Question: How can you tell the difference between someone who wants power because he is possessed by one of these beings and someone who wants power because it is his nature, because he is not spiritually developed?
Sri Chinmoy: If one has the ability, the easiest thing is to concentrate on the soul. Then one can see whether the person has become a victim of these wrong forces or if his own vital being is craving for power. Let us consider a child. We should feel purity in a child’s face; by nature a child should be sweet and loveable. But instead of that, if we see a child is always breaking things, fighting and full of aggression, we will know that this child has been possessed by something. In some cases, the child is born possessed in this way and when he grows up his very nature is to fight and seek to conquer. He always wants others to be behind him or at his feet. With a child, one can easily tell in this way. And if one can concentrate on someone’s soul, one will immediately know if that person has been possessed by another being or not.
Sri Chinmoy, Astrology, the supernatural and the Beyond, Agni Press, 1973