Ghosts Spirits & Reincarnation – Understanding how the invisible affects the visible

[Youth meeting at ISKCON, Juhu, Mumbai]

Ghosts, spirits and reincarnation.

Basically understanding how the invisible affects the visible. So, my thrust will be in this session on the theme of how there is we look at the visible world around us. But, even in the visible, dramatically active world around us, there are forces which are invisible that influence us.

And this is not just something which we as spiritualists talk about. So, recently in this Champions Trophy, the Champions Trophy cricket series was going on. So, before the finals, this was the headline of an article in The Guardian.

So, Pakistan cling to the spirit of Miyanda, not the ghost of Sharma. Now, what does it refer to? Most Indians know about that match, more than a decade ago, when on the last ball, Chetan Sharma bowled a ball and it turned out instead of Yorker, a full toss. And Miyanda hit it for a six.

They wanted a four to win and they won the match. So, that was like a scar on the Indian morale for many, many years. And India, for a long time, from winning situations, India kept losing the matches.

So, cricket commentator said that India is haunted by the ghost of Sharma. That means what? That memory of how we lost from a winning situation, that memory is coming back to haunt us again and again and again. So, the word ghost is usually used in a negative sense.

Whereas, ghost is something, if at all it exists, we are right now starting from an objective, sceptical perspective. If at all something exists, the word ghost is used in a negative sense. And the word spirit is used in a positive sense.

The spirit of Miyanda means how on the last ball he very confidently, very expertly hit a winning stroke. So, channel is a word used commonly, but it also has a paranormal meaning. Commonly it is used, channel means if water is flowing in a particular way, we get it to channel, through a channel to flow in some other direction.

Now, channelling is also a paranormal phenomenon by which people try to catch some subtle influences. So, some people try to communicate with ghosts and spirits and that communication is called as channelling. So, that idea is channel.

So, now moving forward, so, when we use the word ghost, as I said, it refers to some eerie things. In movies, often ghosts are talked about. Or somebody is sitting in a room and suddenly the door opens and there is nobody there.

What is this? So, ghosts are considered very scary. And ghosts are supposed to do two things. One is they haunt places that if any of you are aware of real estate dealings.

If somebody wants to get the price of a real estate down, just spread the rumour that that place is haunted. And nobody will want to purchase it. Very few people will want to purchase it.

So, places get haunted. And people get possessed. When somebody is possessed by a ghost, they start behaving in very strange, peculiar ways.

So, there have been many ghost believing scientists. There is a scientist, Alfred Wallace, who was like a co-founder of the theory of evolution. He wrote a whole book on the phenomena of ghosts.

And I will not go in this class on trying to prove that. My focus will be on explaining that. And our focus will not be either on spirits or ghosts.

Our focus will be on the invisible. Is there something invisible beyond the visible? And we will look at what is called normal science and what is called as paranormal science. Normal science focusses on the observable.

We observe things and science is seeing is believing. We want factual evidence. However, seeing is believing is not the scientific method.

Last year I was invited to Cambridge University to give a talk on science and spirituality. And on the way there, we passed by the tree where Newton is said to have seen the fruit falling or maybe felt the fruit falling. Whichever version of the story we consider to be the true one.

But now that tree, of course it's not the same tree, it's like a descendant of that tree. But that tree is considered to be like a pilgrimage place for scientists. So people go over there.

Now if you see when Newton saw that fruit falling, what did he do? He did not focus on seeing is believing. The whole of scientific progress began with Newton's postulation of theory of gravity. And his postulation of theory of gravity centres on the idea that for visible phenomena we look for invisible principles.

So the fall of the fruit is a visible phenomena. Gravity is not a visible phenomenon. It's a principle.

It's a law. But it's invisible. So science progressed because Newton went from the visible to the invisible.

In fact there are other scientists at his time, say like Leibniz, who strongly critiqued the idea of gravity. He called it derisively, derisively means mockingly, as spooky action over a distance. He said, you know, because Newton postulated that the same force which causes an apple to fall down, that is the force which keeps the planets in their orbit, moving around.

So he said, how can a force act invisibly over thousands of mass? It doesn't make any sense. So Newton said that I am not talking about the ontological nature of this force. I am not talking about where exactly this force originates.

I am simply giving a mathematical equation for an observed phenomenon. So the point is that science progressed because scientists moved from the visible to the invisible. And in fact science does not progress because of facts.

It progresses because of theories. Theories are basically explanatory frameworks that help us to make sense of facts. So fruit falling is a fact.

But facts, okay, facts are simply facts. But it's a theory which when verified, when proven, it helps us to make sense of the facts. And a theory is not a visible thing.

Theory is invisible. So in any field of knowledge that we take, knowledge progresses by moving from the visible phenomena to the invisible principles that explain the phenomena. And this same principle we can apply in spirituality.

So now science as it is practised in its mainstream version today, focusses on material explanations for material phenomena. So that is called as normal science. And paranormal science refers to any other form of investigation which considers non-material phenomena.

Which considers maybe there are some non-material forces that are acting. So that is called as paranormal science. But essentially it is science.

So we will now look at some scientific evidence for the phenomena of reincarnation. So we will look at reincarnation, look at the evidence. Then we will look at a model of the self drawn from the Gita that explains reincarnation.

That will also explain ghosts. So let's as I said, spirit is also a word used in common parlance. And spirit is referred in a positive sense.

Something higher that inspires and empowers. Somebody, they are getting discouraged. But then they say, no, come on, we'll do it.

We say, that's the spirit. That's what spirit means. Here we are talking about spirit in the sense of energy, enthusiasm, attitude.

All these are invisible. But they have visible effects. And in Christianity the word is Holy Spirit.

