Hi and thank you to you and James, I watch some videos on YouTube and I got the essence of the Enlightenment book and have yet to read it (slowly) due to as of now finishing studying non duality from David R Hawkins.
My question is about a year ago I had a huge lapse of judgment and let a street preacher pray for me. He then sneakily sunk his hand into my aura deeply and proceeded to list off the 7 main demons in Christianity’s Hell. I then unfortunately for the past year have been dealing with intense ice cold burning, shaking whatever I sit on and growling/ hissing/ knocking- common place negative entity supernatural stuff.
I have a Vedanta friend from Australia who is into James’ work and he says I’m not subject to anything like this due to being pure awareness / universal consciousness and need deeper subtle surrender to God.
My question being is there any recommended mantra/prayer that can be said to cast this thing off and out for good- luckily it’s not in my mind or will just latched onto subtle body/aura. I’ve played the lotus sutra to no avail but since I still have an ego and not in deep enough surrender it shakes me especially before I try to sleep. (This isn’t any form of psychosis or mental issue) that’s been verified. Since this was a “Christian” street preacher” I had a Catholic priest bless my house and it didn’t totally work.
Thank you for any advice from you or James so much.
Sundari: Your friend’s advice is correct. As the Self you are not subject to fear thoughts or any thoughts. All thoughts, positive and negative, are objects known to you. An object is defined as anything other than or known to you, pure Awareness. Mantras may help if they are identity mantras, i.e., you use them as a tool to take a stand as Awareness and think the opposite thought. They will not be of much use if you are using them as a defense against negative forces you think are real. Real defined as that which is always present and unchanging, a definition that can only ever be applied to nondual Awareness, satya. Meaning you, the knower of all experiences, i.e. the knower of that which is apparently real: duality/mithya.
So what you need here is some discrimination between what ‘belongs’ to you as the Self, satya, and what belongs to the ego, mithya. To understand this teaching, you need to sign on and commit to self-inquiry into your true nature as the Self, and what that actually means for you as the person, or ego. We have instructions on our website for how to do that, and we are happy to guide your inquiry. You must be properly taught by a qualified teacher and understand what is required to succeed at self-inquiry, assuming of course that your main motivation is freedom from fear and limitation. I.e., freedom from the limited neurotic personal entity identified with the body/mind.
It is clear you are not psychotic, but these psychic disturbances are occurring in your mind because everything we experience does, there is no other option. The mind is the Subtle body. All experiences are just thoughts, nothing more. The only question regarding how we experience anything is whether we are identified with what we experience, or not. You say you still have an ego, but as pure Awareness you do not ‘have an ego’. The ego (personal or conceptual identity) is no more than a thought appearing in you, Awareness. Just like these psychic disturbances are thoughts appearing in you.
They are not you because as stated, the Self is the knower of all thoughts, including the thought that you have an ego which is under some kind of spell. It is under a spell, but the spell is called ignorance, or Maya, the hypnosis of duality. The mind is incredibly malleable and open to suggestion when it is under the spell of Maya. Once an idea gets lodged in the mind, thoughts can play out in positive or negative ways in the physical body, which is also, just another thought appearing in you, Awareness.
The apparent reality is all a dream within a dream; none of it is real. ‘Psychic phenomena’ of whatever ilk are subjective psychological (thought/emotional) projections in pratibasika, your subjective reality. You have objectified these thought entities and identified with them, so you take them to be real. But they are no more than an externalization of fear thoughts; they have power over you because you have given them power.
A happy life as a person is all about thought and emotion management. The mind is our primary instrument for knowing anything. It is so powerful, it has the unique capacity to convert heaven into hell and hell into heaven. A person with every convenience, coming from a good karmic life, can feel miserable and tortured and a person weighed down with so many problems can feel totally happy and peaceful. The quality of our life is dependent on this powerful organ, the mind. Isvara has given us an exquisite instrument with which to experience life, but it has a serious drawback inherent in its nature which prevents most of us from experiencing the joy of our true nature as Awareness.
