Akmal wrote: “I wanted to ask, are occult practices mentioned in the tipitaka?”
There are no “occult practices” per se mentioned in the Tipitaka.
However, the word “occult” means “paranormal phenomena”, meaning phenomena that cannot be understood by modern science; see, the Wikipedia article, “Occult”.
In the days of the Buddha, not only the followers of the Buddha, but also other yogis were able to engage in such actions as flying through the air (with the physical body) or even visiting deva and brahma realms with the “manomaya kaya” (which is the same as gandhabba).
Such feats were achieved not by practicing “black magic” or mysterious procedures, but by cleansing one’s mind.
– Non-Buddhist yogis did that by abstaining from immoral actions, speech, and thoughts, and also by suppressing the desire for sense pleasures.
– Buddha’s disciples did those things by rooting out not only abstaining from immoral actions, speech, and thoughts, but also by eliminating sense desires by comprehending the dangers of sense pleasures.
Therefore, we need to think about issues like this relating to mind phenomena depending on the context.
In another example, “astral travel” can be done by cleansing one’s mind as discussed above. Furthermore, those who has cultivated such capabilities in their recent previous lives can develop such capabilities without much effort. The same with anariya jhana; those who had cultivated them in previous recent lives can “get them back” easily.
– However, there people who are selling “their techniques” by promising to teach how to do astral travel. Those are hoaxes.
– Therefore, one needs to be careful in addressing these issues.
I do not have much time to address other issues, but these are my initial thoughts.