So some non-material forces said to descend into the hearts of those who believe in Jesus, those who surrender to Jesus. That's why they have Holy Spirit. So that's in religious context.

But here I'm simply talking about the word spirit as used in a positive sense to refer to something invisible. So ghost and spirit both refer to something invisible which affects the visible. So that headline from Guardian what was it saying? That Pakistan want to win this match and for that they want to channel a spirit of Miyanda, not the ghost of Sharma.

So again, the point is, the visible is affected by the invisible. And this is something which is understood even in a field that is as visibly dramatic as a cricket championship final. So let's move forward.

Somebody may say, is there something invisible? So scientists have found cases of past life memories and within them also spontaneous past life memories. And the question that they raise is how can children know that which they don't know? That which they can't know? Now a child who is just 2-3 years old just barely started speaking and not very coherently. One day the child says, Mummy, Mummy, I want to go to my other mummy.

Child says, you know, I was big then, I've become small now. Normally the truth is, I was small then I've become big now. You know, when we meet someone, we don't say, this child we meet, you've grown so big, you've grown so small.

We never say that. Maybe somebody lost a little weight, we may say that. But, this is not just in terms of physical weight, but in terms of size.

So, these are spontaneous past life memories. And often these kind of memories are talked about, but again they are talked about in a very very generic sense. So, in Bollywood, reincarnation is a common theme that is used.

So, and in that what happens is, that reincarnation is often talked about as a way of, say a hero and heroine. They are trying to unite and they are unable to unite and both of them die. And after they die, then they, both of them are reborn in exactly same bodies.

So, there is a hero who has a double role, the heroine has a double role. And it is exactly, so what has happened is, the bodily conception has been just extended beyond this life to another life. In fact, I answered questions online.

So, I was asked a question by someone, by a boy. He says, I want to marry a girl, but somehow our families are not agreeing. So, what karma can I do in this life so that I can marry her in my next life? So, the idea here is that actually we, there is a bodily conception of life and reincarnation is simply thought of as a means of continuing this bodily conception.

So, there is one devotee in Russia, he was giving a class once and he was saying, you are not your body. And one person is Sir, if I am not my body, then whose body am I? So, the idea is, I am the body. There is no doubt about that.

If I am not my body, then I am somebody else's body. So, the bodily conception is what needs to be not needs to be critically examined. So, these kind of romanticised, sensationalised depictions of reincarnation, they often actually do disservice the serious research that has been done in this field.

So, the pioneer in this field was Dr. Jan Stevenson and when he studied the cases of past life memories, he was in University of Virginia, head of first psychiatry department and later on he started a separate department called personality studies and he found four levels of evidences. First is recollections. As I said, children remember I used to live there and in my house, there were two cows in our house, we had three neem trees around our house this was the name of my mother, this was the name of my brother, like that, recollections.

But recollections is the first thing. After that, second thing is recognitions. When the children are taken there, as soon as they go to that place, automatically they recognise, this is the person, this is the person, this is my house, they recognise people over there.

Third is behaviours. That means, say a child who was drowned and died because, a person who died because of drowning, in this life they exhibit hydrophobia, fear of water. And similarly there is the birthmarks and birth defects.

There are physical marks which the children are born with. And, so Stevenson wrote many books and two of his works were most significant. He started with this 20 cases of suggestion of reincarnation and then he moved on and wrote many books of reincarnation in America and Europe, in various parts of the world and his last book was a multi-volume tome.

This was where reincarnation and biology intersect. But, biology because the birthmarks and birth defects are physical marks on the body. They are not just psychological.

Somebody remembers something, somebody recognises something, it's somebody, actually they are physical marks. And how significant are those marks? This is an example. Some people have some sort of pimple or some sort of scar on their birth or their body when they are born.

These are like small marks, but these are very unusual. So, this is a mark which was there from birth on the body of a person who in his previous life had been knocked down by a truck and the truck had rid over their thigh and that's how they had died. This person, what happened was, he's got a very distinctive birth we call it a birthmark or a birth defect.

And as of now, scientists know about only three main causes for birthmarks and birth defects. First is, it may be genetic in the family from generation to generation. Second is, that it may be that during pregnancy, the mother has some health issues because of which the skin of the embryo gets scarred.

Or thirdly, the mother ingests some harmful substances which she smokes, drinks or does something like that during pregnancy and then that affects it. Now, in almost 50% of the cases of past life memories of 50% cases of birthmarks and birth defects in general, researchers have found that none of these three factors apply. And still there are birthmarks and birth defects.

So, let's look at one particular case which illustrates this principle of these four points. So, this is a case of a Muslim to Hindu reincarnation and this was Naresh Kumar Raidas. He was born in Bajanagar in UP.

And even he was just around two, you know, he started using the word Kakori, Kakori Kakra, Kakra. So, Kakori was the place where he claimed to have lived in his previous life as Mushir Ali Shah. He called himself Mushir.

And Kakra, Kakra means cart in the local dialect. And so, he had been hit by a cart. He was a vegetable vendor and he was driving a cart and a truck had hit into his cart and the cart's pole, cart's wooden structure had penetrated into his chest and he had died.

So, and as a child from the age of two, when nobody would be in the room, he would start kneeling down and offering prayers and namaz. as soon as his parents would come and see what is he doing, immediately he would stop that. And as he grew, now notice this is just at the age of two, children at that age are not very coherent at all.

Now, Mushir's father was the Fakir, he was like a holy man and he used to go from village to village and beg alms. So, every week, once a day, he would come to the Bajnagar. And whenever Naresh would see him, Naresh would call him Abba, Abba.

Now, Abba is the Muslim word for father. His mother, Naresh's mother would tell him, call him Baba. In India, sadhus are called by Babas.

