Patanjali Yoga Sutras and the Siddhis (Super Natural Powers)

B Premanand

Patanjali Yoga Sutras explain the method of awakening the sexual
energy – Kundalini Shakti – from Muladhara Chakra through Sushumna Nadi and the six chakras: Swadhisthana Chakra, Manipura, Anahata, Vishuddha, Ajna to the
ultimate Sahasrara Chakra, where the
union between soul and super soul (atma
and paramatma or Shiva and Shakti) takes
place to become one with god. In this practice a person also acquires 64 minor siddhis and 8 special siddhis (ashta siddhis) which are:

I once believed in Kundalini Yoga and had aspirations to
master the siddhis. At the age of
nineteen I went in search of a guru and travelled around the country till I
found a certain yogi in Rishikesh who agreed to teach me Kundalini Yoga. By that time I had mastered about three hundred or
so asanas and pranayama through a yoga instructor engaged to teach us yoga at
home.

To demonstrate the power of mantras, the yogi asked me to draw “ॐ” on a piece of paper in Sanskrit in double lines. He then took it to his
prayer room and closed the door. After about an hour he came out, took a ganja beedi, lit it and touched the
portion where I had drawn Aum.
Surprisingly, only the part where Aum
was drawn burnt with flickering light leaving the rest of the paper intact. He
gave me a lecture on the power of the Aum mantra. He said meditation on Aum made everything possible. I was
asked to meditate on this mantra and
when I could concentrate on it I would also be able to burn the Aum. At that time another person came to
learn Kundalini Yoga and he too was
asked to draw Aum on a paper in
double lines. When the yogi again went to his prayer room, I climbed on a stool
and peeped through the ventilator. The yogi was applying some liquid on the
drawing. He applied several coatings, waiting for each coating to dry before applying
the next. The following experiment explains his secret:

Experiment: 41

Effect:  The Aum
symbol burns without the paper getting burnt. 

Props: Saturated solution of
Potassium Nitrate in water 25 ml. with 5 ml. gum accacia mixed with it. Thick
bond paper with Aum drawn in
Sanskrit, all the lines connected through double lines. A thin bristle artist’s
brush to apply the solution on the paper, cigarette and matchbox.

Method: Apply the solution on the
Aum four times with the brush
allowing each coat to get dry. Light a cigarette and touch the starting point
of the symbol with it. Where the potassium nitrate solution is applied the
letter will burn in outline, leaving the rest of the paper intact.

Aum – Explanation of the Mantra

According to our scriptures there
are two kinds of mantras, one suggestive and the other symbolic. The Upanishads
explain them and their powers. We are told that symbolic mantras are not for
chanting but are symbols to be practiced. Aum
is the most sacred and powerful mantra of the Hindus. It is called the mantra
of creation – Srishti Mantra – and it
is from practicing Aum that life
comes into existence.

Man is the only being who
exploits nature. It is only through knowledge gained from nature that has made
man exploit it where other life forms survive by it. Without naming things one
cannot define anything nor identify or experiment to gain knowledge of nature.
Man is the only being who has invented language through which he acquires
knowledge and controls nature.

The first language invented by
man was “Chitra Lipi” –
Picture symbols. He drew in signs, symbols and line drawings on rocks of things
which were dangerous to human life and which were helpful to the man. Such
symbols can be seen on prehistoric caves where primitive man had his home.

The menace of wild animals, the
danger of natural calamities, pestilence and death, made man think of how
children were born. The outcome was the Srishti
Mantra “AUM”, the
symbol of creation. It is claimed that if one practices “AUM” he can bring down the
mountains and change the flow of the rivers, change sky into earth and earth
into sky, and transform hell Into heaven and heaven into hell.

