On Power
I. THE PARADOX AT THE HEART OF PRACTICE
The pursuit of power is at the heart of classical yoga traditions. Whether it be power over others, power over the spiritual realm, power over one’s self, or the power to perform acts of telepathy, flight, invisibility, omniscience, or superhuman strength, power is a pervasive feature of the tradition. From the Vedic hymns of the second millennium BCE, when the seers (ṛṣis) sought to harness cosmic forces through sacrificial ritual and inspired speech, to the proliferating global yoga cultures of the twenty-first century, where a wide variety of practitioners seek to harness and enhance their mental and physical prowess, power is found as both an implicit value and intended aim.
At first blush, this may seem at odds with the concept of spirituality – especially considering the many traditions of renunciation and asceticism. In renunciatory traditions, the emphasis is placed on giving up worldly powers – anchoring one’s spiritual practice in a picture of liberation that transcends the world of relative attainments, or in a heavenly paradise defined as one’s ‘true home.’ Situating our efforts in the promise of such transcendent states can inspire the view that acquiring earthly powers is corrupting, ‘sinful,’or illusory. Yet the variable contemplative practices characteristic of many renunciatory traditions imply the accumulation of at least one relevant power – the ability to control one’s mind. Wielding power in one form or another is therefore a standard byproduct of contemplative practice. And where power is available, it can paradoxically become either a fuel for insight or the cause of one’s downfall.
The Bhagavad-Gītā, among other texts, mentions how difficult it is to control and harness one’s runaway mind. The giving up of material wealth or the sacrifices of austerity are cited as portals to a power that exceeds the mundane. Additionally, one cannot relinquish attachments to ignorance, confusion, and misunderstanding without at least a modicum of discipline and meditative training. Discipline and training thus assumes an implicit role for power. Depending on the tradition, the power that liberates a limited individual from the seductive forces of cognitive error is variably conceived as the ‘power of grace’ (anugraha), the power of illuminative insight (pratibhā), the power of wisdom (prajñā), the power of devotion (bhakti), the power of discernment (viveka), or the power of self-inquiry (vicāra), among others. More than this, the influence of such powers also creates the conditions for more relative powers to arise in the practitioner. In the traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, asceticism, or tapas, can lead directly to siddhis, or ‘mystical’ powers. The word tapas itself — deriving from the Sanskrit root √tap, meaning ‘to heat’ or ‘to burn’ — suggests a process of refinement through intensity, in which the practitioner generates an inner fire that purifies, transforms, and ultimately empowers. This is not merely metaphorical.
In the Vedic cosmological imagination, tapas is a generative force of cosmic proportions, with the creator god Prajāpati himself said to have brought the universe into existence through the heat of his own austerity. Power, in other words, is not only the goal of ascetic practice — it is woven into its very fabric.
Yet the relationship between austerity and power is morally ambiguous from the outset. The accumulated force of tapas is understood to be neutral — a kind of spiritual energy that can be directed toward liberation or domination with equal facility. Sometimes these spiritual powers are overtly non-righteous: in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, one of the central texts of Bhakti-yoga, the demon Hiraṇyakaśipu performs ferocious acts of tapas — not to purify himself or draw closer to the divine, but to extort from Brahmā a boon of near invincibility, and thereby assert absolute dominion over gods, humans, and worlds alike. His austerities are genuine; his intentions are not.
What is instructive about this cautionary tale is not that Hiraṇyakaśipu’s practice was fraudulent, but that it worked — suggesting that the cosmos itself does not discriminate between the saint and the tyrant when distributing the fruits of sustained discipline. The ethical orientation of the practitioner is a separate question from the efficacy of the practice, and it is precisely this separation that makes power, in the Dharmic traditions, such a charged and carefully regulated domain.
This ambivalence is similarly reflected in the Jain tradition, where the tīrthaṅkaras (‘ford-makers’) accumulate extraordinary powers through lives of radical renunciation — yet these powers are understood as signs of spiritual attainment rather than instruments to be wielded. In Buddhism, the abhijñās (‘higher knowledges’) that arise from deep meditation are acknowledged but consistently subordinated to the pursuit of liberation: the Buddha himself is depicted in the Pāli canon as cautioning his monks against displaying their powers, lest the pursuit of siddhis become a distraction from — or worse, a substitute for — genuine awakening [2].
