Velvet V.:
I'm interested in what exactly it is that gives you siddhi\powers, "real" powers like divination, something that can be executed successfully in our world, as opposed to, say, having a vision or a vivid dream about it.
Humans are composed of similar elements but the compounded results are beings that are complex and this allows for a lot of diversity. That has much to do with the diversity of our experience and our thoughts about those experiences. I don't think we will ever see a consensus on this kind of subject or perhaps any subject given conditions prevailing in our world today.
I can't say I have ever drawn any firm conclusions in this area and I'm inclined to think that it wouldn't be beneficial for me to do so. The main reason is that I have had a lot of experience with things like this. Many people would like to explain it, interpret it, discount it or base some kind of faith on it but more often than not it seems quite clear to me that they are not able to draw on the same kinds of or quality of experiences. I have difficulty understanding why others feel the need to draw conclusions about these kinds of things when the more experience I have in these areas they less inclined I am to do so. A possible interpretation of this may be that generally the less experience there is with this stuff the easier it is for people to draw conclusions and set these things aside. Setting these things aside is probably for the best regardless of what kinds of conclusions people draw.
Most of my experience in these areas conforms to a few general observations. 1. In the context of insight practice (or any genuine quest for ultimate truths or insight into the nature of being and of the universe) these kinds of experiences are largely counter productive. Not always counter productive but more often than not. This is simply because these kinds of experiences can be so anomalous that they result in a great deal of conceptual confusion. 2. The basis for most of this unusual stuff is a strong quality of concentration. What I mean by that is a completely clear mind, a mind free of the conventional content like reflective thoughts or imagery and so on.
For a lot of people clearing the mind by way of insight practice does away with most of the seemingly unusual experiences because much of what was previously mysterious becomes a lot more observable and understandable and therefore no longer mysterious. So a lot of people can easily discount the strange experiences that other people speak of because they have seen through many of the tricks in their own minds and on that basis they infer that this is all that is ever actually going on. I would agree with that assessment for the most part and I would also recommend clearing the mind completely regardless of the nature of one's experience as that is going to be beneficial regardless of whatever else is going on or whatever other objectives one may have.
For whatever reasons I tend to become concentrated very easily and ordinarily that is very useful in life and very supportive of my meditation practices but it has also resulted in a lot of weird experiences. My mind was very clear as a child, I had very little reflective thought and imagery even when dreaming and so on. Even at this point in life visualization is very difficult for me and I don't have much in the way of mental visions and so on. It is correspondingly easy for me to completely clear my mind. When I was a kid in school I used to be very uncomfortable much of the time because of the states of mind that most other people were in. I didn't really have a sense of why that was until I got older and began to sense that I was actually picking up quite a bit more than most people do of what other people think and feel. After I began meditating in a much more conscious and formal way I would occasionally have experiences that were much stronger. At times I experienced two way telepathic conversations with other people, people that were present in the same place with me. We were typically both surprised by that and even since becoming more accustomed to these kinds of episodes it has more often than not been a bit odd and uncomfortable. In addition to things like that which were immediately verifiable by discussing this with the other people at the time I have had a lot of similar experience of awareness of other kinds of beings. Not human beings but beings with either bodies that I would describe as made out of some kind of energy or light and beings that seem to be made up of only mind.
I started a thread about some of that mild examples of that kind of contact with non-human sentience at DhO at one time and received the sorts of responses that I more or less expected. The best advice was to continue with my insight work until I had cleared all of this up. The unfortunate thing about that is that I have had as much success with my insight work as pretty much anyone either here or at Kenneth's forum and none of that work has cleared any of this up. I have had just as much access to the various concentrated states and worked through the nana's and so on at least as many times as any one else here. I can enter into all of the kinds of non-dual states reported like no-dog, primordial awareness and so on and I have also found a few things besides that others haven't yet reported. I have also done a lot of work with the brahmaviharas and work very similar to that reported by the actual freedom guys. Meditating is pretty much my vocation simply because it is what I want to do with my time and so I spend a lot more time on it than most people can afford to do.
