EWS #76 Questions from Viewers (19)  - Education & Teenage Issues - 3

July 24, 2021

Alina (0:00:00):
Namaste all. We welcome you all to the continuing series, Evenings with Sraddhalu. My name is Alina and together with Joel from Auroville.

Joel (0:00:23):
Namaste, Alina.

Sraddhalu (0:00:25):
Namaste.

Alina (0:00:27):
Nice, we are back. Namaste. We are happy to continue our series and answering questions on the same topic, education and teenage issues. And we will be covering, in this session, same questions received from our viewers on the lifestyle of young adults, addictions, therapies. We already took some questions on the use of drugs and today we will continue on this theme with a few more questions that we received from our viewers. So I will address Sraddhalu, the first set of questions. Renat is writing, can tea or coffee be also considered a drug? And then we have another question from Shankaran. cinema and TV shows, for the past 25 years, it's been driven hard that smoking and alcohol are cool. And now it has become a normal thing. Please discuss about this Gutkha culture which is specific to the Indian subcontinent. Nobody to my knowledge seems to kick the Gutkha habit out, including me. And then we have another question from an anonymous. Can you comment on the attachment to or obsession with video games in the youngsters?

Sraddhalu (0:02:19):
Yes, we are continuing on the theme of addictions for a while and this will be the last few questions around that as we move on to other related topics. But just to recapitulate the last two sessions before this, we had dwelt in some depth on the whole question of addictions and particularly drug-related addictions. And you will recall that we discussed the effect of drugs from a yogic perspective, the four kinds of damage that happen from the drugs, how to heal that damage from a purely spiritual way. And last time we went in-depth on peer pressure, group influence, the nature of the drug high and the drug low, and how it changes in time, and comparison with that high, with the meditation high, if we may use that term, and also occult causes of addiction and the means to get free. We dwelt on these questions, drawing heavily on the experience of both Alina and Joël as therapists and as themselves having passed through these pressures and experiences. We took their advice for youngsters as well as parents. And in particular, we closed on the idea of the psychic influence within us as the primary reference and guide, not only in matters relating to drugs, but any kind of decision, any kind of choice that we may make in life, especially choices which might have ramifications that are serious or perhaps harmful even if wrongly chosen and that is where we had paused. There were several continuing questions, these which Alida has just read out, which continue in that line of discussion. So I would like to use that opportunity to also widen the scope of what we covered last time, generally to all kinds of addictions, as well as the positive side of the use of drugs in medical usage, for example. There are, in fact, originally in all the shamanic traditions particularly, and I use the word shamanic in a very general way, where there are specialists whose job it is to access domains beyond the physical world in order to create interactions with beings or forces, powers of those worlds for the good or comfort of human beings. And this is something so basic in all tribal cultures that as civilization evolves, it always remains. Even when civilization enters in a very intellectual phase of its development, these things hang around on the side and when somebody finds a situation that has no intellectual recourse, they often turn to these types, occultists, magicians, shamans, whatever term is used for help. For help, there's no way I'm in a jam, can you do something, use your magical powers. And magic here is like a screen saying I don't know but there's something happening behind the screen and hopefully that can act. But in almost all of these shamanic traditions there is the use of, liberal use of narcotics and I want to put that in context also. So first of all they used narcotics or drugs, particularly plant-derived drugs, which as a means of stunning the brain in order to free a part of their consciousness to access those worlds. And as we've already discussed extensively, the space you access is the space corresponding to the plant consciousness or the drug’s presiding deity and its consciousness, which is generally of the domains most close to the material vital. Rarely even it touches higher vital and certainly the mental is not touched except the part of the mental which is part of the lower vital and that's about it. And there you have the full range from hells to heavens also, but of a very dense character unlike the higher vital which can have a more refined sense of the heavens and hells equally. But for the purpose of the shaman, this is the domain they want because it is in this domain that they get beings or powers which access the physical results or which can influence the physical world. And so that's perfect for their purpose. And they have very strict training to prevent backwash from access to those worlds. In almost all occult traditions where they utilise means of accessing the subtle worlds generally, they have very clear protocols of gates which are opened by specific means and then deliberately closed by specific means so that there is no backwash of influence from those domains which may then harm you when you are unconscious or unaware.

Sraddhalu (0:07:36):

None of this actually is used when people use drugs only. They have no idea what they're doing. They just open the gates. The gates are left half open or fully open. Even afterwards, when they've come out of the state of intoxication, the gates may be open and beings can access them, as we had discussed before. So, recently somebody was sharing an example of a person who was, after a drug high, was then going through a severe crisis, and he was running around saying that demons are chasing me and he was in a state of high anxiety and of course he was asked well are you having a panic attack but my observation is it's not a panic attack that makes him imagine demons, rather it is these demons accessing him through these open gates that is causing the panic attack because the inner being feels itself under invasion and under threat of possession and the state of panic is coming from inside in response to that access. So the Shamanic access is a very strict regimented and trained system protocol that prevents or minimises these kinds of backwashes. It's important to understand when it is used for these purposes, it is used with a very specific knowledge. Allied to that is also the medical use of narcotics, which also in cases of extreme pain, in cases of war in the past, when somebody is severely injured, or there's a need for amputation, they would put the person under some kind of narcotic intoxication so they wouldn't feel the pain. But what happens at that point is, the subtle body is half pushed out of the physical. So it's a state of half sleep half dream state and so they don't feel the pain of the gross physical and they're in the subtle physical generally of some kind. And so again it has a medical use there. Similarly there is some use, even today it has been found to be helpful, on a mild dose with certain cases of PTSD, what they call post-traumatic stress disorders, where someone has gone through extreme trauma and they are unable to free themselves either from the memory or the habit of the trauma which is imprinted in them and of this we will be speaking shortly later. In such cases a mild dosage of narcotic substances has been found to be helpful because it clears, it dulls the mind, clears that memory momentarily even if superficially, gives a chance for something deeper or more meaningful to come forward, take its place and then as the influence wears off, you have a solid anchor to hold on to even as the memory returns. So there are medical uses for these things and they have been found to be helpful naturally and that's the reason why they exist in nature also, they are there to help us finally. But it needs to be done with a very clear knowledge of what we are doing, what the effect is and how that effect can be controlled. So this is to speak on the positive side of it.

Sraddhalu (0:10:40):

I wanted to then use these other questions which came up about the use of gutkha or smoking alcohol in cinema or whether tea and coffee are a drug, and obsession with games. All these I want to combine together to broaden the theme of the nature of addiction which we also discussed last time. But addiction covers a whole range of activities and we must understand why this is possible. What is the nature of this addictive pattern itself? Nature has a use for this mechanism of addiction. Because this is how she is able to override our intelligence to compel a species to behave in certain ways, especially when animals are in a state of heat to procreate. At that point, there is an entire mechanism which is built in in the biology by which the reasoning faculty or the automatic self-protection faculties are all dulled. And a drive of an estrus can compel the animal to do things which would otherwise be considered dangerous in the instincts of the animals. Now, this principle is used today by the media as well as by industries to influence human behaviour in purchasing. So for example, it works very subtly. Let's say a lot of purchase is happening today on online, but even if you were on a shopping window, you go to make a purchase or maybe you're not even interested in purchasing, you just want to do a window shopping. If at that point there's a picture which is racy, it doesn't have to be very obvious, but it's there subtly. A picture which is racy, seen even momentarily and even subconsciously, is enough to trigger that machinery in our biology. Suddenly your heart rate goes up slightly, your general metabolism kicks in, your pupils might dilate slightly, there will be other responses which are visibly measurable but its effect is to override your discriminating power and then suddenly for no reason at all you say, ‘ah that looks nice, let me just go ahead and buy it’. You suddenly forget that you came not to buy, you forget that you are at the end of the month and your resources are low but at that moment, the instinct overrides and you make the purchase. And then later you wonder, why did I do that? I don't need it really.

