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Mantra śakti awakens in us saṅkalpa śakti. Saṅkalpa śakti means the power of will, the power that whatever you wish for should come true. Of course, many things we wish for do come true, but we have to work for them. You may wish to become a pilot, an engineer, a nurse, or a gardener. That wish will come true, but you need training and study, which requires time. You cannot become something from one day to the next. Similarly, there are different wishes, different saṅkalpas. Some saṅkalpas are for realizing material things in this world. And just so, there are certain saṅkalpikā which surpass our normal energy and power. But through the practice of mantra, you purify your future; you purify the ākāśa tattva which surrounds you, and your wishes come true. Yet it is also very important that you know what you will do with that wish when it comes to fruition. Are you sure that you wish for this? Sometimes we need many years to consider if we should wish for something or not. There was a man who wanted to become very rich. Someone told him, "Who is rich? One who has much gold." So he wanted to have a siddhi, the power to make gold, so he would be very rich. He went to the forest and for several years prayed and prayed, performing anuṣṭhāna—an anuṣṭhāna a little more intense than yours. After 24 years of prayer, a voice came from the sky: "Yes, my son, what do you want?" He said, "Please give me siddhi." The voice said, "Tell me, what do you want?" He replied, "I want that whatever I touch becomes gold." The oracle said, "Are you sure what you are asking for? Do you really want this, that whatever you touch will become gold?" He said, "Yes. For 24 years I have been thinking; I need not think more. Please give me the siddhi so that whatever I touch will become gold." The voice said, "Okay, it will be so." Very happily he went home, saying, "Now I have siddhis. Whatever I touch will become gold." His grandchild came: "Grandfather, grandfather, how are you?" He embraced the child, and as the grandfather touched him, the child became gold, falling down as a piece of gold. His wife came and said, "So many years you were in the forest, how are you?" He said, "Very nice," and touched her. She also became a golden statue. His son came and said, "Hi, Dad," and wanted to embrace his father. The father touched him, and the son also became gold. Then he was hungry and thirsty. He took a glass of water; it all became gold. He wanted to drink; he touched the water, and it became gold. He wanted to eat something. He took bread to buy it; it was only gold. What to do with this? He could not eat, he could not drink. No one dared to come near him. Now it became a problem. Hungry, thirsty, desperate, and crying, he lamented, "Oh God, how stupid I am! Why did I want to have gold? This gold has made my life problematic." He went again to the forest, praying and crying. This time the prayer was more intensive. Again the voice came: "Yes, my son, how are you? Do you enjoy the gold?" He said, "Lord, please forgive me. I did not think like this." The voice said, "I told you to think." The man pleaded, "Please take this siddhi away from me." So the siddhi was taken away. The voice said, "I give you a siddhi: whatever you touch will return to its normal state." Then the grandchild, the wife, and the son all became normal again. Though gold is full of temptation and one thinks it will make you happy and rich, the unhappiness it brings can be greater than the happiness you imagine. Therefore, you must think carefully about what kind of siddhi you want to have. There was another man who wanted to have the siddhi of levitation. He got the siddhi. Again, a voice came and said, "Yes, I want to be above the ground." Now he had the siddhi, but he could not sleep anywhere; he could not sit anywhere. He always wanted to sit in an airplane because he was going up. He wanted to sit in a bus up; it became a very problematic life. So, levitation in yoga—for me, I would say to levitate your thoughts. It means higher thinking: stay above everything, full of tolerance, full of understanding, and see what is reality. That is very, very important. We have to seek that kind of levitation. Other kinds of levitation are not true levitation. What siddhi do you want? Do you want to see through everything? If you get this siddhi, you will be one of the most unhappy persons in the world. Would you want to know how your neighbor is thinking now? Would you want to know what your wife is thinking? Your wife may be thinking of giving you food and serving you, but she is thinking of somebody else. That eating would become poison for you. Or, what if you knew what your husband is thinking? You want to see through, sitting here now, what your children are doing? You see everything about your wife, husband, or parents. Life would be very, very unpleasant. So be thankful to God that He did not give us this kind of ability. He will give us this kind of ability on the day when you will be able to digest everything. But you know, it is not easy to digest the truth. Very rare people can digest the truth. Therefore, God did not give us that kind of knowledge to know the truth—and truth means everything. Let's say we are sitting here very happy, enjoying beautiful nature, harmony, spirituality—everything is very good. And someone's mother has just died, but you do not know it, and you are very happy sitting here. You do not have that knowledge; you do not know the truth, the reality. But as soon as the news reaches you, you will become very sad because you cannot digest this truth that the mother died. So it is not easy to digest the truth, and we avoid it. We try to hide the truth because we cannot digest it. And that's it. So any kind of siddhi you want to have is a problem. Therefore, in the Patañjali Yoga Sūtra, Patañjali writes—and many other saints also say—that there are different kinds of māyā. Māyā means illusion. Māyā is that kind of illusion which takes you away from the right path. So there is a māyā for yogīs. When you rise above this material life, then siddhis come, and now these siddhis are māyās. These siddhis are exactly the same as, or even more harmful than, the worldly māyās. Because worldly māyā gives you only temporary troubles or some karmas, but the utilization of those siddhis gives you more karmic troubles. When you leave the physical world, if you have a siddhi, you should not perform the siddhi. But if it happens through your presence, that is okay. One should not abuse spirituality, the spiritual power. So, utilizing siddhis, using siddhis, means abusing them. Those great saints who have siddhi do not perform those siddhis. But if it happens through their being, or if you ask, "Please bless me," and they bless and say, "Okay, it will be okay," then everything becomes okay. It is okay. But not to purposely make siddhis happen. The future of such a yogī will be more problematic. Utilizing siddhi will bring you again into the bondage of the Chaurāsī Cakra. So what should we wish for now? We should wish only that God blesses us. God, forgive our mistakes. And we shall wish for bhakti, devotion. That is it. Nothing is higher and more beautiful than devotion: the love, that we are always in feeling, in imagination, and in thinking with God.