In Christianity (as well as in many of the world’s religious traditions) the promise of salvation, or heaven, is reserved for those who give up possessions and status. As said in Luke 12:33, “Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys”[3]. Here, there is seemingly a promise of power at the heart of sacrifice and service.
II. POWER IN THE BODY OF TRADITION: THE SIDDHAS
In many Indian and South Asian contemplative traditions, the presence of ‘accomplished beings’ known as siddhas is pervasive. Because these great yogic beings are referenced in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions, they represent a kind of syncretic religious category of empowered accomplishment that is irreducible to the stated aims of any one religious tradition. The yogic sage and siddha, Matsyendranātha (also known as Matsyendra, Macchindranāth, Mīnanātha and Minapa) is considered the auspicious founder of the Nātha-saṃpradāya – a tradition that, widely regarded as formative to the development of haṭha-yoga, combined elements of Buddhism, Hinduism, Classical Yoga, and Tantra [4]. As such, Matsyendranātha is revered as a trans-sectarean saint who symbolizes a mode of empowerment that is irreducible to the doctrinal coordinates of any one system.
Often, what distinguishes a system is not the emphasis placed on the siddha, but on the number of siddhas accepted by a tradition. In many Hindu Tantric and Buddhist Vajrayāna sources, there are attested eighty-four mahāsiddhas. In the Tamil tradition, the canonical number is eighteen. In the Nātha tradition, the recognized number of siddhas is nine. Certain siddhas – like the aforementioned Matsyendranātha and his devotee Gorakṣanātha – often overlap, albeit with varying names, depending on the tradition. While these variable enumerations and namings can become canonical and a matter of doctrine, it is perhaps an unnecessary assumption to conclude that the siddha is a foreclosed category. According to the Jains, the siddhas have eight specific characteristics, qualities, or powers: (1) absence of corporeal existence, (2) absence of karmic matter, (3) the state of having accomplished all aims, (4) the absence of rebirth, (5) eternity, (6) incorporeality (7) omniscience, and (8) perfect bliss [5].
Characterized in such a way, the siddhas can be considered simultaneously localized beings as well as ever-present symbols for the non-ordinary empowerments that lie dormant within every disciplined practitioner.
It is perhaps for this reason that the traditions housing the siddhas have never been merely antiquarian in their orientation. The siddha is not simply a historical figure to be venerated from a distance, but a living provocation — a reminder that the boundaries of human possibility are far more porous than our everyday experience might suggest. The eighty-four mahāsiddhas, for instance, are deliberately drawn from every stratum of medieval Indian society: among them are kings and outcasts, brahmin priests and fishermen, courtesans for the foundational account of Matsyendranātha’s role in establishing the Nātha lineage and his relationship to Gorakṣanātha.
Their diversity is itself a teaching — that the capacity for radical empowerment and liberation is not the exclusive preserve of the renunciant or the sage, but is latent in the full range of human circumstance. In this sense, the siddha tradition anticipates what the Jain enumeration makes explicit: that the ‘accomplished being’ is not defined by the possession of extraordinary powers so much as by the complete actualization of faculties that, in their seed form, belong to everyone. Power, on this account, is not something acquired from without, but something uncovered from within — a recognition that will quietly underwrite everything that follows in this issue.