The similar mechanism is used when people are put in spaces where they are gambling. So in a gambling den, you have a lot of images, symbols, sounds, music, entire environment created which excites the passions and particularly tapping into that deep-rooted animal instinct, procreative instinct particularly, which overrides this discriminating power so that you spend far more and uncontrollably. So, advertising is using it heavily for the same reason. But the point is, there is this mechanism of addiction which is already there, present, used by Nature, but in the way Nature uses it, she ensures with inbuilt limits that once that cycle is completed, it shuts down by itself. So Nature has built a groove for obsessive behaviour with a very specific goal and inbuilt limits. Now if you tap into that groove and use it for other means but bypassing those limits that's when we get into addictive behaviour. And of course drugs, alcohol, smoking are the most well known. There are other things, pornography, masturbation, chewing tobacco, pan, gutka, gaming, television. I just made a list from some of the more intense ones to the least intense. You could throw in tea or coffee which have a mild addictive tendency but they would not come under that category of drugs, at least not strictly. They are stimulants and any stimulant can provoke in you a kind of a let's say attraction which may even become addictive when overdone because now you need the stimulant again and again to maintain your normal state and so it becomes addictive. But they are not in themselves of the same category as narcotics because they don't distort your perception of reality.

Alina (0:15:22):
And especially they don't harm your health. Yes, the moment when it starts to be harmful then yeah to your health for your overall being then maybe we can consider them being.

Sraddhalu (0:15:34):
Yes and of course we are not talking here of extreme use. Some people will drink coffee 10 cups a day, at which point they will also be harming their health. But let's keep it within limits. In that case, it does not harm your health. So I would not put it in that category, but we understand the principle being active in us, anything could be turned into triggering an addictive behaviour. There are other things which we also mentioned here, which are tobacco, chewing tobacco, which is of course highly addictive. It's equivalent to smoking, but without the smoke effect in the lungs. But it has the stimulation in the system and the addictive form that comes. And it's a plant, and it has a deity behind it. In many of the Shamanic traditions, they respect tobacco highly because the respect is not to the object of tobacco, not the piece, but to the deity behind, the presiding being behind those plants. And those traditions, let's say, have a relationship with that being because that being is seen as a gatekeeper who can open the doors of some kind of an access to certain domains. So it is treated as a sacred plant and the axis itself as I said has a particular usage through the gateways. In India we have paan and gutka, supari. These are variations of various plant seeds I think and the plant leaves which are used as a stimulant initially but when overdone they become highly addictive. Some of them have the effect of triggering biological changes. Now I was told by somebody who had a dog that when the dog's hair was too thin they were advised to give gutka, the seed, to the dog and the effect was to trigger sudden hair growth and thickening of hair. Now this is to show you how vividly the change can be in your biology through some of these stimulants. And once done the hair is thicker, that's it. It's a permanent change. So it's equivalent and I would I believe so but I have no medical verification, validation of this. I believe that it triggers certain hormonal changes and those hormones will make you then behave differently. Now this is a case where the hormonal change might actually make you more dense in your physical consciousness, more forceful in the density of vitality that you have. And so I have seen people, especially people who have a strong addiction to gutka or pan masala, they tend to have a dulling of their higher vibes and a thickening of their denser levels.

For a person who does not aim to refine their consciousness, it will give them a stronger grip in the physical world, at least in that domain of vitality that it exaggerates. But it will also dull the higher faculties of discrimination and perception. And I've seen this pattern so distinctly that I automatically or perhaps intuitively associated it with their use of the pan masala or gutka use. And I saw people who did not have it and then turned to using it and I found that shift in consciousness. The dulling of the higher faculties and the thickening of the lower ranges. And it was so distinct that I'm pretty much convinced it's coming from that. And of course, because it's a plant energy, it grips you, it pulls you back, and the addictive form comes through it. There is also the increasing problem with youngsters of addiction to pornography, which also has a similar effect and energy behind. I am going to associate it with the habit of masturbation also, which comes along with it. The Mother spoke of this in the ashram school when she was addressing the children. Pornography was not there, at least not in this form, but masturbation at least and she said that when somebody participates in that instinct, that impulse, it creates a strong energetic vibration that spreads around. It can actually be felt as an energy spreading around and then provoking others. She described it, it's something I read long ago, but the impression I have is, she described it as something in the aura which comes with the form of tentacles, which then come to irritate and trigger and grip you as a formation, which can be seen, felt, and even which comes by force of its habit or its compulsion that attaches itself to you. And this ties in with what we discussed last time about beings and energies behind this whole question of addiction.

Sraddhalu (0:20:52):

In the case of pornography, there are energies which work nowadays, of course, through the internet. Earlier, it would be through magazines or other forms. But these are energies which have, again, I will use the image of tentacles reaching out, connecting to large numbers of people and then drawing energy from them. It's not too different. It's just a difference of gradation. It's not too different from certain religious energies also. You will recall Mother speaking of this and it's not everywhere, but in a certain church where she had been, where the atmosphere was very dull, she saw a huge spider-like being behind the altar which was sucking the energy of all the people who had come into that space. And I've personally experienced this in certain churches. It was one of them, it was in Germany. We were driving through a village. It was a beautiful village externally, visually. And my host said, okay, let's get a view of what it's like. And then he took me to one of the churches there. It was supposed to be a famous church. And as we walked towards the altar, there was an increasing density and heaviness until I felt suffocated perhaps even the tendency for a severe headache forming but it was literally suffocating physically and then he pointed to a little stairway behind the altar and he said that goes to the dungeons where they used to keep prisoners and torture them and that explained it of course. You see, it's a very strange idea that in what should be a sacred space, they had prisoners in dungeons who would be kept in darkness for months together, tortured, dying, suffering. Why would you bring those vibrations together in what should be a sacred space? But well, that was the case in that space at least. And so one can understand why there would be energies of beings of that kind.