Despite all of that interest and effort, it simply isn't possible for me to conclude that my contacts with minds other than my own is merely an artifact of my own mind. People I have never met don't know me personally and it is easy to suggest that my experience with these things is as a result of a failure to finish the insight work or to become capable of correctly understanding the nature of my own mind. I can understand this thinking but it honestly isn't applicable in my case. I can't do anything to prove that and I don't try to. As almost no one else reports similar experiences it is easy to conclude that this is all based in misperceptions on my part and I would rather leave people to that conclusion than argue about it as that won't benefit anyone anyways.
I don't think it would contribute much to anyones genuine understanding for me to draw conclusions on the basis of the odd kinds of things that I have experienced. We don't have enough data from enough people to usefully theorize about it. My general impression of things is that consciousness is elementary in the similar way that water is elementary. That is an analogy, I'm not suggesting that water and consciousness are the same kinds of elements as they have much different qualities. Some people perspire heavily and some people perspire very little while most people loose about a litre of water a day through respiration. Similarly consciousness could be viewed as something that is circulating in and out of our makeup in a similar way. Cycling through the nana's and so on demonstrates this momentary nature of consciousness very well. A common conclusion drawn by people that have worked through the stages of insight and fruition may be that consciousness is simply an epiphenomena resulting from the activities of the brain, nervous system and etc.. That may be an interpretation that serves many people very well and again I don't think it helps to argue about this but my various experiences with consciousness beyond that which can be associated with my own body and mind do not support that kind of interpretation. So, if I had to interpret that stuff I would suggest something like consciousness as a kind of field phenomena which exists in various continually changing forms throughout the universe and that it is not simply something generated by living bodies but something similar to the other kinds of elements in the body, an element that provides beings with cognitive capacities.
I think it is unhelpful for me to theorize or infer very much about this as the result is simply another conceptual box that I then have to try to fit all of my experience into. What I have observed in general is that it is the absence of an operative conceptual framework has more to do with making much of my more unusual experiences possible and that attempts to construct a conceptual framework has created barriers to the kinds of experience that falls outside of those expectations.
Seemly reliable concepts are the basis for a satisfying state of affairs for a mind that takes pleasure in referring to it's conceptual frameworks but it is not the basis for a satisfying state of affairs for a mind that would like to remain open to further experiential territory. So that is probably indicative of the conditions which underlay the views typical of our times. We live in an intellectual climate that is strongly predisposed to rationalize things in the context of the assumptions inherent in the kinds of scientific materialism that have predominated in recent centuries. In times when other worldviews were more common people rationalized along other lines. To an extent it is possible to model what may be happening in keeping with other paradigms such as buddhist cosmologies or quantum physics but most people still live in a culture where the presumptions of scientific materialism developed over the past centuries continues to exerts the major influences on their individual mental cultures.
To sum this up then; the single most significant condition for the arising of anything that might be considered siddhi phenomena is probably a mind that is completely tranquil, calm or concentrated. In the context of developing a comprehensive awareness of the nature of one's mind and being, 'hardcore' siddhi phenomena is going to more often than not be counterproductive. In the context of ridding the mind of the inclination to cling to conceptual frameworks that limit the minds capacities to broaden it's experiential base, siddhi phenomena can be a net benefit so long as one is not simply going to use these kinds of unusual experiences to again fabricate new rigid conceptual frameworks.
As to the question of why these phenomena can not be made to be more reliable, the best insights into that can be drawn from the insights into the mind that one can develop through vipassana and so on. The qualities typical of consciousness and the mind are more given to change and inconsistency than they are to stability. That is probably why people are so given to holding to conceptual models, beliefs, and so on because the nature of consciousness is by nature very unstable and flexible.
These aren't answers or conclusions, and this is an area where you won't really get any satisfying answers or conclusions unless what you are aiming to do is to shut your mind off from any actual experience in these areas. The more actual experience you have along these lines the less possible it will be for you to form a lasting conceptual framework which you can rely upon. My suggestion to anyone with these kinds of interests is to give a lot of consideration up front to what their real priorities are and to then cultivate a mental environment that is compatible with those priorities. I would agree with most here that the path of insight is far more important than the path of power but I am, in these regards, a kind of dharma libertarian and I wish everyone success in whatever path work it is that they wish to undertake.