III. WHAT ARE THE SIDDHIS? ETYMOLOGY, TAXONOMY, AND THE
YOGA-SŪTRA
In the Yoga-sūtra, psychic powers (or siddhis) are said to arise from saṁyama – the combined discipline of concentration (dhāraṇā), meditation (dhyāna), and absorption (samādhi).7 In the bhāṣya (‘commentary’) on sūtra III.45, mastery over the gross and subtle elements (the mahābhūtas and tanmatras, respectively), the three constitutive guṇas (elements of psycho-physical reality: rajas, tamas, sattva), and the purposiveness of objects — mastery over all these gives rise to (1) aṇimā (‘the power to become microscopic’), (2) mahimā (‘the power to expand infinitely’), (3) laghimā (‘the power to become light or to levitate’), (4) prāpti (‘the power to reach anywhere’), (5) prākāmya (‘the freedom of will’), (6) iśitṛtva (‘the power of creation), (7) vaśitva (‘mastery over creation’), and (8) kāmāvasāyitva (‘the power of wish fulfillment’) [8]. This suggestion may seem at odds with the purported intent of the text itself as defined in I.2, which posits yoga as citta-vṛtti-nirodhaḥ (“Yoga is the cessation [nirodha] of the fluctuations [vṛtti] of the mind [citta]”) [9]. Wouldn’t gaining powers, acquiring extraordinary knowledge, or expanding the range of perception amount to more fluctuations of the mind? Would these capacities not reinforce the egoic attachments that the Sūtras appear otherwise at pains to liberate yoga practitioners from?
A resolution of this apparent contradiction can be found in the text itself through a distinction made between the purposive orientation of puruṣa outward toward prakṛti (i.e. other objects) and the puruṣa’s ‘own-purpose’ (puruṣārtha) – entailing the isolation (kaivalya) of puruṣa (‘contentless consciousness’) from prakṛti (‘psycho-physical matter’) [10] by means of samādhi (‘absorption’). Within the former orientation toward ‘external’ prakṛti, any object the yogin attends to will ‘subtlize’ during the process of saṁyama and endow the yogin with the powers particular to that object.
For example, in III.24, meditating on the power of an elephant will permit the yogin access to ‘elephantine’ strength. These powers are the inevitable attainment of ‘seeing’ the objects in their prakṛtic nature – first as gross, then subtle, then ‘concealed,’ and finally as their ‘distant’ properties [11]. In III.37, however, the siddhis are stated to be obstacles to samādhi even though their attainment is both spontaneous and natural to the process. “These are obstacles (upasargāḥ) to samādhi, though they appear as attainments (siddhayaḥ) in the outward-turned state” (te samādhāv-upasargā vyutthāne siddhayaḥ) [12]. Arriving in the third chapter (pāda) of the yoga-sūtra (the vibhūti-pāda), discussion of the siddhis is situated between the first two chapters (the samādhi-pāda and sādhana-pāda) that emphasize the disciplines of practice, and the fourth chapter focusing on liberation [13]. The powers and faculties that arise as a result of practice could be considered intermediate achievements that have the ability to distract the practitioner from ultimately accomplishing the deeper aims of yogic sādhana. The side effects of practicing deeply include greatly enhanced sensory powers [14] that, among other things, might reveal dimensional beings (i.e. various devas and asuras) who deflect the yogin away from their ultimate resolution in the Self.15 In other words, the popular adage ‘power corrupts’ [16'] may apply equally to those engaged in the meditative practices of the classical yoga tradition – a consideration somewhat at odds with the ethical precepts of the yoga-sūtra’s second pāda and with the popular characterization of the yogin as an ethical and moral agent in the world.
The siddhis, in modern parlance, are often quaintly referred to as ‘yogic superpowers,’ [17]but this translation is not without its share of problems. In the modern secular-materialist imagination, ‘superpowers’ are often associated with the cultural archetype of the ‘superhero;’ to the layperson, superheroes are the stuff of Hollywood fantasy and cultural mythology. Perhaps for this reason, the vibhūti-pāda is often skimmed over (or skipped over entirely) in the yoga philosophy modules of modern postural yoga teacher trainings [18]. As the chapter that most strongly contradicts our modern assumptions about reality, the vibhūti-pāda challenges certain preconceived notions regarding what is and is not attainable through yogic practices. For the modern yoga teacher trainer, to suggest that, for example, levitation, telepathy, and the ability to make yourself gigantic will come with sustained practice may feel pedagogically irresponsible – indulging in ‘delusions of grandeur’ that are out of step with the more mundane goals of self-improvement and the moral and ethical instincts that define much of the modern postural yoga world’s self-understanding.