But what happens also is today these energies have an access through networks. So the physical wiring or the telemetry which is like a link even if it's bounced across satellites, those are just the physical embodiments of the tentacle itself which is an energetic link and it's not necessarily bound to a physical space only. And so there are energies which tap into people and it of course has a force of spreading and if you're conscious you may even feel it. For me this has been an issue often when we are in a hotel while travelling you have to stay in hotels sometimes and most people are not conscious of this but if you think about it the way hotel rooms are arranged, to maximise the efficiency of electrical and plumbing, two bathrooms will be next to each other with a wall separating. But that means the bed is on the other side for both. Which also means two beds will be separated by a single wall. So across two rooms, the beds have your head here, someone else's head here and a wall in between. Now if you were to see through the wall, energetically, the wall has no meaning. Your head is barely two feet away from somebody else's head. And above you, stacked, if it's a big hotel, stacked just in line with you, geometrically aligned are people above, below and on the side. So you're in a grid of people's energies. And if the hotel is full, and depending on the kinds of people travelling, if it's a business hotel, the vibes are very different. But if it's a holiday hotel, it is much lighter, freer, all kinds of energies, more chaotic also, more varied. But you're in a grid of energies. And what happens around you, well, infiltrates, does affect. If nothing else, your thoughts and impulses, what you do with it is still your choice. But if you are sensitive, you can feel, ah, this is the mood. But if you are conscious, you can also reverse it in the sense that if someone else's energy can affect you, well, yours can affect them also. Or at least your energy can form a bubble of protection.

So I used to do this consciously for a long time, that if I went to a new space, even if it was in someone's house, in someone else's, because finally you're sharing, you're using a bedroom which is used by someone else, otherwise even if it's a guest room, I would do it as a routine, that I would first sit, generally on the bed, I would sit cross-legged, consciously do an invocation, a prayer, and consciously invoke the presence and the protection around to fill the entire room. So the physical walls may have no meaning energetically but now with your intention you create an energetic bubble aligned to the walls and make that your space or sanctify the space to whatever extent your intention. And then after that, interestingly, the physical separation of the wall of the two beds, although physically two feet apart, the energetic separation can be quite radical. And you can actually feel yourself in a bubble unaffected by what happens around you. And I'm not just using this in the sense of negative energies, but generally if you find yourself in a space where you don't find the alignment of energy is very comfortable, well, create your own. What is interesting is, if you have done that, as you leave the room, it's time to check out, I have to leave. As you leave the room, you look back, you'll find the energy field is still intact. And if somebody else comes who is sensitive enough, they will come in and say, oh, this room has a very nice vibe, very different from the other rooms. You can feel the difference. So sometimes I would feel almost guilty that I'm leaving behind a presence that is invoked. So I would make a conscious effort to thank it or perhaps even to reabsorb it. But I'm just sharing this because it might be useful for some of you if you are particularly conscious of these things. If you're not, perhaps it doesn't matter too much also. So the idea is that we can create our own protective space or protected space and thus limit the nature of the mixed influences. I come back to the topic that there are these tendencies which can have an influence spreading in the community environment. I've seen from a subtle sight, somebody who smokes, in their aura, there's a thin layer of a greyness. That's the way one would describe it. It's not always visual, it's felt energetically like a grey smoky layer. And I've found inevitably, when one detects that in somebody, inevitably you find, oh yes, the person does not smoke publicly, in private they smoke and you can feel that difference, perceive that difference. Something similar when people take alcohol or drugs, it can be felt in the aura or seen in the aura in the way I described earlier as these holes or again a dark, heavy, cloudy element. But also sometimes visible in the eyes, it's as if the reflection of something which is not them. If I have to describe the feel of it, because these things are not entirely physical, the feel of it is as if something in them is reflecting a consciousness of the vital domain which is not them though. So that's the indication that there's a link, there's a hole, there's a gap still felt. And different people feel it differently perhaps.

Sraddhalu (0:28:54):
The question we had already discussed about healing, but I want to take a more physical access that. We should discuss the spiritual healing by invoking the Mother's force and particularly her power of love, which is the most powerful as a healing energy and can heal the most extreme damage. But for most of us, even if you're exposed to things like this, if your general health is good and if your general psychological health is good, you must trust that just as a physical injury will be healed by the body, so too a psychological injury will be healed naturally. But what you can do, as you do for the physical body, you protect the injury or you provide the body positive nourishment. You can feed yourself with positive energies, positive reading, visualising, watching of cinema, but positive, healthy, which makes you feel joyous, optimistic, positive, complete, healthy or being in space in nature where you are around healthy plants. Again it makes a difference if the trees are sick well they can't help you much, but if the trees are fresh and happy and energetic, well they heal you and you can open yourself to that healing influence. Hug a tree and there are various means like that but the principle is the same as what you would do for a physical injury. You provide positive nourishment and meanwhile protect from further negative harm. And the same thing you can do in your psychological domain also through these kinds of positive thoughts and positive reading, company of positive people.

And we'll recall in our discussion last time, Joël had mentioned, you need to cut the links of the friends who pulled you into the problems or even the drug seller who has a compulsion to reach out and grab you. You need to cut the links and he said you delete their names from your phone list. Now, it's not just on a practical level that you might not call them because of an instinct. So, you look for the person or you don't have the number you can't call. It's not just that. The fact is the name being on the list in your phone is a link, energetic, occult link to that person which gives them an access to you also. So it's similar to what you see often done in occultism. Through the use of symbols you connect to something, someone, some situation, some space, some idea, some energy, some higher power through the use of symbols. But the name in your phone book is a symbol, isn't it? The number is a precise link in the universal intelligence, a precise link to that person. I'm going to give an example here. You see, often we know this, we have seen this with the Mother that we would receive a telegram. And my teacher MP Pandit, as Mother's secretary, was doing this very often. Telegram, letter, money order, some message would come saying so and so is sick, praying to the Mother for help. He would take the message to her and say by name who the person is and asking for help and immediately there was a response, there was a change in the situation. We know his own sister when she was practically on the deathbed from a very serious illness, he took it to the Mother and immediately at the same time that he reported it to the Mother, she woke up from a state of almost like a coma, suddenly breathing intensely and calling out Mother's name. The response is instant. But I always thought coming from a science thinking in the mind, how does Mother know where is that person or even who that person is? You just give a name. You see in this case it was Pandit-ji's sister who had seen the Mother. Fine, at least there's a link of a known person but where is the person? How do you know where to send the energy? So that was my thinking as a young child. And what about when a person is not known? You've never met the Mother, you've heard of her, you send a telegram, the message is taken by somebody who also doesn't know who you are. They just got a message in the mail. And they tell the Mother the name of somebody who is totally unknown to everybody in between. Where is the link? How does she know who to help, how to help, how to heal? But of course, as the experience grew, one realises that in the experience, you don't need all that. The act of a telegram coming already is a link energetically and brings a fine vibration of that person. As the message is taken and spoken to her, the name is spoken to her, that fine vibration comes like a thread, touches her and it's a two-way link. She feels the link to the person and if I may use an imagery which is how it's felt actually in the intuitive state. You feel the link, the thread and it's a direct link to the person. You can feel the person or you can send along in that link the help, the energy, the support needed. Literally at that point, it's like a thread, a link, a point of contact with that person's consciousness. So, understanding how this works in the subtle worlds will help us to understand how powerful these symbols can be.

