DISCOURSES & TALKS BY MEHER BABA

OCCULT  POWERS

 15 December 1927

On the 15th at Shahane's house, Rustom read to Baba an article from the newspaper about a live crab being created from a piece of metal. This elicited the following candid explanation from the Master:

This is due to occult powers, but remember it has nothing to do with ghosts. Ghosts and occult or black magic are quite different. Spirit [mind and energy] itself, as in ghosts, is a power, originally the power of cause; but occult powers are powers that are caged and covered.

[A tantric seeks occult powers.]  By acquiring such powers, the tantric's spirit contracts very bad sanskaras, worse than the sanskaras of the worst sins, and reaps the fruit accordingly. So I advise you all not to fall prey to such madness. This has no connection with the spiritual path to God. On the contrary, the treader of such a path is far, far away from the spiritual path because he accumulates the worst possible kind of sanskaras, which prove an obstacle to his progress on the path.

The least said about occult powers the better. This type of tantric spirit (as opposed to ghosts [of suicides]), is even more terrible, and neither receives nor gives benefit from his efforts. He gains occult powers through various studies or by very undesirable practices — like eating excrement, drinking blood and other such unclean acts.

This type of tantric practice takes a very long time, and the person concerned acquires only the power of making his body large or small. He can make his body smaller than an ant's and then assume his human bodily form again. But he changes into another form for some material gain or objective.

He can enter another's body by making his body small, but his own gross bodily sanskaras are with him in his tiny form.

Ghosts are not like tantric spirits. [Ghosts are people who have committed suicide and have no body.] They enter another body and then make the body of whomsoever they enter do as they wish. But he who has gained occult powers does not do so; he only makes his body big or small and thus his bodily sanskaras are always with him. In this action, there is also the danger that through some accident, he may be trampled on by some person while in his little body. In short, after long and hard study such tantrics do not benefit in any way but, on the contrary, risk contracting some of the worst possible sanskaras. So there is no use in playing such a worthless game!

Lord Meher On-line page 870-1

Lord Meher Vol.3 page 993-4