However, if instead of ‘yogic superpowers,’ we translate siddhi in a manner more proximate to its Sanskrit etymology – deriving from the root √sidh, which means ‘to succeed,’ ‘to accomplish,’ ‘to attain,’ ‘to prove,’ ‘to be established,’ or ‘to be effective’ – we arrive at a translation of siddhi as ‘accomplishment,’ ‘success,’ ‘attainment,’ ‘fulfillment,’ or ‘establishment.’ Suddenly, a subtler and perhaps more accessible understanding reveals itself. Rather than reject the idea of siddhis based on specific ‘attainments’ we may find difficult to imagine possible, we can preserve a more modest view that the emergence of new or refined faculties of perception, skills, capacities, and interests are the natural byproducts of many trajectories of contemplative practice, and these fruits are themselves siddhis – commonly and pervasively attested to by many who take up a path of deep sādhana.
It is perhaps for this reason that the yamas and niyamas (ethical ‘observances’ and ‘commitments’) are included as the first two auxiliaries of the famous ‘eight-limbed’ (aṣṭānga) system of classical yoga – to avoid the temptation toward the unethical behaviors of what David Gordon White traces in his provocative historical account, Sinister Yogis [19]. Without cultivating an ethical disposition that could channel the inevitable accumulation of subtle empowerments towards liberation, classical yoga can become little more than an introversive process of self-aggrandizement and power-hoarding [20].
In other words, practice is neutral: it can attract us toward the seductively subtle worlds we encounter within, or it can be directed toward liberation. Being a meditator doesn’t automatically make you a better person. In fact, as we’ve suggested, indulging in its various fruits can be seductive, and – as with any source of power – what arises from it can be harnessed for either ethical or immoral aims.
To read the rest of the introduction, purchase On Power in print or digital below.
Footnotes
1. See Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda: An Anthology. London: Penguin Classics (1981: 25–26). For the cosmological role of tapas in Vedic creation mythology, see also Jan Gonda, Vedic Literature: Saṃhitās and Brāhmaṇas, A History of Indian Literature, Vol. I. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz (1975: 345–347).
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In this issue of Tarka, On Power, we explore the concept of power from multiple socio-political and contemplative angles. The editors of Tarka and its publisher, Embodied Philosophy, are delighted to share this timely issue following an extended hiatus. As you explore the issue, in the spirit of contemplation and personal reflection, we invite all who practice within contemplative traditions – or who inhabit them as ‘scholar-practitioners’ – to consider some questions along the way. In terms of outward-oriented power, we ask: What kind of power does your practice cultivate? Who benefits from it? Who is silenced by it? When does empowerment become domination? When does surrender become complicity? When does authority become a responsibility? In terms of inward-oriented power, we ask: What is the quality of awareness one can bring to the experience of power — its seductions, its somatic contractions, its subtle distortions? Where in your body do you feel the difference between power that liberates and power that binds? And perhaps most searchingly: what would your practice look like if it were truly in service of awakening — not for personal gain, institutional allegiance, or ideology — but for the happiness and flourishing of all beings?
In this issue of Tarka, On Power, we explore the concept of power from multiple socio-political and contemplative angles. The editors of Tarka and its publisher, Embodied Philosophy, are delighted to share this timely issue following an extended hiatus. As you explore the issue, in the spirit of contemplation and personal reflection, we invite all who practice within contemplative traditions – or who inhabit them as ‘scholar-practitioners’ – to consider some questions along the way. In terms of outward-oriented power, we ask: What kind of power does your practice cultivate? Who benefits from it? Who is silenced by it? When does empowerment become domination? When does surrender become complicity? When does authority become a responsibility? In terms of inward-oriented power, we ask: What is the quality of awareness one can bring to the experience of power — its seductions, its somatic contractions, its subtle distortions? Where in your body do you feel the difference between power that liberates and power that binds? And perhaps most searchingly: what would your practice look like if it were truly in service of awakening — not for personal gain, institutional allegiance, or ideology — but for the happiness and flourishing of all beings?
