BEYOND THE SIDDHIS

The Author, probably because he's not very far on the path, attempts to tell readers that the Siddhis are not to be taken at face value and are in fact only philosophical references. He goes through many of the most popular Siddhis such as Invisibility, Levitation, and Psychic Communication and instead of explaining and expounding on them as they were written by Patanjali over 2000 years ago, he takes outrageous liberties and "philosophizes" them to where they mean nothing.

For example in the section discussing Invisibility he first asks the question "How visible are we to begin with?" Then proceeds to run off with a bunch of philosophical tripe about how none of us are really visible since we cannot "see" each others true selves and nor can anyone "see" our true selves so we're all already performing this siddhi everyday!

He continues to do this exact same thing with every Siddhi he covers, beginning with asking some meaningless philosophical questions and pointing out that we usually are already doing the siddhi we are trying to attain such as with Levitation where he asks "Are we really connected to the earth we wish to levitate above?"

This process of "philosophizing" the Siddhi's into meaninglessness is totally opposite to what Patanjali and the Yogis since him having been teaching and practicing for the last 2000 years.

What's most annoying about this book is that this "philosophizing" technique that the author uses is so out-dated and pathetic that the reader is just left shaking their head the whole time and wondering if the author was even around during the 60's when this stupid technique was most used by every drug using self-professed guru that had to come up with a good explanation for their clueless followers as to why their enlightened teacher couldn't walk on water.

Not to mention the ridiculous idea that these types of "gurus" like to maintain that Patajali, considered the father of yoga, would be stupid enough to write an INSTRUCTION book filled with abstract double meanings e.g. "Oh he didn't mean Levitate off the ground, he meant for us to examine the idea of weather or not we really are on the ground in the first place and we will then find that we are already levitating!"

Given that Yoga is such a difficult subject for laymen to understand it's sad that it must be riddled with selfish fakes like this that purposely seek to destroy what little truthful instruction we have left from the legendary adepts.

Bottom line if you want a good book on the Siddhis I suggest simply buying a direct Patajali's Sutras translation. You'll usually get all 4 books with none of the Sutras missing, the author will probably do the direct translation and then further explain things in more laymen's terms. You still probably won't find many authors that'll heavily discuss their own Siddhi experiences but at least they don't try to destroy what Yogis have spent over 2000 years trying to preserve.

I highly suggest "Raja Yoga" by Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda was one of the greatest Yogi's of the 20th century and had a clear understanding of the science of Yoga and Patanjaili's sutras and could at the same time present this information in a format available to the modern westerner. Keep in mind this book may be a little tough for beginners but if you understand it then it will be the most important book you've ever read.