"In his masterful book, Kapalikas and Kalamukhas, David Lorenzen makes the following cogent point concerning the goals of yogic practice.
In spite of abundant textual references to various siddhis in classical yoga texts, many modern Indian scholars, and like-minded western ones as well, have seized on a single sutra of Patanjali (3.37) to prove that magical powers were regarded as subsidiary, and even hindrances, to final liberation and consequently not worthy of concentrated pursuits. This attitude may have been operative in Vedantic and Buddhist circles and is now popular among practitioners imbued with the spirit of the Hindu reformist movements, but it was not the view of Patanjali and certainly not the view of the mediaeval exponents of hathayoga. It suffices to cast a glance at the Yoga Sutra to see that the acquisition of siddhis was at the forefront of yogic theory and practice in the first centuries of the common era: nearly all of fifty-five sutras of book three of this work are devoted to the siddhis, and the "disclaimer" in verse 37 of this work that "these powers are impediments to samadhi but are acquisitions in a normal fluctuating state of mind" seems only to apply, in fact, to the siddhis enumerated in the two preceding verses." --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <vajradh...@...> wrote: > > > On Apr 29, 2010, at 12:40 PM, cardemaister wrote: > > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj vajradhatu@ wrote: > > > > > > You sound desperate to find some way out of Patanjali's denunciation of siddhi cultivation, Card! > > > > Please, show me a linguistically substantiated(?) comment on > > that suutra that proves the pronoun 'te' (they) refers to > > all the siddhis mentioned in the vibhuuti-paada! > > > > I'm 99 percent sure you can't... ;) > > > Sorry, I'm with Vidyaranya on this one. >
