“The powers are flowers of the Soul that sprout when we have sanctified ourselves.
For one step that we take in the development of the chakras, we must take a thousand steps in sanctity.
We prepare our garden with the esoteric exercises so that we can make our marvelous chakras bloom with the perfume of sanctity.
The yogi must water his garden daily by finishing with all of his moral defects.
Each one of the petals of our lotus flowers represents certain virtues; without these virtues, the lotus flowers cannot open to receive the Sun of Truth.”
~ Samael Aun Weor

A lot has been written about the attainment of spiritual powers (known as Siddhis in Sanskrit language); there are hundreds of books that deal with this matter, and it seems that this is one of the main reasons why so many people become interested in spirituality, especially in this modern superhero era in which we live.

Powers are what many people dream about; powers to control, to show off, to do better in life, to have more things, to be able to impress others, to make those close to us proud…whatever it is, a lot of people are convinced that through powers one can reach the ultimate satisfaction.  Many approach spirituality exactly for this reason, especially young people. Most of them do not actually get on the path of the realization of powers because they get disillusioned when finding out about the effort that is needed in order to reach anything of that sort, and many also do not find the right teachings that would show them how to approach the subject properly. Some of these young folks do get more refined in their search and become interested in true inner change.

There are many ‘gurus’ today that promise their students a quick and easy access to their inner powers, charging in the process a large amount of money. There are many places in the world where the attainment of powers is more promoted than the actual work upon oneself. In places like India, a lot of spiritual folks measure their achievement based on their inner powers. Also in the West there are those who think that if someone did not access their inner powers, such as clairvoyance, that they did not achieve anything significant. Nevertheless, the development of siddhis does not always exactly match the inner development.

If someone enters the sphere of spirituality for the sole reason of attaining spiritual powers, one should be aware of the fact that powers come with a price. If you are doing exercises for awakening psychic perceptions, but your interest remains strictly on powers, if you do not notice your spiritual interest encompassing the transformation of the inner darkness, then it is better to stay away from this subject, because spiritual powers are not a stand-alone thing.

The reason why I say this is that when we do not do the inner work, when we do not remove the subjective elements of our psyche, and if we are not strengthening our consciousness, then psychic perception could be more of a nuisance than helpful. For example, someone who has activated the faculty of their third eye and throat chakra would gain access to abilities of clairvoyance and clairaudience. This means that they would be able to see and hear things that other people can’t, they would hear sounds and visions connected with higher dimensions. In people who are not doing the inner work, this sort of impression would inevitably pass through the layer of subconscious mind, because the latter is normally very active and almost always layering the consciousness. The consequence of that would be a distorted perception, which can cause confusion and, if impressions are intense, it may also cause fear and stress, especially if the person who find themselves in possession of this faculty is not the most stable mentally and emotionally. Now, chances are that in the majority of cases it is the Being (Higher Self) who determines when the soul can access such faculty, but there are still cases where people have them and struggle because they are not ready for them (or perhaps they are but not knowing it?).  Whatever the case may be, I think it’s important to take the development of psychic faculties with caution.

Having said that, when we do the inner work, by default we also gain access to psychic senses, things such as clairvoyance, clairaudience, psychometry, empathy, telepathy, and many others. All these things then come in their own time, safely, without the need to spend hours and hours on their activation. Doing the inner work means to work on the egos and the consciousness; strengthening and deepening that which we are (the consciousness) through practices such as meditation, concentration and mantras, and dissolving that which we are not (the egos) and by so doing we are liberating particles of trapped consciousness from the subconscious mind. That, in combination with the transmutation of the sexual energies, profoundly affects our interior, purging energetic blockages in the system and allowing for the energy to flow fully and enabling chakras to work properly. Like this we gradually become more and more sensitive to energies around us which eventually translate into something that we can call “information”. We are also enabled to see more deeply into things, and eventually visions appear and the faculty of clairvoyance becomes an ability that can be accessed regularly. This is fortified by going through the esoteric initiations and the consequent gradual integration with the Being.

There is no doubt that a dedicated person, with or without a proper interest in the spiritual work, can invest a lot of time and develop a faculty of, say, telepathy. Possibility for this exist even when the person does not do any deeper form of spiritual work. Now, suppose this person does achieve a certain degree of telepathy, he would most likely need to apply a continuous effort in order to maintain it, which means that he would need to be disciplined in his daily efforts and achieve a certain detachment from his mind and his subconsciousness. Consequently, this would indicate that some sort of spiritual work is being done. If this detachment is lacking, the person gets consumed by everyday struggles of daily life, and the faculty of telepathy would simply not be able to surface, it would not be heard, and would eventually possibly be smothered completely.

The spiritual powers can also indicate a grade of the soul – the more we raise ourselves up, the more we can see, hear, sense etc. A psychic faculty, in its full sense, comes as a reward, as a grade. When we see it as such, it means that we understand the sanctity behind it, that we should not misuse it, that we should use it only from pure reasons and never allowing ourselves to feed the ego.  In this way we remain in harmonious relationship with the inner Being.

HDP, December 2020.