Psychic ability is not a New Age construct developed in the 1960s by hippies on acid. Since ancient times, yogic sages understood that we're all born with some degree of sixth sensory abilities, known as siddhi in Sanskrit. They claimed that the discipline a meditation practice imposed on one's mind naturally enhanced sixth sensory acuity, like exercising a muscle. But they also cautioned that desiring to acquire the abilities just to have power over other people was not a good reason to pursue meditation, and soundly discouraged such an approach. Below are a few Sanskrit terms for psychic abilities:
- Adarsha Siddhi (or Divya) is clairvoyance, the most well-known psychic ability. It is seeing information you didn't already know in visions and dreams. Visions can be quick flashes of insight, or long, highly detailed vignettes that play like a movie in your mind's eye
- Shravana Siddhi (or Divyashravana) is clairaudience, the psychic ability of hearing information you didn't already know. You might hear someone saying something in their head (which would also be called telepathy) when they didn't speak it, only to have them speak it a moment later. I used to hear a friend's cell phone tone when she wanted to go out to Happy Hour, though she was no where around me at the moment. I'd call her and ask if she wanted to go to Happy Hour and she'd say, "Hey, I was just about to call you and ask you that!" I used to get a kick out of that
- Pratibha Siddi is divination, the ability to read and acquire information through tools of augery, or through signs presented in the rhythms and patterns of the natural environment
- Vedena Siddhi is what we call empathy, where we feel psychic information in the body. For example, you might feel anger welling up in your body when someone near you is angry, though you yourself aren't angry about anything. Or you might suddenly feel a sickening sense of dread seemingly for no reason, then later find out a friend was injured in a car accident at the exact time you felt the dread. To me this is the hardest psychic ability to live with comfortably.
- Asvadana Siddhi is clairgustance, where psychic information comes to us through our sense of taste. For example, you might suddenly taste gun powder when you walk into a room where someone was once shot, or you might taste tobacco when a disembodied spirit who smoked when he lived on the Earth plane is near you
- Varta Siddhi is clairolfaction, the ability to smell psychic information. I find that you can literally "smell" fear on a person. It is an acrid, vinegary smell, highly charged with energy, which reeks from someone who, for example, feels guilty about something they did. People with beautiful, benevolent spirits smell like flowers
- Parashiva is self-realization. Though not a psychic ability per se, it is a state of spiritual transcendence and freedom from attachment to the material world and the ego. Meditation greatly enhances and supports this spiritual state
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