Beyond Psychic Powers (Part 5)

QUESTION: Psychic powers cannot bring about a peaceful society?

JAGAD GURU: They cannot. It will be worse. It's the same exploitive consciousness. Everything is just taken to a more subtle level. For example, people who want to excel in the field of business would have to cultivate psychic powers to defeat their business competitors. The possession of psychic powers raises people's competitiveness, aggression, and exploitive tendencies to a more subtle dimension. It does not change their hearts from loving mammon to loving the Supreme Person. Indeed, they become more exploitive, because they become convinced that they are the Supreme.

In Europe and America, there's something called "Scientology," which teaches how to increase your power, how to clear your mind or consciousness. In the book The Search for Superman, one scientologist says that when you've cleared those blocks, you can become aggressive and get what you want—in short, you can declare yourself master. But what is the value of a whole bunch of people who are convinced that they are masters? What is the value of such power freaks? How does this benefit society? It doesn't. It's the same old materialistic business, only on a subtle physical dimension. But because people can't see psy-chic powers with their gross material eyes, they think these powers are spiritual—as they say, "Mind over matter." These fools don't know that mind is matter. Mind is subtle material energy, not spiritual energy. Gross and subtle bodies are covering you, the spirit soul. You are the spirit soul—you are neither the gross body nor the subtle, psychic body.

QUESTION: Are there any dangers in getting too involved in psychic powers?

JAGAD GURU: Yes. The most obvious danger is that you become more hardhearted and go further away from the Supreme. But there are also other dangers, such as becoming totally wrapped up in all these astral zones, thinking they're spiritual, just because they're not gross material doesn't mean they're spiritual. As I said, subtle material energy is also material.

QUESTION: So an ideal society can be brought about not by people developing psychic powers, but by people developing their love for the Supreme?

JAGAD GURU: Yes. An ideal society can be possible only when the members of the society are free from enviousness of the Supreme Person and therefore free from enviousness of one another. When people are working cooperatively for the pleasure of the One Supreme Being, then obviously everything will be peaceful. But if everybody is fighting over His property, trying to increase their power on the gross or subtle physical dimensions in order to exploit more efficiently, then that will create only conflict. Lord Chaitanya describes an ideal person as:

One who chants the Holy Names of the Lord in a humble state of mind, thinking himself lower than the straw in the street, more tolerant than a tree, devoid of all sense of false prestige, and always ready to offer respects to others.

The Chinese sage, Lao Tzu, also taught that we should try to be like water, always heading for the lowest point. Lord Jesus taught that humble love for the Lord is the perfection of life.