When you meditate, you can get various yogic powers or siddhis. But enlightenment happens when you go beyond these powers also. Enlightenment is having the capacity to handle the powers, as well as the intelligence to drop them when necessary.

The other day I read an interesting article about a book ‘Occult Chemistry’ based on research done by the theosophists Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater on the molecular structure of various elements. It said that even long before physics discovered that an atom has a nucleus, the theosophists had determined the atomic structure of many elements, and that too down to the ‘quark’, the most fundamental particle known today in quantum physics!

How did they find this out with no modern scientific equipment, before even quantum physics was born? The report says it was through the siddhi, or mystical power, known as anima that has been described in the Yoga Sutras by the sage Patanjali, an enlightened master from India and father of the science of Yoga. Patanjali described anima as ‘the ability to acquire knowledge of the small, the hidden, or the distant, by directing the light of superphysical faculty.’

With yogic training, they could experience visual images of minute objects too small to be seen by the normal eye. They found five new elements through these yogic powers. They even went beyond the quark as well as its detailed structure, into the sub-quark, which science is yet to find. These very same findings have also been made by at least three other people from different places in the world at different times, through such occult capacities.

They concluded that all matter is like bubbles in space, just like pearls on an invisible string. The report says that the researchers not only ‘saw’ the subatomic particles, but they could also see inside the atom down to the sub-quark, for which science needs a very powerful particle accelerator that costs billions of dollars!

There are many yogis who have these kinds of siddhis or powers that come about as a result of meditation. They are good as long as you don’t get caught in them.

Otherwise, you will lose sight of the ultimate goal of enlightenment.

source: Living Enlightenment