By practicing the great mantras, you will come across certain tremendous powers called the siddhis. They invariably come to you. (The other, higher meaning of siddhi is perfection or attainment.) It is very important to know about the siddhis because sometimes you can become so flooded with the spiritual energy that you will be at a loss to know what to do with it. Just as a man who obtains but doesn't know how to operate a gun can be a source of danger to himself and those around him, a person who has attained the siddhis without a corresponding wisdom in their use can be equally dangerous. This has been true in the lives of many Masters in the past and in the lives of many gurus in the present.
Not only in the spiritual realm but also in the political, religious, social, historical, and scientific levels, when man gets power, that power corrupts unless he has the humility to receive the blessing and use it for the service of mankind in the service of God. This why the Masters always encourage us to go beyond the siddhis and dwell in nectar. Power used selfishly will kill you or drive you crazy unless you use it for service.
Though there are many siddhis, such as clairvoyance (supernormal vision), clairaudience (supernormal hearing), extrasensory perception, psychometry (matter moving by the power of the mind), eight important ones are described below:
Anima means you know the subtlest of things around you and just by mere will, you can make yourself appear very small to everyone. Or you can become so subtle that you can enter into the dreams of people and guide them or if you misuse the power, you can misguide them, which is dangerous. Or even though all the doors to a room are locked and the walls are solid, by assuming a subtle form, you are able to penetrate those walls and doors. So anima means very subtle, to be atomic in size or to assume the minutest form with which you could go anywhere you like.
Garima is to be able to assume a mountainous size which means your form appears colossal, mountainous or cosmic.
Laghima means to be very light. By practice of the mantra, no matter how weighty you are, you have the power to make your entire system very light, like cotton or flower petals. That is the secret of levitation and reaching anywhere.
Mahima means to be very, very, very heavy. These are only the surface meanings. There are so many other celestial meanings to these most practical powers which come to you.
Prapti means that whatever you wish for, either for yourself or for others, immediately you obtain the same.
Prakamya means, among other things, that if a soul is not resurrected, that is, it is caught somewhere in the astral worlds, it is visible to you, and you can use that prakamya power to send that soul to a higher dimension. Or if someone is asking for help in conquering the prarabdha karma, the incurable karma, and he remembers the guru, the guru is able to cure that karma and see that the person is healed, restored to his health or pristine purity or lifted from any fall and raised to a higher height. With prakamya, you even have the power to create new dimensions or to ask a special favor from God for certain souls for their enlightenment. This applies not only for individual wishes, but for the collective wishes of mankind.
Ishitva means lordship. You are the lord of your senses, the lord of your mind. It means you conquer and wherever you go, that lordship is there. That is why you call Jesus 'Lord Jesus,' or Krishna 'Lord Krishna." Often these powers come to a social, political or religious leader and all too often, we see how this power is misused. You have to develop humility and remember that God alone is Lord. If you allow the ego to operate this siddhi, then definitely there will be brainwashing and the killing of the spirit of others. You must be very careful to remain humble. All great Masters fall on their knees when this siddhi manifests and pray again to the Almighty to bless them with humility. "Blessed are the poor in spirit ..." it is said, "for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." Otherwise, you will get lordship over certain things, such as continents or wealth, etc., but you'll lose the Kingdom.
The eighth power, with almost the same connotation, is called vashitva. It means attraction. Wherever you go, you are the magnet, the center of attraction. You attract everything--all the angels, all the human beings, all the species--towards you.
In the 1950s, a cow called Lakshmi would part thousands of people gathered around Ramanamaharshi to go to the guru every day for a blessing. The guru would not eat until he had personally fed that cow. All animals, all creatures are attracted toward such Masters. You have heard in many stories how the cat and the rat, the tiger and the deer, the snake and the mongoose will forget their enmity in the presence of such a saint and play together. Vashitva means that. Everything is attracted towards you, but you are not attracted towards them because you keep God as your central attraction. You look to God and they look to you. Then you are safe.
If you are attracted by the things which are attracted to you, then very soon the power will be gone, for it is God which dwells in you which is the source of attraction for the whole humanity. Bless them, make them stand on their own two feet and give them the Light so that they may walk in the Light and not in darkness. But at the same time, tell them that these blessings come from God and not from you.
If you take the credit, you'll have a large following for a few years before that very following becomes the instrument of your downfall. History proves that. Be careful acknowledging that the blessings are from God. Somebody said, to Jesus, "How good you are!" Immediately he said, "Why do you call me good? There is only one who is good and that is my Father in heaven!" This form of humility should be there constantly. You may not have a large following and you should not be attracted towards that either. It comes to you when you don't want it.
Everything comes to you when you transcend the desire for it. This is the one lesson which you and I have to learn eventually. It is very tricky for it teaches 'if you want a desire to be fulfilled, just conquer that desire.' At that very moment, the desire is fulfilled. That is food for thought. Think about it. Anything you want to have, go beyond that want, and then it will be there at your feet.
It is taught that we should strive to go beyond all desires other than the desire to attain enlightenment. That desire is not included in the baser, lower, egotistic selfish desires for this one is an aspiration. Like the lotus blossoming by seeing the sun, like the river dancing down into the ocean, similarly, the soul has to reach God from where it has come. It is that aspiration--I won't call it a desire--it is that longing alone which will make you reach the Truth.