But he would always say, Abba, Abba. His mother was very puzzled. And he would tell him, I am your son.

Fakir Harish, I would be surprised. Shocked. Believe me, just leave.

And then, every day, he would just follow him and the Fakir would move away. He would just follow him for a few houses and then the Fakir would quickly move away and come back to his house. Then, by the age he came to the five, six, and this would happen every week.

By the age of six, he would just call and say, don't you recognise me? I am your son. So, what is this? Now, in mainstream Islam, as of now, they don't accept reincarnation. Although, actually, there are texts in the Quran which are broadly compatible with reincarnation.

So, I have a book on demystifying reincarnation where I have talked about both the scientific evidence as well as the inter-religious discussion on reincarnation. So, anyway, the point here is that he did not accept reincarnation. So, he just walked away.

Now, next morning, he told his mother, Naresh said that, I want to go to the house of my father. He said, if you don't take me there, I will go there. And he insisted.

And then, his mother finally took him to Kakori. And now, often, in India, there are certain localities like Muslim localities. So, Hindus often don't go there.

Especially a child and a mother alone, they would not go there. So, he had never gone to that locality. But as soon as he went to Bajnagar, he led the way and went straight to the Fakir's house.

And he went there and he recognised everyone. He recognised his mother, Najima. He called her Abbi.

And he went and he just behaved with her like a mother. And then he had his brother Naseem, who had been younger to him. But now he was older.

He said, where is Naseem? And he said, he is sleeping. And he just went and woke up Naseem and started hugging him. Naseem, who is this Hindu boy? What is going on over here? This couldn't make sense of anything at all.

And then, his mother asked him, how many brothers and sisters you have had? So, they are a large family. And he identified all of them. And this one young small girl, he said, who is she? She was in your stomach when I died.

And he recognised even that. And then, he had given So, this was like a sensational thing. So, other people also came over there.

And he asked suddenly a woman, your husband, I had given him some money. Did you return the money back? He said, yeah, yeah. And nobody knew it except he, except Mushir and that man.

And he said, yes, he gave the money back. So, he recognised so many things. And then, as they were leaving, he said, they gave him a little money.

It's like an etiquette. Some children come to somebody's house. When they are giving some guest, you give some money.

He says, what is this? He says, your, you won't give me T and X? Now, he used to, he was very attached to X and T. And his request, especially for X, was significant because the rice family was vegetarian. They did not take X. So, then, when he went back, Fakir and Najeeb Mahat, they saw that there was a depression in his chest. And the depression was exactly in the same location where the cart had pierced his body.

So, it is not just one or two, but several dozen recognitions which Narendra did. And now, it is significant because Antonia Mills, she wrote this in an article in the Journal of Scientific Exploration and where she analysed several inter-religious reincarnation cases. And she said strongly that how there is opposition to this.

Would someone like to read this? Yes, please. Hindu parents of a child who claimed to be a Muslim generally tried to take measures which they hoped would erase the child's previous life memories. The techniques used included simply ignoring the child's flames, teasing, piercing the child's ears, turning the child on a potter's wheel and taking the child to an exorcist out of fear that the child would go mad.

One Muslim family tried a combination of rotating the child counter-clockwise on a millstone to undo his past life memories tapping him on the head and beating him. So, here what we see is the parents are not at all far from building up the memory. The parents are actively discouraging the memories.

They are trying all these methods. And yet, in spite of that, some cases would survive. And some people would be able to remember.

So, that way some children would be able to remember. So, there is active parental disapproval. Now, this sort of cases, often, sceptics try to dismiss this off as pseudoscience.

This is not scientific. There is some fraud going on over here. Pseudoscience is just a label.

And the standard way of emotional manipulation is labelling instead of reasoning. When you don't want to reason with someone, then emotional manipulation is done by labelling instead of reasoning. So, when we label someone, this person is like this, then we don't have to argue their points.

So, pseudoscience is a label that sceptics often assign on this kind of research. But if you consider that there is something pseudo, there is something faulty, some kind of fraud in it, what is the fraud? If at all there is a fraud, first of all, what would be the motive for the fraud? Who could commit the fraud? The children alone themselves, they are very small, 3, 4, 5, 6 years old. For them to commit a fraud would be extremely difficult.

They would need the parents to be involved. Either the parents have to be involved or the investigators have to be involved or both have to be involved. If you consider the parents, what could be their motive? Money? Possibly.

But Stevenson made it a very strong point that he said we will never pay anyone for doing the interviews. So, when they come and interview the parents and their relatives and their acquaintances, they said we will not pay anyone. Because once you start paying, some parents may want to, some people may start sensationalising the cases so that they could get more money.

So, many of these children who were reincarnated, who claim to be reincarnated, they were born in lower class families, lower income families. And for the parents, sometimes being interviewed rigorously, sometimes repeatedly, Stevenson, if you see his methods and his books, a rigorous questioning he would do. And just like sometimes police do grilling, they try to find out if there is something wrong in the narrative, some inconsistency.

You told this to this person, you are telling this to me. They would do this thorough grilling. And for them, often they would have to take off from their workplace for one day to do the interview.

So, they would lose money. There is no gaining money. And maybe they wanted to become famous.

Oh, my son is a reincarnation. But actually, in most countries, where say, in India or Bangladesh or other countries or Tibet, where reincarnation is already accepted as a fact, there is no fame to be got because everybody accepts reincarnation. And there are many people who claim to be reincarnations of celebrities.

There are at least a dozen girls all over the world who claim to be reincarnations of Marilyn Monroe. Now, researchers, they take these serious researchers like Stevenson, they just discount cases of celebratory reincarnation. So, there are, because there is obvious motive for fame over there.

