Supernatural Powers
Can samatha practice turn me into a superhero?
A Meditator’s Question:
I’ve heard that deep meditation can develop extraordinary abilities called “siddhis” - like becoming nearly weightless, gaining instant access to distant places or objects, mastering natural forces, or even controlling other beings.
Can samatha practice actually lead to powers like these?
Oded’s Answer:
Samatha meditation can develop the kind of deep concentration traditionally associated with siddhis, leading to a variety of unusual experiences, perceptions, and mind-made phenomena arising in deep meditative absorption, or “jhana”. We may indeed feel weightless, infinite, or completly fulfilled, as if all of our desires are granted.
However, if you’re hoping for externally verifiable manipulation of the physical universe (e.g., extraordinary, paranormal, or supernatural powers), you’re probably in for a disappointment. Our physical body won’t actually fly, teleport, shrink, disappear, or conjur objects out of thin air. Meditation can radically transform experience, but there’s no good evidence that it lets anyone suspend the ordinary laws of physics.
In any case, both Buddhist and yogic traditions tend to treat these powers as secondary - and potentially distracting - rather than as the real goal of practice: Awakening and Liberation. These matter far more than any kind of fireworks associated with deep meditative states.