In the meantime, by the practice of mantra, there might be several other forms of siddhis which will come to you, including the higher siddhis such as walking on water or going to any loka, or entering into another's body (parakaya pravesha), or blessing an individual.
A poor lady, when Shankaracharya came to beg for alms, had nothing except one fruit. Yet she brought that amalaka fruit and with tears in her eyes gave it to the guru in his begging bowl. Immediately, he uttered the kanakadhara stotra, which means invoking the supreme Lakshmi, and showered all kinds of wealth and riches on her. There are many more, such as restoring the dead, or enabling a childless couple to have a baby. All these blessings and more are possible by the proper use of siddhis. If you maintain humility, then you will use the siddhis for the service of humanity and in the eyes of the Kingdom, you will be considered as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father.
So this is the knowledge and the warning about the powers which might come to you. Ganesha and Hanuman, especially, give the siddhis immediately. These two aspects are quick siddhis. But when the king wants to give you the kingdom, if you beg for a few cents (pray for the siddhis), that would be foolishness. That is what the siddhis are. Do you understand? A parable will clarify this point.
Once there was a king traveling in a golden chariot and he met a beggar who was on his way to ask the king to make him become superwealthy overnight. But before the beggar could beg of the king, to his wonderment, the king began begging of the beggar. Descending from his chariot, the king asked the beggar to give him something. At that, the beggar began pushing his knapsack behind him, saying, "I don't have anything, I don't have anything at all!" He had seven or eight handfuls of rice in that sack but he said, "I have nothing."
The king replied, "Well, whatever you have, give a little bit of that to me."
But the beggar was not willing. He said, "You are the king, I am the beggar and you are begging of me? Then both of us should go together as beggars!"
The king insisted, so the beggar, much against his will, put his hand into the knapsack and pulled out seven or eight grains of rice from the seven or eight handfuls which he had. And the king accepted that very gladly and in his golden chariot, returned to the palace.
The beggar was very unhappy thinking, "not only did the king not give me anything, but he took from me also! How unfortunate I am!" Thinking thus, the beggar with great agony came back to his mosquito-infested hut and emptied the sack. Lo! To his surprise, among the seven to eight handfuls of rice, there were seven to eight grains of rice which had been converted into gold. Now he began beating his forehead, lamenting, "how foolish, how dull-witted I am! Had I known what I gave to the king would return to me in pure gold, I would have given all seven to eight handfuls of rice. I would have emptied everything there so that I would have been filled here!"
We are all like beggars. We have something and we go to God to ask Him for more and more. Instead, God asks us to give what we have. But our ego says, "I don't have anything, I don't have anything!" We try to hide the knapsack behind us. God insists, but still we don't agree to give our time or our breath for meditation. God has given us our whole life to realize Him and we say "We have no time, we have no energy. We are very busy, we have no money, we have no health, we don't have this, we don't have that." Yet God insists.
Still, when you do not behave, then God 'kicks,' throws bricks,' sends difficulties, problems, ill health, headaches, etc., to make us give something to Him so that we could be blessed. Then, much against our will, we give seven to eight minutes of meditation in twenty-four hours, or seven to eight hours in a month. Some people do not even give an hour in a whole lifetime. Then the time comes to empty the sack, to depart from this body, and you realize that those days, those minutes, those hours, those breaths which I spent with the Lord or in the company of saints--those moments alone are the golden moments of my life, like the seven or eight grains of rice converted into gold. At the time of death, you beat your forehead and cry with agony, "Had I known that this would be completely golden and I would be basking in that yellow, healing light and God Himself would come with His messengers to take me to the immortal kingdom of Truth, I would have dedicated all my breaths and all my time for God!"
But, by then, it is too late. You'll be reborn again. Still, with that lament as your last thought, when you are reborn, you'll come as a yogi to end your evolution. This parable is a great parable, related to every one of us. Life has value only relative to the time you have spent in realization of your great Self or doing any action with the spirit of God. All the rest is, compared to the immortal Truth, worthless. The moments which we spend with God are golden moments which will be returned to us as golden moments. So make the whole life a golden moment. Get initiated into the Truth and represent God in every work which you do. A little more kindness added to our work, a little more selflessness, is an expression of that love for God. That is what will make on earth the Kingdom of Heaven.
Do the sadhana (spiritual discipline). Never eat your breakfast without doing sadhana. Never go to sleep unless you pray and conduct your sadhana daily, without fail. Because that alone is life. That alone is divine. Morning prayer gives you energy throughout the day to work with all alertness in healing and helping. All those who come to you will take with them that kindness and compassion which you manifest by the power of the prayer. Just as you take time for sleep, time for food, time for recreation, time for everything else, you must take, similarly, time for meditation until you make the meditation or prayer constant in the midst of all activities, and in every breath. Then you shall not be reborn, and if you do come back, you'll come back with compassion in order to help humanity reach that higher state.
Each one of you, along with your other works, kindly bring this potential healing power in you to the surface and bless people around you who really require these great mantras and ashirvada (the benediction). Become the great healers of humanity. It is neither caste, creed, color, country nor anything else that counts nowadays, other than the power to heal, the power to love, the power of God to manifest in each and every one of you. It is potentially in you, but hidden. The guru invokes it and brings it to the higher level. Do not allow it to go back. Instead, recite the mantra, get those powers and, with humility, heal humanity.
(Lord Ganesha, p. 15.)