The symbol of AUM is the union between male and female
where sperm unites with ova and conception takes place. But it is by technology
and manpower that mountains have been levelled and the flow of the rivers
changed by building dams and canals, Hell can be transformed into heaven and
heaven into hell by one’s mental attitude. All the progress made by man has
been through his own endeavor, with the help of language through which he
gained power to imagine, and to arrive at conclusions through experiments,
logic and reasoning. Therefore MAN i.e. the outcome of AUM, is himself the most
sacred and powerful mantra, because it is within us to bring in peace and
progress, or destruction. But if one recites AUM mantra not even a blade of grass
would move. We have devised H2O as the symbol of water, but even If one recites
this a million times over, water cannot be manufactured. One must take two
parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen and fuse them together to get water.

Later when I became a member of
the Divine Life Society, founded by Swami Shivananda, I started practising Kundalini Yoga under him in right
earnest. Along with the practice, I was to read and learn the treatise on Kundalini Yoga authored by the Swami. I
reached the portion where it was mentioned that when the Kundalini Shakti is aroused the person becomes healthy and free
from all diseases. Swami Shivananda was suffering from asthma, diabetes, a bad
heart, rheumatism, over weight and an eye problem. As a guru he should have
roused the Kundalini up to sahasrara and cured himself. I wondered
why he was sick. His answer was that he was suffering from these ailments as he
did not want to wipe out the past Karmas which have caused them. This
explanation satisfied me.

The second question which
bothered me was why people who had attained Nirvikalpa
Samadhi were dying even when they had conquered death. Moreover, it was
mentioned in the Patanjali Yoga that Sushumna
Nadi, through which one raised the sexual power, was a mental nadi which cannot be seen by the eyes or
dissected; it could be visualised by the mind in meditation. Starting from Patanjali
Maharishi, author of the yoga thesis, all those have died who claimed to have
raised the Kundalini Shakti to Sahasrara. These include Shirdi Sai
Baba, Upasani Baba, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Yogananda, Dayananda Saraswathi,
Rama Thirth, Aurobindo and the Mother, Ramana Maharishi, Swami Shivananda,
Swami Ramdas, Swami Nityananda, Datta Bal, Muktananda, Prabhupada, Rajneesh and
recently Pandit Gopi Krishna and Ananda Murthi. Could it be that they never
experienced Nirvikalpa Samadhi at
all? We know these saints also suffered from incurable diseases.

Now, how can one raise sexual
energy i.e. semen, through a mental nadi?
When 1 asked these questions I was told to stop questioning, have faith and
practise. Regarding death of these saints, I was told that they are not dead,
their souls still lived. What they had done was to discard this body as one
might take off one’s clothes. If that be so, since all souls are said to be
immortal, then there is no need to practise Kundalini
Yoga. Unprepared to waste my life pursuing idle fantasies, I lost my faith.
During this time I had seen Babas walking on water, sleeping on beds of nails,
thorns and glass, walking on fire, doing penance on one leg, piercing
themselves with tridents, and much more which were tricks.

From the practice of meditation, pranayama and Kundalini Yoga, I found all this to be nothing but Self-hypnosis.
By meditation with Pranayama and
reciting AUM through the mouth, the
body system is supersaturated with carbon dioxide and deprived of oxygen. This
tires the brain and the person goes into drowsiness, which is thought to be Samadhi. In such drowsiness, one
imagines the sexual power rising through the mental Sushumna nadi upto sahasrara.
The state of samadhi is nothing but a hypnotic sleep. In hypnosis one can be
made to see god, go to heaven or hell or any place, recall past births and
other fantasies which are nothing but our beliefs, our past and other information
stored in the sub-conscious.

If we read Ramakrishna’s life
story authored by his disciple “M”, we can discern that he was in
such a condition mentally when he claimed to see Kali. His hallucinations were
such that he could not even go for nature’s call, nor eat food or sleep. When
Ramakrishna explained this to Totapuri, an Advaitin, Totapuri gave him a sword
and asked him to cut off Kali’s head when she appeared in his meditation.
Ramakrishna in hypnotic trance killed Kali when she appeared and from that time
onwards he was free from such hallucinations. Now if Ramakrishna was really
seeing Kali, those around him who had eyes ought to have seen her too. But his
vision of Kali was only in meditation through the alleged sixth sense, the
mind.

Now let us examine some Yogic
Siddhis.