Sraddhalu (0:34:50)

The reality is that everything is a symbol. Through everything we are linking to other individuals, beings, powers, forces, events, spaces, whatever you like. The power of the symbol is enormous. Of course, you may not value the symbol. To the extent that you don't, you put a resistance. The symbol may still have a link but you refuse to look. You are immune to it or insensitive. It may still act but you may not notice. A lot depends on what is behind, the kind of energy which is behind the symbol and how deeply it is connected. Or you value that symbol immensely and therefore you are open to it energetically and therefore you receive its help that much more powerfully. Which is often the case when you go to a religious ceremony. Those who accept and believe in it are naturally more open to receiving the effect of the ceremony than those who are sceptical, who may feel something or may not at all, depending on the effectivity of the ceremony itself. But the fact that they're immune or unbelieving, it affects them less. So Mother makes this comment in the context of astrology, where she says that if you believe in it, if you pay attention to the planets, then the presiding energy behind those planets also pay more attention to you. And because they pay more attention to you, that influence affects you much more. So those who don't believe in it, who are naturally sceptical, have a kind of an automatic protection against such things. So this is something to keep in mind and I'm particularly pointing it to that act of erasing the name and number of a person from your phone list. It's actually cutting an occult link that exists. And that's why these things are so important. So don't think of it as merely practical. They have a ritual or an occult force behind these actions.

So I kind of drifted from this idea, but I was describing the effect in the aura of these different types of things and they can be seen, they can be felt and they affect you. I spoke also last time about the kind of effect it has and I will just quickly highlight certain things. Loss of free will because something else now compels you. Loss of access to higher states because you are plugging into lower states or lower grades of consciousness. But the third thing which I had mentioned was grooves of habit which form. And I want to touch upon this. Why this is so important? I am going to bring it in the context of our developmental stages. When you are growing, we can think of our personality as being formed through layers, building upon a previous layer. As a child, as a newborn baby, you are extremely vulnerable physically, extremely open psychologically. In fact, there is no formation of the psychological personality yet. And as a result, the protective energy of the parents is extremely important. Left free, exposed, bared to environmental influences without that protective energy, the child comes under assault. For no reason at all the child will be crying or will have nightmares because they're still living in a state of consciousness in which the subtle worlds are not yet closed. Their perception of subtle domains and physical domains are mixed. They may see things that you don't see, which for you are imaginations, but they're not. For them, they're vivid experiences and they may cry and you don't know why. So, instinctively you will see the parent's instinct is to embrace and hold the child to protect by surrounding, literally putting their energy around like a bubble, like a shell and a mother particularly has this very strong instinct because in the womb she was holding the child in that protective shell. Now the child is out, the energetic protection that she wishes to hold actually is an extension of her aura. So there's a subtle umbilical, psychological umbilical, energetic umbilical. And although the child goes away physically, she feels the stretch of that energy, and although doing some other work, she will feel the danger or the discomfort in the child and get pulled back like a cord pulling attention. And this goes on for quite a few years. It thins out over time but it never really goes away totally unless one takes special pains to separate and let go and free oneself. Even then a certain layer remains. I perhaps shared this experience here when Panditji's sister Mitrakka, she was in her last two years, she had a stroke and so one part, one side of her body was paralyzed, so she was in the bed and we were looking after her. One day suddenly she said, I don't know what's happening to me, I feel as if I'm going to die. She was fine physically, emotionally, healthy and then about we got a day later we got a message that her daughter had just passed away. Of course she did not know, we did not tell her here but the umbilical of the energy linking to her daughter was still there in some form and as her daughter was passing through that passage of, well, leaving the body, she felt that experience reflected in her. Of course, it doesn't mean that she would feel everything happening to her daughter all the time, but here was a significant, a really significant event that would, of course, affect her also quite deeply. But this is to say that these links are not casual. They can be quite deep. Sometimes there can be also influences, I will say, I won't use link, but influences and affinities which come from past lives, past relationships we may have had. And we may not always be conscious here or aware or even remember.

Sraddhalu (0:41:30):

So the point I was making is, the child is still held and the layers are still forming in this protection of the mother's aura or energy. And as the layers form, the child comes into his own and his individual personality becomes more distinct, concretized until his own aura is quite distinctly separate from the parental influence. And well, the umbilical may remain, but the aura is now separate and you have an individual ready to move out into the world. That process actually of the full growth into a stable individuality and after that you still grow but now you're an independent individual growing. That process may take up to the first 21 years typically. And I'm highlighting this because as those layers are forming, if something is introduced which damages, warps or twists one of these layers then the next layer forming covers the distortion but itself gets distorted and in attempt to compensate for the previous distortion and there's a kind of a layering and a ripple of distortions forming until the outer shell is complete but that knot may be quite deep inside and layered up in order to be able to correct it, you cannot correct the superficial distortions. You have to go back to the root knot in the personality and from there, so to say, undo the distortions. And this can be done. This is often done. Sometimes it is done spontaneously in the person's growth. They become conscious, oh, I have this tendency, I realise it comes from a certain experience or a certain strong association. And they begin to correct it. And this layering is important because the distortion gets covered up even as it affects other layers. There's a very deep symbol of this in the European tradition in what is classified as fairy tales. And many of these fairy tales which are very archetypal have profound spiritual symbolism which is forgotten. Sometimes even they have a magical message or magical knowledge behind which is an occult knowledge. So you have three little pigs and first attempt, second attempt, third attempt. Always in all the fairy tales there are three attempts and the third one succeeds. Why? Okay, perhaps it's archetypal, it has a magical connotation, it represents a deep truth on an occult level.

And so these tales have something important to communicate and this one which is called the Princess and the Pea. And in this story the the Prince Charming is looking for his ideal bride and the test which he makes is that he puts a tiny pea, little green, on the bed and then there are seven layers of bedding placed and when the princess sleeps on top of this bed, she is uncomfortable because she feels this pea through the seven layers. You see the symbolism straight away, the seven is an obvious symbol because for us the seven has the meaning of the seven planes or seven layers or seven, Sri Aurobindo has described seven ignorances, etc. But the suggestion immediately to the intuition is that the only sensitivity that you might have to sense through seven layers of a personality to catch a distortion and to feel uncomfortable about it that can only come from the psychic discrimination. All of our other faculties are layered. Within their domain, they are effective. Across their domain, less effective. But they don't always catch a distortion, a little ripple, a little bump, a little knot. And it can be a tiny one covered up across seven layers, but the psychic will sense, ah, something is not okay here. Of course, in the very act of sensing, it will have the power also to influence, to soften, to dissolve, even to release the knot. Or it can call for help where it is not capable. It can detect and call for help of the higher spiritual action which will come and dissolve the knot. But in this story what I see is immediately the psychic discrimination, perception, sensitivity which is highlighted in the story. But I'm pointing this out because of this idea of layering, of a knot hidden through layers. And this is the reason why the message which I want to convey is this. Any damage done in developmental stages affects you for life and is far harder to undo. But once your individuality is sufficiently formed and stabilised, you can expose it to a lot of, let's say, potential damage and it would have the capacity generally to heal itself unless it is an unstable personality.