So, most of the cases which he discusses, they are not celebratory reincarnation cases. And the people who they claim to be, they lived unknown or little known lives. So, what could be another motive? Maybe there are children who parents wanted to prove their religious belief.

That's why they did this. Actually, there are many cases where there are cases in Europe, in America and even in parts of Africa where their parents did not believe in reincarnation. And the parents accepted, reported the case and they accepted the children as reincarnation of someone, not because of their belief but in spite of their belief.

In fact, in the case of Mushir, the Fakir, he said that that night, he prayed after Naresh told, you are my Abba, don't you recognise me? He said, he went and prayed that night to Allah, what is this mystery, please reveal it to me. And the next day when Naresh came and recognised, then he said, this is really reincarnation, he accepted it. Allah has answered my question.

But then he asked Mushir's sister, she agreed, that you know, he recognised all of us. But I asked her, Antony Amir asked her, what is your conclusion? She said, we don't believe in reincarnation. So, there were people who were sceptical.

And there is no religious belief involved. And even among Hindus who did believe in reincarnation, there is a fear, a superstitious fear, which is not grounded in any solid statistics or any actual observed fact. The superstitious belief is that if a child remembers his or her past life, then that child is going to die soon.

Because parents feel that if the child is remembering the past life, that means that the child is not properly integrated into this body. The soul is not integrated in the body, the soul will leave this body and go to another body. So, that's why parents, even when they believe in reincarnation, they often discourage their child from speaking about past life memories.

So, in this way, there is no motive for committing frauds. And not only there is no motive, there is actually motive for discouraging children also. Because there are some cases where children behave in ways that are embarrassing to their parents.

Say, for example, in India, where there is often communal tension, neither parents wanted to prove any case. For them, it was a little embarrassing. A child of a different religion is born in a different religion.

There is this case of Jasbir Singh. When he was just about 3 years old, he suddenly told his parents, I am born in a high class Brahmin family. I won't eat the food cooked by a non-Brahmin.

Now, what can a 3 year old child understand? And he absolutely refused to eat. And for months upon months, for almost several years, till he came to India for all sakes, his father had to pay a Brahmana who brought food for him 3 times a day. How embarrassing is it for a family to tell that our son refuses to eat food in our own house.

So, it is not only a loss of money to pay someone else, it was a loss of face. So, why would any parent cook up a story like this? So, yes, there are cases which can be fraudulent, but there are many cases which cannot be dismissed as fraudulent. Now, what about the investigators? So, Stevenson, the journal of American Medical Association is the most prestigious journal of scientific research, especially in the terms of psychology and medicine.

And when they reported Stevenson's finding, this was what they said. Who would like to read this? Stevenson had painstakingly and unemotionally collected a detailed series of cases in which the evidence for reincarnation is difficult to understand on any other ground. He has placed on record a large amount of data that cannot be ignored from the journal of the American Medical Association.

Yes. So, unemotionally and painstakingly. So, there is no methodological rigour, not just some sentimental fervour that was there in his research.

And that methodological rigour, not sentimental fervour, that is what actually brought the reincarnation research to the level of science. Now, moving forward, what could be the explanation for this? So, if we take this forward, there is a Vedic model of the self. And now, before that, William James is a Harvard psychologist.

He is considered by many as one of the pioneers of psychology. And he gives a principle over here. He says, if you wish to upset the law, that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are.

It is enough to prove one single crow to be white. So, this means, somebody may say, oh, if past life memories occur, then why is it that everybody can't remember if we are all reincarnated? That's a valid question. And there can be answers for that, which you can come to later.

But just because everybody doesn't remember their past life, that does not in any way prove that we don't have past lives. Because even if one person is remembering, and there is no normal explanation for it, that is itself enough to suggest that, actually, this is a white crow. And that is enough to counter challenge the idea that all crows are black.

So, similarly, the materialistic idea that life, consciousness originates from the body, from the brain, and ends with the destruction of the body and the brain, that can be challenged even by one case, which is solidly recent, for which there is strong evidence. And there are far more than one, there are many, many cases like this. So, now, what is the Vedic model for explaining this? So, basically, if you look at the Gita, the Gita explains that there are three levels of being.

We exist as not just the body, the body, mind, and soul. The body you can also refer to as the gross body, the mind is referred to as the subtle body. And then there is the soul.

So, all three are essentially the levels at which we exist. And, when we die, at that time, what happens is, the soul is the same, soul is surrounded by the mind, the subtle body, and the souls that mind, they go to another body. And our memories are stored in our mind.

And that is how some people are able to remember their past lives. Now, what happens is, most of our memories are stimulated by certain circumstances. That means, that say, now, we all lived in the year 2, 3, 4, 5, but how many of us remember what we did at the age of 2, 3, 4, 5? Now, if we go to some place where we had gone in childhood, we say, I think I remember this.

Some little recollection may come. So, like that, our memories are often stimulated by what we experience externally. So, when the soul goes into a next body, a new body, at that time, because the externals are different, so the souls, the memories of the past are not normally stimulated.

Just as we all have different memories, memory power. Now, some of us have outstanding memories. Now, we just read one passage and maybe after 6 months we can still remember the passage.

Some of us have outstandingly poor memories. You know, we hear something in a class and after 15 minutes, what was that I heard? It was a very good point, but I can't remember what the point was. So, just as there is variation in the capacity to remember, which we see even in this life.

So, that similar variation also applies in the case of past life. So, this variability in memory is a universal phenomenon and is extended to the past life. So, some people by some combination of karma, past karma, are able to remember past lives.

Now, it's not always good karma because to remember a past life, it can be very confusing and disorienting. For us, when we hear, oh, this person remembers their past life, it is exciting, it is intriguing. But for one who is going through that, they literally get the question, who am I? And if they don't get a proper philosophical understanding, it's quite difficult.

