purposes”.
Finally, the US government abandoned this research, at least officially. It could still be going on secretly, as many people believe.
Having said all this, I still believe that psychic powers are possible. It is just that most of the claims of such powers are fake. For reasons not known clearly, a focused human mind seems to be capable of going beyond physical barriers. At least the ability to read other’s minds, influence other’s way of thinking, induce peace in others by mere presence, seem to be achievable by anyone who seriously practices meditation.
But as Buddha often said, these powers could be more of a distraction in the path of a sincere spiritual practitioner. There are far greater achievements ahead and it is not worth getting stuck in smaller gains.
So, don’t waste your energies in chasing psychic powers. They may exist. But it may not be worth going after them. As Buddha said, the biggest miracle is in imparting right knowledge that helps humanity in the long run both at individual level as well as at collective level.
A series discussing questions and answers on Yoga/Philosophy. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2020-21
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