Sraddhalu (0:46:33):

So in most cases what happens, especially with strongly formed individualities, even though they are exposed to various kinds of harmful influences, they find their way, they correct themselves, their aura gets healed and one need not worry too much, but be extremely protective of the earlier developmental stages. And especially one of the greatest instruments we have today, which is the epitome of our humanness, is the refinement of the mind. A damage done in the formative stages of the mind is very difficult to undo because of the nature of the mind to be able to deceive itself. It is blind to its own limitations. It is blind to its own weaknesses. So for example, if you're very forgetful, you might recognize, yes, I am forgetful. But if your discrimination is wrong, if you tend to exaggerate a part unbalanced from the whole, you do not have in yourself the ability to recognize what the distortion is in your thinking. And this is generally what happens when exposed to drugs or to other forms of addiction. The character of these things is it distorts reality by exaggerating something or by erasing something else, but it basically creates an imbalance of some kind, in perception. That imbalance remains. So I've seen a somebody who's, or people who are in a state of mild intoxication or even under drug influence. Suddenly they'll say, oh wow, this is such a fantastic thing. Or they'll start laughing like crazy over what is the most stupid, not even a joke, a non-joke. And they'll start laughing as if it's the greatest joke. And for them it still, it actually feels like something wonderful. And so they will say, oh I feel so free. But about what? About something which is actually quite stupid. The distortion of reality that takes place, they perceive or they feel as a freedom, but it's actually a distortion of reality. It's not a true freedom. And that distortion leaves its imprint. There is an imbalance in the formation of the mind, and this one can perceive. I've seen this in people who had strong exposure to drugs early on. And I don't mean by strong something very intense but enough that they took several times and it left a certain some distortion I've mentioned this before I think, in one of the discussions so be very careful about this developmental stage and please speak to young people about it and say that protect yourself until you're sufficiently individualised at least at the very least.

One of the things which I mentioned last time, the grooves of habit when they come up. And all of this, remember, our discussion primarily is about spiritual life, its effect on spiritual life. You have other effects for someone who's not interested in higher things and we're not going to focus too much on that. Here the grooves that happen, and I mentioned last time the example of swinging of the hips. So in a bhajan or kirtan, you'll find those who are used to having done, well, swinging their hips with exciting music, well, they will tend to start swinging their hips. But I missed this observation last time. Those who have not been through that experience, you will find they will start swinging above, chest and above. They'll start swinging here. You will never see little children spontaneously swinging their hips. It can happen in teenage. Once the sexual excitation can kick in. Even there, left to themselves, if there was not an external provocation of cinema or some other example, most people would not swing their hips provocatively. Most people would feel uncomfortable doing it. But once you've started that exercise and it's become a part of your normal behaviour, then that dominates in a way that the higher movement, which would have spontaneously happened, is overridden by this. And this is important because when you open yourself to a spiritual experience, also especially if the experience has a strong character, they feel overwhelmed on these levels where they are naturally more open. So all of these are to kind of complete the theme of addiction and I hope we won't have to return to this and we can move on to the next series of questions.

Alina (0:50:54):
Could we also give a more closer attention to the attachment or obsession to video games? Because nowadays a lot of teenagers are living in this bubble world and you cannot get them out from.

Sraddhalu (0:51:12):
You will occasionally see interesting news items about video games. One I saw about someone in South Korea was playing a video game for three days continuously and then he died of heart attack while playing the game because he had not eaten or drunk or slept for three days. And you have to ask yourself, what is it in the game that can override all of your survival instincts only through engagement of the mind. You are hungry, you're thirsty, you're sleepy, but you keep pushing and pushing. What is it that can do that? And where is the hook? Of course, it's in the mind and the vital, because it's not primarily in the physical. If you look at the design of a game, it's designed to be able to hook you because the company that makes the game earns more if you play more. The longer you play the more they earn. So if you start playing a game and in the very first attempt that you make you fail to go to the next level, you'll probably stop. Oh, this is too difficult. So initially they have to make it easy enough and even if you fail, they say, Oh yeah, you are stronger than your peer. Come on, let's move to the next level. They have to suck you in. And I'm reminded of a phrase, Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly, inviting you to come in. Here's something free. Enjoy this, enjoy this, enjoy this. And a series of crumbs of enjoyment take you deeper and deeper into the web until you're in the centre of it and now have no way to come out. It's designed that way. And there's a lot of psychology which involves the design of addiction itself to give you rewards. And in the pattern of the play, the game senses when you might be losing interest and immediately they reward you with some bonuses somewhere. And suddenly you are given an opportunity that you might lose if you don't do the next step and that's the hook. You'll see similar things that is used for marketing and even advertising. I get this all the time with I don't want to name these companies to give them importance but one of these online purchasing company which is quite powerful today, they keep giving an offer - do this in the next two days otherwise you will lose a bonus of hundred rupees. So they want me to play music on one of their sites and just play one song and they will give me a cash back of hundred rupees. And of course I would say why not hundred rupees it's worth having extra right? So you just go and play a piece of music and so that's where you are hooked. And I have to consciously bring in the thinking mind, rational mind, no they're not doing this for your benefit. They want to hook you into that particular pattern of behaviour. They want to increase the numbers of clients now using that service and so on. And I make a choice. I'm not going to waste what 30 seconds or a minute. Of course, once I start playing one piece of music, I'll be hooked for several minutes. So let's say I'm not going to waste 5 or 10 minutes or maybe much more of my time for that purpose, knowing that this is the game they play and I have to consciously disengage. If I don't, the instinct pulls me because it's a reward and a reward where there's a time lock. You will see this again on online purchase sites. They will say, oh, you have just come in when we have a special offer. Buy this within the next one hour and you'll get a 20% discount. But once you cross the one hour, you won't get it. So you're in a hurry and there's a tension. The high of the tension is like a kick, a high of a drug kick. Of course, it's a stimulant, not so much a drug, but it's a stimulant kick, which makes you then do more things which bypass your thinking logic. So in the design of the game is this structure and very deeply designed psychologically. They have... I've met some of these psychologists whose job it is to create these traps for you. And there's a lot of knowledge of human behaviour which goes into it.

The only way out is consciously choosing, which means your awareness engaged losing itself in activity must be able to pull back, stand back and say okay now I have to draw a line and end it. It's similar to what's happening nowadays and it's somewhat a new experience for me. Once you start watching streaming services, you watch a television serial for example, earlier the serial would end and then they would say next episode next week. You switched off the TV and walked away because you were not interested in the next next other programs. But today with streaming services, as one episode completes, it starts the next immediately. And of course, they have used a hook. Something very dangerous happens. You don't know. A lot of uncertainty. Let me see how it starts in the next episode just to get feel of that challenge or that danger to understand. And so you wait until it starts and before you know it, 20 minutes or half an hour has passed. So the way they hook you is now coming into online watching patterns also. And the only way is you have to consciously separate, take the poise of the witness consciousness, step back. Ah yes, this is a design, this is a game, this is intended to hook you and I'm master of my life, I will exercise my freedom for what I know is better, I will press the stop button. You have to do that again and again to form a new habit.