So, those children have to get integrated into their body so that they can function. So, now, especially if a child dies suddenly, or a person dies suddenly, then let's say somebody is shot. There is a boy, Titu.

There is a person, Suresh Varma, who was killed. Point blank, he just came home one day from his office and somebody was waiting outside a car and they shot him. Bullet went in from here and bullet came out from here.

So, when sudden unexpected death happens, at that time, the person, the soul doesn't get time to process the event of death. And then trauma gets deeply impressed in the mind. I was shot, I was shot, I was shot.

And then when the soul goes from one body to the next body, that impression is there in the mind. I was shot, I was shot, I was shot. And that impression itself, which is there in the mind, makes an impression on the body.

So, that's how the birthmarks or birth defects occurs. So, the impression, the impression that is there in the body, in the mind, creates an impression on the body. And that's how these are remembered.

And this is how we can, this model explains the soul going from one body to another body. Now, let's look back at ghosts. Go ahead.

So, now, what exactly happens when a person becomes a ghost? Normally, if you see this is a gross body, the person, when they die, they leave this body and then they go to the next body. But in the case of ghosts, the person doesn't go to the next body. The soul, along with the subtle body, exists in a disembodied state.

So, disembodied means they don't have a physical body. And sometimes, they are also referred to as spirits. The word spirits in plural refers to some kind of strange beings, you know, ghosts and spirits, they are often brought together.

Now, the word spirits is also sometimes used for alcohol. You know, some people take alcohol and they become intoxicated. You know, literally some people start behaving in unrecognisable ways.

They are speaking and doing things. What is this? Who is this person? This makes them into a stranger. So, basically, when the soul leaves one body, but doesn't enter into another body, their disembodied state of existence is called a ghost.

And because ghosts have strong desires to be fulfilled, which they are unable to fulfil through their own bodies, because they don't have a body, so sometimes they occupy other bodies. So, this is how ghosts, they possess people. So, what has happened? The possessed person, the original soul is there.

So, that means, the person gets possessed. There are two souls in the same body. But one soul becomes dominated.

It becomes latent. And there are many cases of this to be documented. There is Ian Stevenson who did research in this field also, although his focus was on reincarnation.

So, there are cases, say, of a woman who was born and lived in Maharashtra. And she never went outside her village also. I mean, nearby.

Outside the district of Nagpur. Just a few kilometres around her village. And suddenly, she started speaking Bengali.

And only Bengali. There are no Bengali neighbours in that area. And somebody spoke to her in Marathi, and she didn't recognise what she was speaking.

And she was a female, but she was speaking in a male voice. A male tone. And she did that for almost 2-3 months.

Everyone was bewildered. What is this? And finally, the ghost left. And then she came back to the office.

What happened? She had no recollection of what happened. So, what has happened over here is that the ghost has possessed the person. When the ghost possesses someone, then what happens? That person becomes dominated.

That person becomes overcome. That person is not able to think or reason in their own way. Now, ghosts are dangerous creatures, but ghosts are also themselves miserable creatures.

Because they have desires which they are not able to fulfil. It's like, say, after this programme, suppose there is a feast. There'll be food.

No need to suppose that. There'll be food. I hope so.

Isn't it? So, now, suppose somebody has got very bad stomach. And they can take only soup. They can see everybody else eating a feast, but they can't eat.

It just creates craving which leads to frustration. So, ghosts are like that not just for one evening, but for all of their existence. So, they just get very frustrated.

Sometimes they try to haunt people. They try to possess people. And they try to take control of people.

So, now, in the spiritual traditions, ghosts are accepted as real beings. But, often, when desires strike people, lust or anger or greed, they are also compared to ghosts. There's a Roman saying which says that anger is temporary insanity.

When somebody becomes angry, at that time, you know, they start speaking, blasting out. And, you know, somebody recorded at that time what they spoke. And then after they have calmed down, they replay the recording.

Oh, I spoke this? How could I have spoken this? We are such a horrified. So, what has happened? So, anger is like a ghost when it possesses us. What did I do? How could I do it? So, basically, here again, the principle is that there is something invisible which is affecting the visible.

So, one time, one devotee was feeling very fearful. So, the devotee wrote to Srila Prabhupada, Prabhupada, I think I am possessed by a ghost. So, Prabhupada said, you are not possessed by a ghost, you are simply fearful.

This Chant Hare Krishna. So, you know, it's not that just because we believe in ghosts, it is not that every strange behaviour we have to ascribe to ghosts. It is not like that.

Yes, ghosts can possess people. But the important thing is that we don't have to, it is not that I can say that I will do whatever. No, I just slap someone.

Why did you slap me? No, ghosts possess me. So, we can't abdicate our responsibility for proper behaviour in the name of ghosts. But at the same time, there is there is abdication of responsibility to the invisible and there is an equally irresponsible attitude of denying the invisible.

No, there are invisible factors which affect our behaviour, which affect our life. And we need to recognise that. So, all of us, the ultimate purpose of spirituality is not just to understand ghosts.

Or not just to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts. It is basically to understand that there is more to life than the body. There is more to our quest for happiness than the small pleasures that the body can offer us.

When we understand that there is something more than the physical to life, we all feel dissatisfied with the amount of happiness that we are getting in our life. We all feel, I want more happiness. The materialistic worldview tells us to seek more sense pleasure.

Come on, enjoy more, eat more. Enjoy your senses more. But, spirituality tells us, not seek more sense pleasure, seek more than sense pleasure.

Seek something higher. Sense pleasure is what is visible to us. But, our behaviour, our functions, our actions are influenced by something beyond the visible.

