The siddhi [supernormal power] of the vijnana [gnostic faculty] and the siddhi of the body belong…to that range of experience and of divine fulfillment which are abnormal to the present state of humanity…they are denied by [the reason of] the sceptic and discouraged by [the faith of] the saint…[But there is no] great man with the divine powers at all manifest in him who does not use them continually in an imperfect form without knowing clearly what are these supreme faculties that he is employing. If nothing else, he uses the powers of intuition & inspiration, the power of ishita [synchronistic desire] which brings him the opportunities he needs and the means which make these opportunities fruitful and the power of vyapti [psychic permeation, likened to telepathy] by which his thoughts go darting & flashing through the world & creating unexpected waves of tendency both around him and at a distance. We need no more avoid the use of these things than a poet should avoid the use of his poetical genius which is also a siddhi unattainable by ordinary men or an artist renounce the use of his pencil.
Sri Aurobindo in his private diaries, Record of Yoga.
Kripal, Jeffrey, J. Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007. epigraph.