Alina (0:57:03):
Yeah, because of this virtual groups attraction, to be part again of a group or a game. And I also have a next question, which is related, but I will just read all the Kazi's questions for now. Is this the reason why stand-up comedy works in a group? Many jokes are not funny if you're listening to them alone.

Sraddhalu (0:57:33):
And this is in the discussion we had about the group energy and how that carries, yes.

Alina (0:57:38):
Exactly. Another question from Kazi. Seems like political campaigns exploit the blurring of the aura in their rallies. Is there an occult side to political propaganda? Are there any occult ways by political opinions of the masses are influenced? And can mental contact with a person on a drug high cause the high without physical consumption of drugs to other people? And a last question, we could say that one is lowered in consciousness even if one goes to places where people get high on drugs, on dance, on social behaviours or other actions.

Sraddhalu (0:58:36):
Okay. Yes, I think these are all in continuation of the discussion last time about the group energy which carries you, which pulls you, influences you to make decisions which you would not have made if you were not infected by the group energy. So yes, certainly it works in comedy also and it's the reason why you will find in many of the series which are supposed to be comic, they will put what is called a laugh track. Sometimes it's a live audience, sometimes it's just pre-recorded laughs. So in the TV series somebody says something which is supposed to be a joke. Often you might not notice it as a joke, but at that moment there's a pause and there's the laugh track. So something in you laughs or smiles at least when you hear the laugh track. You move to identify with that group energy. So you already have smiled a little bit. The next joke you move from the smile to a slight open mouth. The third joke you might go, ha! And so it's pulling you into a behaviour of laughter without you realising it. And it's useful if you want to enjoy that more, to laugh more. Yes, it's useful. But it's the same group behaviour. There's an attempt to influence your behaviour by creating an identification with a group which is not there physically, but which is there energetically for you. So some of the series I know for a fact that they used to play them on a studio with a live audience, record the people's responses, and then overlay that on the audio track of the actual series when it was broadcast. Now, you may think it's just a recording of laughter. No, it's not. A recording is also a link in energy. Otherwise, you would not feel a shift in state of consciousness when you listen to a recording. Isn't it? Think about it this way. Let's say there's a beautiful music which is extremely uplifting by a master musician, let's say, whatever your favourite might be. That music was recorded in a studio, converted into digital bits, numbers, edited, modified. Now all the numbers have been changed. Just the fact of pushing up the amplification or passing through a filter, every single number and pattern of number has changed. That was then transferred to a CD, which is just notches of cuts, laser cuts, in a fine foil sandwiched between two plastic sheets. That was then read by a laser in your CD player, converted to pulses, passed through further processing, and come to your loudspeakers, which is air moving that hits your eardrums, enters your brain as electrical signals, creating the impression of the music. That's what's happened. Those people who played it are long dead, perhaps. All you've got is digital imprints of shaking vibrations. But as you listen, you pay attention and you enter into the music experience. And you may even feel the people who were playing it, their emotions, their energies. And you get carried away, uplifted, influenced, whatever, positive or negative. How does that happen? It's not the physical reality of the music. It's the energetic link behind of which we spoke before. That comes through or you tune in into that which is still a living reality in the Brahman, in the totality of the universe. And even if it was recorded 50 years ago, it's a living reality in the eternal now of the Brahman, isn't it? And so the act of listening carefully, a part of you tunes into the energy behind and the experience behind and can enter it. Now this is something which you have to recognize it does not happen totally entirely unless you make an effort. So you can walk into a room where someone is playing music. After a few seconds you may say that sounds nice. Then till then well it was just sound. That sounds nice, you pay more attention. Now what's your attention, your concentration? You pay more attention. Oh, is that such and such a singer? Oh, I love her voice. And your heart opens, you enter more deeply in the identification. And then suddenly there's a familiarity, there's an intensity. And at that moment you forget yourself, you forget the room you are in, and you are as if one with the music. That's when you have identified with that person’s experience, which was perhaps recorded whenever it was years ago, but is present now, is made alive, pulled into active activation and manifestation in your consciousness, isn't it? That's what has happened. See, the singer has come alive in your consciousness or has manifested or has got activated in what was earlier inactive reality waiting has been activated by your opening and inviting it into you. Isn't it? Once you understand this, you understand how those influences work. And so yes, even things can be made more funny for you by the fact of participation in a group energy which is laughing and enjoying themselves, it won't be as effective if it was not a live studio audience. If it was merely a recording of people being made to laugh, okay, let's laugh for the next five seconds. I record it and I patch it on. The link is not so strong. But the people enjoying that particular series as they watched it, as you are watching it, the affinity and alignment energetically is so much stronger and that is so much more effective to make you laugh. And so yes, there's a fact. You are and then if you're in a group setting physically others are laughing you go uncontrolled in laughter. So I've had this experience a few times. I don't laugh very easily in a loud way. Even when something is really good. I may go ah, that's and it stops there. But I found when I was in a group where people were laughing, I was laughing so uncontrollably that my stomach was aching. I couldn't breathe. It was so intense. But I could never have that on my own. And that's because of that group energy which is supporting, filling and pushing you to that edge. Yes, it's interesting.

Sraddhalu (1:05:10):

But then the same principle you can exploit for other kinds of influence and Kazi's question about political campaigns. And you will see often again there's a psychology behind. You get people to come and sit very close to each other. You put an entertaining program before the politician speaks. So or something provocative emotionally to put you in an emotional state which is non-irrational. Then the politician comes and speaks, again, not sensible things, not logical things, but emotive issues. And you'll see it's part of political strategy to sway a public with emotions and not with logic. If you tell them, you know, logically it would make sense if we reduced our investment in this field and increased investment in those fields and our economy will be that much better. We will have more freedom, more free time and more resources for people's good health. You will never get voted because it's too rational. It does not compel you. What compels you? Powerful emotions. That one, he is the big crook. I am going to stop him. That excitation is what is going to compel you to vote. Unfortunately, all our political electioneering is resting on this kind of raw energy of excitation.

And I remember it was an incident shared by former president of Singapore. As you know, he was a devotee of Sri Aurobindo and he shared this experience he had. He was at that time a political leader. He had not yet become president. He was a union leader, I think, or a political leader of some kind at that point. And he said his first opening to spirituality came like this. He was in a public political rally, huge mass of people and he was playing them royally. Now, this part you have to understand. The politician who is doing this emotional excitation, often these are people with very raw strong vitalities. When they excite you like this, they are themselves quite calm. They may speak with powerful voice but they remain utterly calm internally because they have to wield you. They have to hold the Purusha poise. If they are shaken, they can't shake you. So they have to be solid and they have to pull and push you to cause this shaking. So they have very strong and stable vitalities. So he was in this high and he was saying that he was playing them royally. The whole audience was literally eating out of his palms or he was playing them emotionally and he used this word. He said it was an orgiastic intensity. And then in the midst of this he said, from above it was as if a voice spoke to him, you really are enjoying this, aren't you? And he was so stunned by this experience. What! So remember it's not just a voice. If it was just a voice he would have said, oh who put loudspeaker there? It was obviously a higher consciousness which woke him to a different reality. Suddenly he stopped and then said after that I don't know what happened, I could not continue anymore and then he completed his speech came back and then his colleagues said, what happened there? you had the audience all excited and then suddenly you lost it, what happened there and he didn't know what to say that's what began his Spiritual journey, interestingly. And then, of course, he came in to know of Sri Aurobindo, read him, and it turned his life entirely. But what spoke, it was not just the voice. You see, what it said was, you really are enjoying this, aren't you? Who would say that? A part of you that thinks this is not worth it, or something is not right. Something higher which said you have a higher purpose. It's not just this. This is not your greatest reality or priority or power of influencing people. There's a greater work to be done and of course he began to do that subsequently and then he rose all the way to become President of Singapore and fundamentally changed the whole character of that country in a way that raised it to the level, one of the greatest administrative systems that the world can look to and say, ah, yes, that's an example we can learn from. So the nature of the work rose from just this emotional play. But yes, there is this occult side to political propaganda and a lot of it has also beings which act through these.

