Can spirituality help people having acute mental health problems?
You see, if a person is mentally ill and they are having the peak of the mental illness, where they are very unstable or very, they cannot themselves practice spirituality at that time. So, what can we do for them? So, firstly, whenever there is an acute problem, then quite often medication is required.
It's like if we go to a doctor and we are in great pain, quite often a doctor will give some pain medicine. But that is not a cure. But the pain medicine also plays an important part in stabilizing the patient.
Or sometimes the pain is too much, then, or suppose a doctor has to do a surgery, at that time they give anesthesia. They give sedative. If the pain is too much, they give sedative.
So, basically, there are immediate measures that may be required. And if the problem is acute, so, if there is a medical treatment that is known to at least bring the symptoms down. When we talk about modern allopathic medicine, it is often quite good in terms of dealing with acute symptoms.
When the symptoms are very acute, immediately bringing them down is possible. But curing them in the long term, that may not often work out. So, the point which I am making is in the phases of acute symptoms, if there is a medical treatment that works, then that medical treatment should be taken.
At least to get it down. That acts like a painkiller. So, for example, there are medicines like tranquilizers.
There are drugs which are supposed to make people feel tranquil. So, now, dependence on them, addiction to them, that is problematic. So, there is, all of us go through stress in our lives.
And if for the routine problems which cause stress in our life, if for that we start depending on tranquilizers, that is not very healthy. Because then that will become a lifelong dependence. But if somebody has a serious problem and within that they are going through an acute phase, at that time medication, if necessary, it can and should be done.
Now, along with that, even if they are themselves not able to expose themselves then to spirituality, you know, others around them can help them. For example, there is spiritual music. So, in many cases, the spiritual music acts at a subconscious level.
That means, so there is a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. So, at the conscious level, say, my computer is spoiled. And because the computer is spoiled, you know, all kinds of random shapes and patterns are coming on my monitor.
I press a button, nothing is coming over there. So, the computer seems to have gone haywire. But if I can somehow insert some USB stick or something, which contains antivirus software, and that antivirus software starts working, now on the computer screen, there's no change.
Still, all those random shapes are coming. But at the background, the antivirus software is working and it is cleaning. It is cleaning.
And gradually, that cleaning of the corrupt files, that will manifest on the screen of the computer also. So, the screen of the computer is like the conscious mind. And the whole, the background where there is a corruption of the software, that is like the subconscious mind.
So, spiritual sound, spiritual music, like we had this mantra chanting at the start of the talk. Similarly, if that goes on simply as a background music, it shouldn't be too loud, especially if people are mentally unstable, it should not be too loud or jarring. It should be soothing, gentle, soft.
Then if it goes on in the background, that works at a subconscious level. It works at a subconscious level and connects them with spirituality. They may not seem to be consciously aware of it, but subconsciously, they get calmed, they get purified by it.
And over a period of time, that benefit will manifest at the conscious level also. So, both, when the acute phases are going on, you can give medication, which is known to work at least for curbing the acute symptoms. And we can also, even if they can't practice spirituality, we can expose them to some spiritual sound, which will subconsciously calm them down.
Does this answer the question? Thank you. Any other questions?