The serious drawback of the mind is that without our permission, it generates continuous involuntary thoughts we have no control over. With or without our involvement, the mind, which is supposed to be our instrument – we are the owner— acts on its own, of its own volition. The mind is supposed to, and can, produce deliberate thoughts of our own choosing, but unless we understand it and know how to manage it, its nature is to produce and churn out thoughts continuously. It is simply a machine, and this is how it is made. If fear thoughts dominate the mind, they will come at you in every form and the mind will just keep churning them out. The more you invest in them, the more entrenched they become. The mind is so powerful it can externalize them into psychic entities that can appear very real indeed. They are like squatters in the mind, and they refuse to leave. They come from an unknown and unknowable place, the unconscious—Causal Body, or Macrocosmic Ignorance (the collective Unconscious).
If you truly want to understand your mind and manage it so that peace of mind is your constant experience, you need to commit to self-inquiry. Self-knowledge will take care of these thoughts in due course. Reclaim the power and real estate of the mind by giving it a project—noble work. Don’t give these projections any credence whatsoever. Keep the mind focused on the scripture, on the Self. If you don’t have an altar, create one. Practice devotion daily. Chant the names of the Lord, read the Song of the Self out loud that I attached for you, especially when these seemingly real thought entities appear. Take a stand in Awareness as Awareness, practice the opposite thought with courage. You, the self, are Lord of the Manor, owner of the mind. Those imposter thoughts will play out as long as they play out and one day, they will be gone. No trace of their existence will remain.
You are one of the lucky ones who have, by good grace that is not your doing, stumbled upon the true manual for life, Vedanta. This manual contains not only all the operating instructions, it also explains the nature of the mind, what it is, and the forces that run it.When involuntary thoughts kidnap the mind, it means the mind is not available for our use in self-inquiry, or for much else. We do actions without thinking, as an absent-minded or mindless person, “living in absentia.” Managing the mind means managing the forces that run it (which are called the gunas) not according to your understanding or interpretation but according to the scripture of nonduality.
Trust only the teachings, not your mind. There’s no magic to Vedanta. Vedanta shows us that the mind is our primary instrument for experiencing, realizing, and actualizing ourselves in this world. It all boils down to owning your mind as your primary instrument, and repeatedly and consistently reconditioning it with thoughts that are true—in other words, that produce peace of mind. Any seeming failure to realize or actualize Self-knowledge or to have a peaceful life, is only due to lack of knowledge and incorrect thoughts that dominate the mind/emotions/intellect. The simple solution is re-conditioning the mind with chosen thoughts that are aligned with the truth and based in Self-knowledge. This is called volitional, deliberate, thinking.
When skillfully managed, the mind will produce peace of mind and allow us to express and enjoy the beauty that we are in our day to day life, no matter what life dishes out to us. When you feel bad, for any reason, you can convert your emotional distress/fear and mental agitation into gratitude and peace through managing the gunas with volitional thinking. This entails watching out with hawk’s eyes for the habitual emotional thought patterns dominating your mind and creating your negative state of mind and suffering—and transforming those thought patterns into new thoughts of your own choosing.
Michael: Wow thanks for sending to James and what an amazing response beyond thank you for this – This answer sounds like it was from Buddha himself who was said to be beset by “demons” feeling as if his bones were breaking / mara or Christ temptation in desert/ sweating blood in the garden.. Ultimately it’s all in mind and my responsibility to reject it -most likely picked up from the field in which these lower consciousness people I opened and subjected my psyche/ aura too transferred ultimately all illusion and distraction to God aka Pure Awareness.
Sundari: You are welcome. What is important for you to take on is that in order to fully grasp the teaching on Awareness so that Self-knowledge assimilates is that you need to commit yourself to self-inquiry. Intellectual knowledge will only get you to the door of Self-knowledge. In order for the subject/object split to dissolve, the mind must be purified and properly taught, or it will continue to interpret the nondual teachings of Vedanta through its own filters. You cannot read your way to freedom. You say you have been studying nonduality with David Hawkins, and I could be mistaken, but to our knowledge, he is a Neo-Advaita teacher. He does not teach the whole methodology of Vedanta. The Neo’s leave out most of the teaching on satya – mithya, and it is almost impossible for moksa to obtain with it.
Much love
Sundari