Sraddhalu (1:10:02):

You see, when you deal with that kind of vitality, either you have it or you are tied to an energy which uses you as a vehicle. Many of the most powerful political people have a strong Asuric character and some of them one can just see straight away. And I don't want to take names because these things are sensitive. But the moment you see somebody who stays in power for years together on emotional excitation only and doing nothing else, nothing really worthwhile in terms of action done. You know that there are energies behind, sometimes you can sense the character of the energy, then you know what it is. And they use people. Sometimes an individual who has an aspiration to do something aligns with an energy which wants a similar thing and they join. But yes, so there's always an occult side to these things. Some of them, particularly now, in certain groups, as we have spoken before, are also part of the secret societies which use occultism. So they will use symbols with their hands and fingers which project the symbolism or the power of their tradition or lineage or the being that they worship and a lot of it is unfortunately of the vital beings and not so healthy. I have known also, in fact I had a very strange meeting once. One of my friends had taken me to, he was at that time exploring all these kinds of occult things and he had met some interesting people and he was very keen I should meet. He took me to meet a guy who claimed himself to be an Aghori Tantrik. Now, these are pretty extreme Tantriks who live sometimes in the cremation grounds and things like that. Pretty dark stuff. But the guy was extremely compassionate and loving. So I saw what that Aghori tradition really represented. You know, we are used to the weird images associated, but I saw also what he had in terms of sheer devotion to the Divine and even compassion to people. But he was in a path which was a very crude, raw kind of energy. And what he shared was, he said, he showed pictures because this is his little place which he called his ashram and he had pictures of him doing various things. And he said, you know, that kind of ceremony is very powerful. You can win the whole election on it. And of course, I get lots of politicians who come to me. So I asked him, how much do they pay, and he gave me some figure I believe it was 20 lakhs in those days, it was like 20 years ago. But this also happens that people hire those who they think have an access to occult power to help them swing votes. Now how would that work? It's an interesting idea. So here's somebody who does a ritual and it's supposed to affect people's behaviour in a way that it swings votes. Can it even work? Yes, it can to the extent that people are suggestible to a hypnotic influence. I don't know exactly what the mechanism is. Perhaps they have several kinds of mechanism. One might be to associate a being with this person to infuse his energy with some other influence. The other might be an influence which is independent of the politician to swing their thoughts at that time. I don't really know. Perhaps all it does is it acts on a group which is undecided and gets them to swing. So it doesn't always have a strong guarantee. It all depends on the kind of method used.

Alina (1:13:33):
Can I ask a question?

Sraddhalu (1:13:35):
Yes.

Alina (1:13:35):
I'm sorry to interfere, but I heard some years ago, because of some very important sport games, and they wanted to keep people under, to be dull and very quiet, so they even said it loud that they were going to activate these antennas which keep people under control and quietly seated without provoking any agitation or rebellion or fights. So if they are using these type of devices to control the masses on a sport field, maybe they could control it also in big cities where we are already full of antennas and a lot of other devices unknown or unseen.

Sraddhalu (1:14:21):
Yes, it takes it to a different dimension, which is not so much occult but, well, still hidden, but more material, that in fact by playing the brain with electromagnetic energies, one can swing the person's state of consciousness. The original research for this goes back to the 1950s, where certain frequencies beamed at a human being and then modulated in certain ways could shift the person's state from a state of full wakefulness to a state of half sleep or full sleep or an intermediate level which is equivalent to hypnosis in which the person was totally suggestible to whatever was said to them and they would simply say yes to anything they were asked to do. And the fact that you could control a person's consciousness state, wakefulness state, like this, basically playing the brainwaves, basically means that it's a technology that you can pinpoint a person with a narrow beam or with a wide beam influence an entire crowd. So if a crowd is going rowdy and wild with excitation, you can deem this and then turn down the level of excitation and suddenly the people will find their excitation going away and they'll become quiet and calm or they'll get sleepy or they may be put under a suggestible state of hypnosis and then told, okay now crowd let's move aside and they will just obey as if hypnotised. Yes, this is possible. This has actually been done. Like I said, it's a technology which was originally experimented and demonstrated in the 50s and there's been a very long time to optimise and perfect this technology. The particular frequencies used for this purpose are very close to current electromagnetic frequencies used in mobile phones. Now in the actual mobile phone protocol of communication, there's nothing obvious that would allow for this. But there is no reason why you cannot put in the circuitry of the same broadcasters an additional component that can be activated when you want to modify those frequencies in just the right way, modulate them is the word, in just the right way that it influences the state of people around, in that range of that broadcast. You would still use the mobile phone normally because that modulation won't change this communication, interestingly, because that will only modify amplitude, whereas this communication is with frequency modification. So your mobile phone call is still going on but the overall wave intensity is such that it modifies your state. Well if you can do this technologically you can do it occultly also, the principle being essentially the same.

Sraddhalu (1:17:30):

So I wanted to complete this discussion with one important point. Just as I said that you could hire, let's say a magician to do something and this is not so common in India perhaps but in the West where there are these occult societies, they often have the entire power of the occult lodge directed to a specific outcome. Sometimes they may use a ritual for gathering energy to aim at an outcome or even aim at a person that they want to harm. And I don't want to take names but in one of the countries where there was a particular religious group which was very powerful, politically active around India, there was a ritual that they used to speak of, where they would break one thousand coconuts with certain incantations in order to kill a political rival. And yes, it's there, the whole technology or the method is there. Of course, the other side, if the person is strong enough, conscious enough, has a higher protection, they can also protect. But then the whole battle shifts from a physical to an occult domain. It's still a battle. It's a struggle of forces. Similarly, the Catholic Church has actually a mechanism of cursing somebody and again with a ritual associated and they speak about it openly that they can do this and they do actually do it. I'm also going to connect it to Alina's comment of the sports field. Many sports persons draw draw upon such means in order to win a match. And especially countries which are known to have a strong base of magical practices, they tap up, draw upon all these things. My point in sharing all this is that it's not just political propaganda. Wherever there are powerful energies and what is at stake is power, political or otherwise. There are energies which want to use every means possible to attain to those results. We just have to know when it happens. It's always been there. Nothing new really. And if we are conscious, well, we can also invoke a protection or we spontaneously protected by the fact that we are conscious. I want to come to the next two questions which are more related to the state of consciousness spreading to others in a drug high. So can mental contact with the person on a drug high cause a high without physical consumption? In principle yes, if you understand this crowd influence. If everybody around you is in an altered state of consciousness certainly it will have an influence on you. How much? It depends. If nothing else, it will have the effect of agitating you or it will have the effect of that state in them penetrating or opening gaps in your consciousness if you plug into that group energy. You could of course isolate from the group energy and be relatively immune or if you are very powerful or very conscious, you can invoke a higher energy into this very susceptible drug high group and shift their state or open them to a different kind of experience or even navigate their high experience into specific regions or kinds of experience. So this is what a skilled Shaman would do. Now there are not too many of those around today, but a skilled Shaman will actually lead a person using the drug as a way of breaking the boundary of the physical consciousness, opening them to the vital worlds and then lead them to a specific outcome or a specific place of an experience, which was the point of the whole Shamanic trip in any case. And the same would happen if there is a lowering of consciousness in that group, you will find yourself dulled and so I think I've given examples of this before, but yes one can be contaminated positively or negatively but also one can reverse the contamination in this. I'm wondering if either of you Joel or Alina would like to share anything about this.

