​What is the difference between us and ghosts – why are they afraid of the holy name?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, the two work together. Thank you.
I have heard that ghosts are afraid to be near holy name or to enter temples. What is the difference between us and ghosts? Whenever the ghost question comes up, it makes people very interested and a lot of questions come up. So, I will give you a PowerPoint presentation on ghosts to satisfy all your questions.
So, we all have three levels of being. If you see center is the soul, then around that is the subtle body, around that is the gross body. Normally, the soul along with the subtle body live in a particular gross body.
At the time of death, the soul and the subtle body leave the gross body and enter into some other body. Now, in the case of ghosts, what essentially happens is that the soul along with the subtle body, they leave the gross body, but they do not get a new gross body. So, how a person becomes a ghost? So, what has happened is the gross body has been left, that means the person has died.
So, once the person has died, then the subtle body and the soul, they are meant to go to a new body. But the body that we have, it is a facility for the soul to execute its desires. And this facility is provided based on certain karmic credits.
So, for example, if a person say commits suicide, that person was supposed to live till the age of 60. But say that person at the age of 30 because of frustration commits suicide. Now, by one’s destiny, one is going to get the next body as per one’s karmic qualifications after 30 more years.
And for this 30 years, the person was supposed to live in this particular world, but they have destroyed this body. So, now they have destroyed this body. So, they cannot live in this body, but they do not have the karma to get the next body.
So, then they exist in a disembodied condition. That means, when the soul is there with the subtle body, but without the gross body, that is the ghostly state of existence. So, how are ghosts different from us? They do not have a gross body like we have.
And often ghosts are portrayed as very fearsome creatures, very frightening creatures. But ghosts are not just, they are not so much dangerous creatures as they are frustrated creatures. Why frustrated? Suppose, say, you know, this camp is going on and say after this, now there is lunch prasad, there is going to be a big feast.
But suppose your stomach is upset. And you know, you have to take some simple soup or something like that. Now, if you see everyone else feasting and you have to take soup, it’s irritating.
Now, suppose if the stomach is lifelong upset and there is no chance for cure. And so, throughout their life, you see everybody else feasting and you have to take only soup. So, you are more miserable at that time.
So, when we are sick, what basically happens, the desire to eat good food is there, but the physical structure necessary for eating and enjoying that food that is not there. The physical apparatus is not working. So, ghosts live in that kind of condition.
When they have, the desires which we have, they are present in our mind. Mind is a part of subtle body. So, ghosts may desire to eat a gulab jamun.
But the ghosts have no tongue to eat the gulab jamun. There is no physical structure there. It only has a desire.
So, what happens, there is desire, but there is no capacity to enjoy, there is frustration. And that is why the ghosts largely exist in a state of frustration. And sometimes, normally when a person is frustrated, what happens, they take out the frustration on someone.
If I go to office and my boss shouts at me and I am very angry with the boss. Now, I cannot shout back at the boss. But then I am going along in my car and somebody cuts across me and then a whole volcano explodes in that person.
Why? Because that is what a person is there and available for me to shout at. So, like that what happens, ghosts have their pent up frustrated desires. And those pent up frustrated desires, sometimes they express themselves in the form of possession.
So, we talk about haunted places. Haunted places means places where some ghosts might exist. Now, possession is about specific phenomena.
In possession, what happens? The soul itself enters into someone s body. So, normally in my body, I am the prominent soul. There may be germs in my body, there may be worms in my stomach, but they are not controlling this body.
They are just having their own bodies over me. So, I end up, this body is my body right now. But sometimes, if some souls are very tamasic, see there are three modes of potential, goodness, passion, ignorance.
Ghosts exist largely at the level of tamoguna. So, at the level of tamoguna, at the level of mode of ignorance, if people are there existing and drink too much, they live in tamasic lifestyles, then they become vulnerable to possession by ghosts. So, when they are possessed by ghosts, then what happens? The ghost enters into them and the ghost takes over their body practically.
So, like a plane might get hijacked and the air traffic controller is saying, take this plane, the plane is supposed to go to Greece, but suddenly the plane is going to Iran. Why is it going to Iran? Because the person who is hijacked has taken control of it. So, like that when a ghost possesses a particular body, the ghost hijacks that body practically.
And then that person speaks and acts in different ways, ways completely different from the norm. And there are well documented cases of this. The theory of evolution was proposed by Charles Darwin.
Along with him there was another physicist, Alfred Wallace. He also parallelly proposed a theory, but later he retracted the theory and that is why he is not considered a founder. Now, Alfred Wallace, he also did a lot of research into the paranormal phenomena.
Ghosts and other things come under paranormal phenomena. And he has documented, he has written a book called The Spirit World and subsequent researchers have further written books on this topic. So, in The Spirit World he explains, there are well documented cases, say for example, of a person who was born and brought up in France and suddenly he starts speaking Swahili.
He has never met any person who spoke Swahili. He has never spoken Swahili and suddenly he starts speaking Swahili fluently. And he is speaking Swahili and his people around him don’t even understand what he is speaking.
It’s all gibberish for them. But then a person who knows Swahili comes around, how is he speaking Swahili? And during that period, not only the person speaks things which he could not have spoken earlier, but he also acts, his voice becomes, the tone becomes different and he behaves as if he is a different person. And this goes on for a particular amount of time and after that the ghost may stay in that particular person.
So, what has happened over here is, a ghost who was previously in a Swahili body, that person has taken over this Frenchman’s body and that’s why he is now speaking in this way. So, there are documented cases of not just personality change, but also cases of people exhibiting normal age which they could not have had. So, there is a Maharashtrian lady, a woman in Nagpur.
She had never been outside Nagpur also, what to speak of outside Maharashtra. And suddenly, she started speaking Bengali, fluent Bengali. Her neighbours said, how are you speaking Bengali? So, what happened was, it was found that she had become possessed by a particular ghost.
So, when ghost possess a person, then it is almost as if a different person, that person itself changes. The personality changes, the speech changes, the language may also change. And this kind of possession is done by a soul, especially when the soul has a very strong desire to get something done.
And the victim, the person who gets possessed, that person is Tamasic and does not have the power to resist the possession by the ghost. So, when we practice spiritual life, when we chant Hare Krishna, there is Tamoguna, Rajoguna, Satoguna. Krishna exists at Shuddha and the more strongly we connect with Krishna, the more we are able to resist the influences of such things.
And that is why usually ghosts do not possess devotees. Or even those who chant the holy names, there are various methods for exorcising ghosts. Exorcising means driving out ghosts.
So, people may chant some mantras or people may do some rituals. And ghosts have been reported widely. And some of the ways of trying to drive out ghosts are, ghosts, they are very dangerous and they are not at all recommended in scripture.
There are certain Muslims when they say that somebody may, what is the word they use for ghost? Shaitan aagaya hai. So, what they do is, they get the person who is caught a ghost, they place him on a potter’s wheel. Just make him go round, round, round, round, round.
If you make the ghost person go round and round, the ghost will get chakkar and then go out. For all that happens, the person only gets the chakkar. Person gets vertigo.
But the point is that some of the methods for exorcising ghosts are not at all proper. And they involve a certain amount of aggressive behavior which can be harmful to the person. But usually, if a person chants the holy names and practices bhakti seriously, then ghosts will not possess and will be possessed by the chanting of such names, those ghosts can be driven out.
So, because ghosts largely function in tamoguna and because bhakti is practiced in sattvaguna and it connects with Krishna who is above sattva, so that is why usually ghosts stay away from those who are devotees or who chant the holy names of Krishna. What is the hard problem of consciousness?