دار بيبليون
The need to hide miraculous powers in Yoga and Teresa of Avila
(T A)/Lecture by Dr Lwiis Saliba on Zoom Wednesday 27/10/2021
Miraculous powers block evolution
Pathanjali says on the miraculous powers of the Siddhis (Yoga Sutras 3/38): “These miraculous abilities (Siddhis) are obstacles to absorption (Samadhi), but in the worldly state they are powers”.
These powers, say the Yoga teachers, develop vanity, which is the greatest obstacle on the path to spiritual enlightenment. Moreover, striving to attain them diverts the aspirant from the spiritual path, for the goal is Samadhi, pure consciousness, not the siddhis.
Swami Sivananda explains this sutra as follows: “These powers are obstacles and one who wants enlightenment must reject all these powers as if they are of no use to him. For with these he may become a powerful yogi, but he will not become a realized being. They occur as by-products on the path of meditation. They should be ignored”.
For his part, Swami Vivekananda says: “Whatever these powers are, they block the path to the supreme goal and liberation. And the yogi comes across them on his way. If he rejects them, he reaches the highest level, but if he allows the experience of acquiring these powers to prevail, then he will block the path of his evolution”.
In the Upanishads of true Yoga it is said concerning these powers:
“The yogi sees these supernatural forces as obstacles on the way to the goal.
He does not seek these powers and if he gets them, he should not be proud of them.
If he wants to be a true yogic prince, on the contrary, he hides his powers.
He works in the world like any ordinary person.
Rather as a naive person, or a dumb person or a deaf person.”
Display of powers is limited to certain situations
Swami Sivananda, on the other hand, explains the mechanism of displaying certain miraculous powers, and limits the motives for using these abilities among realised yogis to two main reasons: to persuade devotees and to do charity where there is an urgent need. He says: “A true mystic shows no supernatural Siddhi ability, but he may demonstrate some power, at a specific and appropriate time, to persuade his followers, or to do good to people.
Here the miracle appears as a proof of the truth of the message or prophecy, and this is precisely its function in prophetic religions, as mentioned above.
We continue with Sivananda who gives some examples of the use of miracles to persuade devotees, which is famous in the history of yoga, saying: “The yogic queen Chudalai appeared before her husband, King Sikhidvaja, while she was raised a few feet above the earth (levitating), which surprised him, who then took her as his teacher (guru). Matsyendranath performed many miracles to convince Gorakhnath of the sincerity of yoga practices. Similarly, Lord Jesus showed many miracles to convince his disciples”.
Sivananda’s last remark attracts our attention, for he places Christ in the chain of realised yogic teachers who used their powers to persuade their disciples. Jesus is often regarded in India as an example of a Yoga Master who experienced the highest levels of realisation.
And I conclude this discussion of miraculous powers, and the Yoga warning against their use, with my personal experience in this area.
Personal Experience of Using the Powers
In the third chapter of his book, Pathanjali mentions a sutra for developing and refining intuition (3/35-36). “I was in my second year of university studies at the Faculty of Information and Documentation at the Lebanese University and I had an exam in the field of international public law. I had only one day left to study an entire volume on this subject. I was forced, in this case, to cram and select specific and limited topics to study. So I decided to use the sutra that Pathanjali teaches to develop intuition. I did so and limited my meditation practice to the use of this sutra. Then I chose, in the light of my intuition, three topics to study on the remaining day before the exam. The composition consisted of three questions from which the student would choose two. What a great surprise it was to me, when I read the essay, to find that the three topics offered were exclusively and specifically the three topics I had chosen by my intuition to study. I did not expect the result of this intuition to be so correct and accurate.
After this successful examination, I told my yoga teacher Robert Kfoury what had happened, and he said, “You practiced this meditation/intuition innocently, and it worked, but if you repeat it, you will lose that innocence, you will eventually lose that power, and you will disturb your intuition”. He told me what happened to him one day in Germany. His daily route passed by a clothing shop. One day he saw a leather jacket in the window which he liked, but the price was too high for him, and it was almost impossible for him to buy it. In his nightly meditation he remembered this overpriced jacket, which appeared to him in a spontaneous and rapid vision. The next day he stopped for a moment in front of the same shop window, so the shop owner came out to invite him in and offered him the mentioned leather jacket. But the yoga teacher, with his strict yogic ethics, apologised for accepting the gift, as he felt that the shop owner had fallen under the influence of his unconscious desire, which he had expressed in his meditation.
This incident and the account of my meditation teacher Robert Kfouri were enough for me to stop seeking supernatural powers, and I have not repeated my attempts since.
Teresa of Avila insists on the need to conceal miraculous powers
For her part, Teresa’s position on miraculous powers is not unlike the spirit of the Yoga position.
She emphasised, and contrary to the opinion of many of her guides and confessors, that supernatural phenomena do not come from the devil, as they repeated: “They come from God, for everything in them indicates this”.
On the other hand, she did not consider them a manifestation of holiness or an indication of it, for she always declared and repeated that: “Sufi phenomena do not directly signify holiness, for holiness is based on the perfection of love”. This is the same position in yoga: powers do not mean realisation.
And we have already mentioned, quoting from the biography of Teresa of Avila, how the Carmelite reformer always tried to hide the powers she had spontaneously, and reluctantly, obtained. She categorically refused to fall into the temptation of vanity, as she states: “I prayed insistently to the Lord not to grant me any more graces that have external signs. This has since proved to be the case.
This indicates that Teresa of Avila went beyond the question of miraculous powers and did not make them an obstacle on the way to holiness, which is what yogis do. “Many souls reach this state, but few go beyond it”, in T A’s expression, an expression exactly the same as that of the yogis and commentators of the Yoga sutra of Ptanjali already mentioned.
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