Hinduism · Philosophers & Mystics
Person · around 400 CE
Patañjali
Name in Colophons, Chapter of Powers
Compiler of the Yoga Sūtras, a name in its colophons; most of his third chapter catalogues occult powers.
Who they wereHis third chapter is mostly siddhis — knowledge of past lives, invisibility, entering another body — and then he says they are obstacles to samādhi. The powers are catalogued at length in order to be renounced, which is how a text guards against its own attractions.
The FindingMost of Patañjali's third chapter catalogues occult powers — previous births at 3.18, invisibility at 3.21, passage through the air — before calling them obstacles to concentration, and a fourth chapter allows that herbs produce them too; Vivekananda's Raja Yoga of 1896, the book that carried him into English, translated every line of that chapter under the heading Powers.
Person · Indian Traditions · 975 CE
Abhinavagupta
c. 950–1016 CE
Kashmiri polymath, mystic, and aesthetician who synthesised non-dual Tantric philosophy.
Who they wereAbhinavagupta articulated Trika non-dualism in the Tantraloka, teaching that reality is the dynamic self-pulsation of supreme consciousness experiencing itself through sensory beauty and aesthetic resonance.
The FindingLiberation is not world-denial, but recognizing every perception and emotion as divine consciousness.