Alina (1:21:58):

Joel?

Joel (1:21:59):
No.

Sraddhalu (1:22:01):
Have you ever had that you went into a high when someone around you was in the high?

Joel (1:22:05):
I don't remember, no.

Sraddhalu (1:22:07):
Okay.

Alina (1:22:13):
May be its a good time for us to stop here? And we still invite our viewers from now on to send questions beforehand, to our email, integralstudies.in[at]gmail.com. And thank you, Sraddhalu for bringing more information and broader perspective on these subjects. If you could say something, how we could protect ourselves better and how we could, even if we are surrounded by bad vibes or bad energies, how we could re-center ourselves and maybe we could close up with your advice.

Sraddhalu (1:23:09):
Yes, there are two questions which came up in association with all these discussions we've had, beginning with that whole vaccination story to now. And one of them is of a person who says, what to do because of the fear that we have from this? When you understand what the world is like or how these things work, or the kind of dangers we are at as a collective in humanity or as individuals, it creates fear. What do you do with that fear from the fact of knowing? And another person who had a similar question, they said, but the fact of knowing renders us more helpless. Because we know we can do nothing, and so I would rather not know. And the two questions are aligned, and I want to really address this. You are more helpless if you don't know, because then you are a victim. If you do know, even if you feel fear, then at least knowledge will allow you to reduce the effect or even to be free totally. So my preference is always to grow in knowledge, grow in awareness but with that growth of awareness you have also to deepen and broaden your base of stability, in order to be able to really appreciate what's happening. Not knowing, that thing will still continue as it has gone on for thousands of years. By knowing, there's an opportunity first to be free, but second, there's an opportunity now to change. And maybe you can't do something right now. Rather than feeling frustrated, wait for your time. Meanwhile, build your strength, prepare your action and at the very least you can act by invoking through prayer a higher help on that situation. I do believe that if all of humanity were to say we want this situation to change, or let's say even a significant majority of humanity were to ask for that help, immediately there would be a shift in consciousness. Because not just the help would get a support in humanity, but that collective alignment of a positive purpose would be strong enough to overwhelm the alignment of the negative energies. And it will at least tilt the tide of the struggle. So yes, you should know. And if you feel fear, well, you have to change how you're responding to knowledge. Rather, recognize that if you didn't know, this would still go on. By your knowing, you're giving a chance for something higher to change it. And you have nothing to fear because nothing has changed fundamentally in the situation itself because you know it. So, why fear? There's even the opposite. I had somebody tell me this when she got vaccinated. She said, oh, it was such a relief to get vaccinated. For the first time I felt safe. Now think about somebody who has just understood the dangers of vaccination. It felt, I was so miserable getting vaccinated. For the first time I realised that I was vulnerable. What's the difference between these two? It's how you're forming your relationship with that knowledge, isn't it? Well perhaps in ignorance you can say I felt safe, but the point is you chose to be safe, to feel safe. Why? Because of a vaccination. You could equally choose to be safe because of a help that you invoke. You could choose to be safe because you have the divine presence within you. You could choose to be safe because you have the Divine presence filling you, filling all things, filling the whole universe at the very foundation of all reality.

Sraddhalu (1:26:56):

You choose where you place your attention, where you place your priorities, what in the experience of reality is for you more powerful or more important, which is your priority. become aware of things which are nasty, even show you danger, collectively, individually, whatever form it may be, consciously lean upon that which is the greatest safety. You will recall this incident that the Mother narrates when she first went to the Theons in Clemson in Algeria for learning occultism and Mr. Théon came to take her from the wherever the train or whatever it was and as he took her to his villa he said to her, ‘now you are totally under my control, aren't you afraid?’, and Mother said simply, ‘no, because the Divine presence is within me’. And then she says, he became white with fear. He met somebody who was not afraid, who was immune to his power. What was the immunity? Not your body, because your body could be cut by a knife. Not your mind or your emotions, because they could be hurt by a knock. But the Divine presence within you. And when you align yourself to that, you share in its immunity and its immunity fills you to whatever degree. But since the bulk of these dangers that we're speaking of or fears or difficulties are primarily psychological, they're not really physical. The immunity of the presence acts in that space instantaneously and far more effectively when they're in the physical. So this should be our recourse always. Grow in knowledge, understand the world. Being blind to the reality is not going to help because eventually your consciousness has to grow and widen to experience the totality of the cosmos. That's our purpose, to participate in the full cosmic play. And choosing to hide, choosing to limit your perception of reality is pointless. It only stops your growth or warps your growth. We accept to learn whatever comes our way. We will know, we will understand from a calm inner equality. But lean on the strength of the presence within you. Call for that help when you don't feel it within you. You have at least that within you which can call, which is your psychic being, your soul or your aspiration. In whatever way you feel, call for the help within and in to out. Let its influence fill you. Immunity, unshakable stability, solidity, protection is a natural consequence of the Divine presence activated. If things from outside can enter and activate, certainly that which is inside you already, which is you essentially, can activate far more completely, effectively and permanently. But this we have to practise, not in the time of crisis only, but practice daily. Give yourself, if nothing else, just one minute every day. Become conscious of the aspiration, of the presence, of your deepest sense of I, whatever you feel most easy at that point, or simply your love for the Divine, for the Divine Mother, whichever way is easier for you. Concentrate, become conscious, and gently let it grow and fill, not only the boundaries of your heart and your mind, not only the boundaries of your physical body, but extending into the space around you, which we will call the aura or subtle body. Let it fill you entirely as and form a protective cocoon, which is under its influence. And then with that concentration, with that intention, with that aspiration, you enter life. And it may take just a minute. If you enjoy it, stay longer. Nourish yourself with the Presence. If you don't have time, move on. But this will be there, active within you always through the day. We can take a few more minutes to concentrate on this.

[Alina] Namaste. Thank you.

[Sraddhalu] Namaste. Thank you.