The English word “occult” is quite vague as to what it means.
Occult simply means a capability, but because certain people used this capability in irresponsible and negative ways, the word “occult” has come to mean something negative. But occult is also of the highest order. Shiva is an occultist. Not all occult is necessarily negative. Occult can be a positive force. It depends on who is using it and for what purpose.
Occult is just a technology. Today, you can pick up your cellphone in India and talk to someone in the US. Occult is just like this—you can talk to someone in the US without the cellphone. It is a slightly more advanced technology. This will happen with modern technology too as it evolves. There are already mechanisms where if you just say the person’s name, the phone dials the number for you. A day will come when even this is not needed. Just a small implant will do.
Occult is when you manage to talk even without Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. It is a technology on a different level, but it is still physical. You are using your body, mind and energy to do these things. Ultimately, no matter what the technology is, you are only using your body, mind and energy. With a cellphone or any piece of technology, you use other material to serve you, but the fundamental material that you use to manufacture it is just your body, mind and energy.
Initially, you had to use a lot of material if you wanted to manufacture a phone. Now, we are constantly trying to reduce that. A day will come when we don’t need any material—that will be occult. Modern science and occult are bound to meet somewhere if some small changes happen in the understanding of what is what. The physical can be used in many ways. For example, if you take information technology, what started as a stone tablet has now come to a tiny chip. What would take a whole mountain to be carved upon, is today stored on a tiny chip. The physical has become subtler. When you use the subtlest dimension of physical, we call it occult.
In many parts of the world, occult is passing off as a spiritual process, which is not good. Spirituality is about going beyond the physical, to bring an experience within you which is not of the physical. Occult is using the subtlest phenomena of the physical, but it is still physical.
As modern technology becomes subtler, the need for occult will come down. Let’s say a thousand years ago, I was in Coimbatore and you were in Delhi, and I wanted to give you an instruction.
You traveling all the way and walking down to Coimbatore or me walking up to Delhi would have been impractical, so I spent time mastering occult so that I could deliver this to you. But now that I have a cellphone, I don’t have to do it. I can still do it, but to prepare you to be receptive enough—so that you are clear enough to receive it and not doubt it—will take an unnecessarily long time. I would rather just call you.
So, occult is becoming more irrelevant by the day because modern technology is advancing at a great pace.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, a bestselling author & poet. He has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org