And we need to, the deepest fulfilment will come by looking at something beyond the visible. Beyond the visible. So, I was just in America and there, the mixing between boys and girls is very common.

And not just mixing in terms of interacting, but they have physical contact also, physical interactions also. But, even just by the age of 17, 18, the boys and girls, everybody gets jaded. Jaded means that they get exhausted.

Ultimately, the amount of pleasure that people can enjoy with the body, how much can you do? There's not much pleasure, and even if people try to do some new positions, new this, new that, it's ultimately every way that a person can enjoy through the body, just by the age of 14, 15, when they start becoming adolescent, by the age of 18, they have explored it all. And then, after that, what am I living for? What am I living for? And, then they recognise that, even when there is a culture of free sex, the deeper fulfilment comes through a relationship, not just physical contact. And although there was this ethos when a lot of people, it's not that the culture of free mixing is gone, but, more and more people are recognising that just this free sex isn't your pleasure.

Now, we want some meaningful relationships. The bodies may come in contact, and that is just like tickling the body, but there's some titillation, but it's only when the hearts come in contact, there's some meaningful relationship. So, there is increasing movement, not in the mainstream, but a significant movement where people are moving towards recognising that just the visible hype about sensual pleasure, that is not really going to lead to much happiness.

So, they want to, won't want something more. Please go ahead. So, now, at a visible level, we all try to make resolutions.

You know that, I want to do this, I want to, I'll stop doing this, I'll start doing this. I was invited for a TV talk show on New Year resolutions. So, at that time, I did some research, I was quoting one survey, that more than 90% of people's New Year resolutions, the resolutions are not new.

They made a resolution last year and somehow they couldn't keep it. So, now, there is something within us that sabotages us. I'm going to do this, but I plan to do this and suddenly something comes and pulls me in some other direction and I don't know what happened.

Let's get over with that. So, what is that? We have to recognise that the invisible affects the visible. It is very important.

And our past, why does it last? I decided I want to give up this habit, but it still keeps coming back because the impressions are there in the mind. Our actions, our actions are not determined just by our intentions. They are also determined by our impressions.

So, impressions means that I may decide, you know, I'm not going to overeat, I'm not going to do this, I'm not going to do that, I'm not going to oversleep, whatever it is. But the intention alone doesn't shape our actions. Intention is important.

But if the impressions are there, the impressions also shape. I need to recognise, this impression is there and I'll have to work. Say, for example, if this floor is inclined this way downwards, then, but there is no hole for water to go out from here.

The hole is on that side. And as soon as water falls over here, it'll just automatically go this way. If I want the water to go in another way, just my intention, water should go there, is not going to be enough.

I have to physically push the water in the other direction. Or I have to reconstruct the floor so that the inclination changes. So, in other words, inclination is also used for our mental inclinations.

Just as when water falls, it will flow in the direction of the inclination. Similarly, our thoughts, we all have developed certain impressions, which are like inclinations of our mental flow rate. And as soon as we have a little idle time, our thoughts will automatically go in that direction.

Just flow in that direction. So, if we don't want the thoughts to flow in that direction, we have to first recognise that intention alone is not enough. My intention is important.

I don't want water to go there. I don't want my thoughts to go there. I don't want to act like that.

But, we have to physically, when thoughts go in another direction, push them back in other direction. So, in bhakti, there is shama and there is dhamma. So, there is determination and there is purification.

Determination means, no, I don't want to do this. Purification means, I don't feel like doing it. When I don't feel like doing it, it means the mental inclination has only changed.

The flooring of the mind has changed in a different direction. That will happen gradually. Go ahead.

So, the last part is that what do we do? We are talking about channelling. We don't want to channel the ghosts of our conditionings. They are there in our mind from this life, from previous life and they are going to affect us.

We don't want to channel that power. We want to channel the power of the whole. The power of omnipotent omnipotent lord.

So, the Gita explains that not just that we are souls, but the soul is a part of the whole. The whole is known by different names and different traditions and is known as, in the Bhagavad Gita by the name Krishna. He is all attractive.

He is all powerful. He is all loving. He is all merciful and when we connect with him through the practise of Bhakti Yoga, through chanting his holy names, through worshipping his deities, through rendering service to him, then we channel a power far greater than our power.

A channel of power far far greater than our power. And with that power, we can overpower the conditioning that we may have, which are like ghosts. So, there are invisible forces that affect us, that push us to do wrong things.

But there are also invisible forces that can inspire us to do the right thing, that can empower us to do the right things. So, which power we channel, that is our choice. And that is where we need to be very intelligent and very vigilant.

Intelligent means, this is what I want to do, this is what I am not going to do. This is the beneficial thing, this is the harmful thing. And vigilant means, although I intend to do this, suddenly, my thoughts are going in that direction.

When they go in that direction, bring them back. yato yato nishchati manas chanchalamastiram tatas tato niyam yaita atmanye vashyam naya In 6.26, Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita, that wherever and whenever the mind wanders, bring it back to the control of the self. So, that question which this boy asked me about what karma can I do which I can marry that girl next life.

So, I told him that actually we have horizontal relationship with people in this world and we have vertical relationship with Krishna. And whatever we find attractive in anyone in this world, yes, they may have certain physical features, they may have certain personality traits which you find attractive. Yes, that attraction is there.

But that attraction is a spark of Krishna's attraction. yad yad vibhuti madhya sattvam srimad urjita meva vata tattva devavad achyatvam mamate jyam vishasambhava Everything attractive manifests a spark of Krishna's attractiveness. Krishna says in 10.41 in the Bhagavad Gita.

So, sometimes some horizontal relationships will work out. And sometimes some horizontal relationships will not work out. But ultimately, all horizontal relationships are meant to inspire us towards our vertical relationship.

