What is the concept of the evil eye – what is its rational and scriptural basis

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question what is the concept of the evil eye or buri nazar does it have a scriptural basis answer certainly that concept has this concept has a overall foundation in our tradition and we see that it is implicitly accepted in our scripture basically the concept is that if somebody is especially very good then they might attract envy or animosity and that envious or inimical intention can cause hurt to people so let’s look at this break this down now we live in a empirical scientific world uh and we live with an empirical a rational world view and we may not give much credence to such things which is okay at one level because there is much that is superstitious and we don’t want an uncritical acceptance of everything at the same time we also need the humility to acknowledge that our understanding of reality is finite and that there could be much to reality that we do not currently understand and therefore we need to take steps for expand for expanding our conceptions of reality or at least be open uh to the idea that reality might be more subtle and complex than what we have been taught to believe so with that you with that starting humility if we look at the concept of the evil eye what it can mean at the very least is that if somebody brandishes and parades uh their power their opulence their beauty their wealth at a very practical level we can say that that can make others envious and some envious people may move from just having that envious emotion to actually uh to a hostile destructive action whereby they may try to damage or destroy or disfigure someone something which is which is the object of their envy so we could say that as a matter of humility there is no need to uh parade our superiority over others there is no need to act as if we are far bigger or better than others secondly so that’s so at a deeper level if you understand that the subtler energies now that there is the whole concept of black magic which many people may not accept in today’s world but there are many times people who have some diseases have some distresses which just defy medical or circumstantial explanations within the reductionistic materialistic worldview so by the by doing something to counter black magic the effects of black magic people have had their distresses go down astrology also talks about various paranormal influences and these have also been uh vetted uh that in the sense that while lot lot of speculation and deception goes on in the name of astrology but there is a core concepts to it which may not be understood through a rational worldview and as with rationality as defined by modern modern materialist matter-based science but so so overall it could be that some people may have that power that by casting an evil glance on someone they can actually cause damage to those people they can hurt those people and at another level that evil eye may may lead to they activating their subtle powers to cast some dark spell or something like that or to do some things which may not be that paranormal but which may hurt us so we see in krishna leela whenever the krishna faces great danger then somehow survives then the prajapasis chant various mantras to protect krishna and that broadly is similar to protecting from the evil eye so overall the concept of evil eye is not something which is to be to be just either indiscriminately believed or to be utterly rejected it is a possibility and within bhakti the basic way we could apply that is simply by saying that let us not unnecessarily parade our superiority over others and traditionally the idea was that sometimes if somebody has some perfection if a house is perfect if a person’s features are perfect then create a little imperfection so that in some way or of course people say if you are an amulet or something like that by which they may be protected so we understand that the universe exists at three levels that or rather there are three levels of existence within the universe there is physical there is subtle material you could call it mental and there is spiritual so the evil eye is not spiritual but it is subtle material of course somebody might literally with their physical eyes cast evil glance at someone but the effect effect of that uh may happen through mechanisms at the mental level at the subtle material level of which we today have no clear understanding now beyond the subtle material is the spiritual and in general if we take shelter of krishna wholeheartedly and practice the principles of bhakti then that should protect us from most influences of the evil eye and of course within practice of bhakti we can also be practice the core essential principle of humility so that we do not come off as being far far superior to others and thereby we do not attract others evil eye thank you question from ram