The Yoga of Psychic Ability

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          Psychic abilities are not a New Age construct.  There's nothing new about them.  They only seem new to us because over the centuries socio-political factors have dumbed us down so much.  We have been alienated from our own true abilities and potential as spiritual beings.  Since ancient times, Indian sages (rishis in Sanskrit) knew that we're all born with some degree of sixth-sensory ability, called siddhi in Sanskrit.  They wrote extensively about this.

        The rishis noted that one of the natural consequences of the mental discipline created by a regular meditation practice is that it tends to sharpen one's innate sixth-sensory acuity, much like exercising a muscle.

        At the same time, they also cautioned that desiring to acquire these abilities in order to attain power over other people, or for vainglorious attention or wealth, are not good reasons to pursue meditation and siddhis, and soundly condemned such motives.  While they knew that siddhis could be fine-tuned and controlled, many teachers (even today) taught that they should be ignored altogether because the temptation to misuse them is too great.  As you develop your abilities, seek to use them for benevolent purposes.  Otherwise, there will be negative karmic consequences you will have to deal with, and this is unavoidable.

                  Below are a few ancient Sanskrit terms for various 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 happen during the waking hours.  They can be quick flashes of insight, or long, detailed vignettes that play like a movie in your mind's eye.  Dreams can sometimes contain psychic messages, so pay attention to them

• 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.  A funny example: I used to hear a friend's cell phone tone when she wanted to go out to Happy Hour.  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!"  When I hadn't heard her cell phone ring, but called her anyway to see if she wanted to go, she would be tied up with something and unable to go 

• Pratibha Siddhi 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 today empathy, where we feel psychic information in the body.  For example, you might feel anger welling up in your body when someone you're connected to in some way 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 moment you felt the dread come over you.  For many, 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 discarnate spirit who smoked when he lived on the Earth plane is nearby

• 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.  I also find that people with beautiful, benevolent spiritual energy tend to smell like flowers 

• Parashiva is Self-realization.  Though not a psychic ability per se, it is a state of spiritual transcendence.  It is freedom from attachment to the material world, and from one's ego.  Meditation greatly enhances and supports this spiritual state

Here is a video including a few additional abilities.  I disagree with the
assertion in the video that these are just "2012 Ascension" abilities doled
out to chosen ones of a "higher vibration," blah, blah.  That's just New Age
romanticism/misinformation, in my opinion.  Again, these abilities have
been described since ancient times, and people have them to greater or
lesser degrees than others, as with any other in-born ability
(like musical or athletic ability, etc.)



 

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Related books:

Dream Yoga

Living Yoga (Psychic studies)

A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga

A Chakra & Kundalini Workbook: Psycho-Spiritual Techniques for Health, 

Rejuvenation, Psychic Powers & Spiritual Realization

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