Our relationship with Krishna is our only enduring relationship. And whatever pleasure we may get in any horizontal relationship, we will get it and we will get much more in our vertical relationship with Krishna. So, we focus on the vertical relationship, not on the horizontal relationship.

And if we do that, then whatever fulfilment we might have got by any horizontal relationship, we will get that and much more. So, there is the understanding that if we get affection, if we get love in horizontal relationship, we accept that. It's not that we have to deny or reject that love.

But we have to know that this horizontal relationship, no matter how attractive, how captivating, how fulfilling it is, it is not enduring. So, we don't deny or reject that, but we harmonise it with the vertical relationship. And if the horizontal relationship works out, great.

If it doesn't work out, we are grateful for whatever we got from any relationship. But if it is not working out, we don't have to despair and get frustrated by that. We don't have to make the mission of our life to get some horizontal relationship to work.

What to speak of the mission of our next life? That's it. Because ultimately all horizontal relationships, they are temporary. Even if somebody does some, goes to some astrologer, does some karma, it is promised that you will get this particular spouse in your next life.

Well, what after that? That life is also temporary. Isn't it? So, our longing for love, our longing for fulfilment, they can be fulfilled not through any horizontal relationship, but through a vertical relationship. And we need to harmonise our vertical relationships, our horizontal relationships with the vertical relationship.

So, if we define ourselves in terms of a horizontal relationship, you know, I am this person's son, I am this person's husband, I am this person's daughter, I am this person's father. If we define ourselves in terms of horizontal relationships, relationship, then any problem in that relationship will frustrate us. But if we define ourselves first and foremost in terms of our vertical relationship, you know, I am a servant of Krishna and as a service to Krishna, I am a father of someone, I am the son of someone, I am the husband of someone, I am the wife of someone, I am the daughter of someone, I am the father of someone.

All these are services. Now some services will work out wonderfully. Some services may not work out that wonderfully, but our connection with Krishna is what endures.

And when we have this understanding, then we can act responsibly, lovingly in our horizontal relationships, but we don't get consumed by them. We don't get devastated by problems in those relationships, because our shelter is not in those relationships. Our shelter is in Krishna.

So the ultimate purpose of reincarnation is redirection. When we understand reincarnation, I am going through many, many lifetimes, my purpose should be to redirect my heart from this world to Krishna. And when our heart gets redirected to Krishna, then even in this life, we find fulfilment.

What to speak of? The next. So I will summarise what I spoke today. I spoke on the topic of ghost spirits and reincarnation, understanding how the invisible affects the visible.

So even in a highly visibly dramatic sports like cricket, there was a guardian headline which talked about Pakistan wants to channel the spirit of Miyanda, not the ghost of Sharma. They also understand there is something invisible. So spirit refers to something positive, which inspires and empowers, ghost refers to something negative, which troubles and torments.

And then we discussed about the idea that seeing is believing is not a scientific idea. Yes, seeing is what science begins with. But science for explaining goes beyond visible phenomena to invisible principles.

And it is the invisible theories that explain the visible facts. So in that sense, the invisible is foundational for the explanatory potential of science. So science focusses on material explanations of material phenomena, that is normal science.

Science takes this beyond the material, looks for non-material factors also. And we discussed, is it scientific? We discussed Stevenson's research of four levels of evidences for past life memories. What are they? Recognitions, recollections, behaviours, birthmarks, yeah, thank you.

And then I discussed the case of Naresh Kumar Raydas, who was a reincarnation of Mushi Lalisha. And we saw all these four things. He remembered that when he was taken to Kakori, he recognised the place as well as the people over there.

And then behaviours, he went and hugged his brother, who was an unknown boy for him basically. But along with that, he also asked for his dietary preferences were typical of his previous life. His prayer preferences were also typical of a previous life as a Muslim.

And then after that, his birthmarks, and I discussed about how birthmarks are very distinctive and there is no normal explanation for almost 50% of the cases. And then we discussed about the explanation for this in terms of the model. So there is the body, the mind and the soul.

There is the gross body, subtle body and the soul. So during reincarnation, how are these past life memories explained? At the physical level, the body is destroyed and there is no connection between those two people. So if our life and consciousness came simply from the body or the brain, then these children should not be able to remember it.

And even if one child remembers, that is like one observation of a white crow. And just one white crow observed is enough to challenge the theory that all crows are black. Like that, even one person who remembers the past life is enough to challenge the idea that our consciousness comes from the body alone.

And so why is everybody not able to remember their past life? Although the soul and the mind go from one body to another body, the mind's memories are primarily triggered through the circumstances. So there are many memories stored inside but they are not triggered. So when the body changes, the whole environment changes and that is why most of the memories are triggered based on the bodily connection.

And in some cases, just as some people remember a lot, there is variability in memory because of karma. So some people because of some peculiar karma remember their past lives. And then when especially death is sudden and traumatic, the soul doesn't process the event of death.

And that trauma is impressed in the mind and that is why that impression of the mind, I was shot, I was shot, I was run over by a truck, that carries on in the next body and that creates a physical impression of the birthmark or the birth defect in the next body. And then I discussed in conclusion that when we understand that there are invisible forces that affect our visible behaviour, then what do we do based on that? We recognise that I have to channel the invisible forces that are constructive, not the invisible forces that are destructive. And what is the most constructive, the most powerful invisible force? That is the soul's connection with the whole.

And that whole is Krishna, the all-attractive supreme, and we connect with him through the practise of bhakti yoga. So we all have certain conditionings, which impel us to act in undesirable ways. And just intention alone is not enough for changing our action.

