Why is it, that some "sour grapes" svaamiis think Patañjali advises people not to practise siddhis? The reason might well be that the Sanskrit skills of many of them are not too good.
As many of us know, the original suutra goes like this: te samaadhaav upasargaa(,) vyutthaane siddhayaH. If ones "linguistic intuition" is weak, one might actually read that as a warning against practising siddhis. But Patañjali in fact refers only to the "refined" senses mentioned in the previous suutra: tataH *praatibha*-shraavaNa... The clue(?) for interpreting that suutra is to make it clear for oneself, what is the antecedent of the pronoun 'te'(they). We are not sure, but we guess, that when Patañjali uses pronouns like that, they usually refer to the previous suutra. At least Vyaasa in his Yoga-suutra-bhaaSya makes it rather clear what he thinks is the antecedent of that pronoun. Sez Vyaasa: te praatibhaadayaH (*praatibha*-aadayaH: praatibha, etc.) samaahita-cittasyotpadyamaanaa... To paraphrase kRSNa's last words in the Giitaa: iti matir mama... ;)