Because there is inclination that is formed by previous impressions, as the floor is inclined, just by saying the water should not flow like this will not change it, we have to first determinately push the water in the other direction, then we are going to change the flooring of the water, of the floor, change the floor's inclination. Like that, we rigorously redirect the mind, if it goes off in the wrong direction, by our diligence, and then when we keep connecting ourselves with Krishna, that connection with Krishna will be a higher satisfaction, which purifies us. And thus, we will find that our behaviour will become more and more positive.

And I concluded by talking about how we have vertical relationships and horizontal relationships. So instead of romanticising reincarnation and thinking that the relationship in this life can be extended in the next future life, we recognise that whatever fulfilment we get in a horizontal relationship, we can get that and much more through a vertical relationship with Krishna. And our horizontal relations are services, which we do responsibly, but we don't get consumed by them.

And if some relationships work out, wonderful, if they don't work out, still, we move forward in our relationship with Krishna. And in whatever fulfilment we get in any relationship, we'll get that and much more in our eternal relationship with Krishna. The purpose of reincarnation ultimately is redirection, when we learn to redirect our heart from this world to Krishna, when we love Krishna more than this world, then Krishna will take us out of this world to his eternal abode.

Thank you very much. Hare Krishna. Are there any questions or comments? What happens to the original subtle body of that person? How does the subtle body of the entering ghost interact with the subtle body of the existing person? Interaction between both and how does the, what happens to the existing soul? What is the connection between both of them? Okay.

So, when a ghost enters into somebody, then, next slide, so what is the relationship between the subtle body of the possessing ghost and of the possessed person? Basically, the possessed person becomes largely inactive. It's like, say, if we have a computer, it's my, if I have a computer, it's my computer, but it's connected with the overall system. And the system administrator takes control of the computer.

Although normally the computer is in front of me, but I have no control, you know, I haven't, my access has been frozen. So, it's somebody else, it's my computer for namesake, but somebody else has full control of the computer. Something similar happens in this case, when we get possessed by, when a person gets possessed by a ghost.

So, basically, the soul as well as the subtle body, both of them become inactive. It is the other soul with the other subtle body that takes control of this body. And in most cases, the person doesn't even remember what happened during that time.

In some cases, they just remember, but it's like something happening to someone else almost. They say it's happening to, it's I am speaking, but I am not speaking. It's like, okay, the body that I am that is speaking, but it is not I who is speaking.

So, basically, the soul and the subtle body, they become, we could say, for that period, almost decoupled from the gross body. So, it's like a person is driving a car and somebody comes and takes control of that car and pushes the person on the driver's side to the next side. And that person may sometimes just be given some chloroform or something while they fall unconscious, not even aware where the car is going.

Or just push aside and just in a day is powerless, seeing the car is going in this direction, although they don't want it to go in that direction. So, basically, during that time, the soul that is dominated, that is possessed, the person who is possessed, their body, their mind and the soul, both of them become inactive. Any other questions? Are all the souls equal? It depends on what we mean by the word equal.

Ultimately, all souls are parts of Krishna. In that sense, all souls are equal. At the same time, in this world, the different souls, based on their different karmas, have got different kinds of bodies and mind.

So, based on the kind of body and mind they have, they have certain capacities. So, that is called the Kshetra. For example, ant, the soul in the ant's body is essentially the same in quality as the soul in the elephant's body.

But the ant, that soul, has got such a small body that it can do very little. The soul in the elephant's body, because of having such a big body, can do much more. So, this is in terms of the difference in physical body size itself.

But the difference can be subtler. It can be intellectual capacity. It can be some other analytical capacity.

Some other, say, managerial skill. So, somebody might not be physically very powerful, but they are just very good at getting things done. So, in that sense, spiritually all souls are equal.

But materially, when the souls are existing in an embodied condition, they are all having diverse levels of power. Does it address your question? What exactly was your question? I wanted to know, if the souls are equal, soul, only soul, then how can one soul possess the other one? Both are equal, then how can one possess the other one? Okay. So, if the possessed soul and the possessor soul are both equal, how can one possess another one? That's because not all souls have the same power at the same time.

So, depending on one's past karma, certain souls may acquire more powers. So, generally speaking, humans are quite high in the hierarchy of living beings. But even among humans, the level of consciousness is different for different people.

There is goodness, there is passion, there is ignorance. So, when a person is in the mode of ignorance, at that time, they can be overcome very easily by the souls who are in ghost bodies. A person is in goodness, a person is striving towards transcendence, for ghosts to possess them will be difficult.

Because although the ghosts are not having physical bodies, but they in the hierarchy, there is a hierarchy of beings described in the fifth canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. And there it is described that ghosts are higher than human beings. Why is that? That higher is in terms of, the subtle often has more power than the physical.

Subtle cannot directly affect the physical, but subtle has more power than the physical. Just like we see in the overall Vedic cosmos, the devatas are having better karma, better piety, better dharma than human beings and they are more powerful. The asuras, their karma and dharma is lower than human beings.

But still their strength is more than human beings. So, like that, ghosts can sometimes have more power than human beings. Especially when those ghosts are, especially when those human beings make themselves vulnerable.

If they subject themselves to activities in the mode of ignorance, like say intoxication or illicit sex, then those activities which are very much in the mode of ignorance that make them more and more vulnerable to becoming haunted by ghosts. So, just wanted to understand that the ghosts that manifest, after a particular person dies and before it becomes a ghost, so the laws of material nature, will that not dominate to them as well? Or they are like, they have the free will to become ghosts. Laws of material nature will work on them as well? Do the laws of material nature work on ghosts? The laws of material nature work, but not the laws of physical nature.

The material is not just physical. In the material there is, physical refers to gross body, subtle mind is also material, although it is not physical. So, just like in a computer, there is hardware and software.

The hardware is physical. You can say, this is the monitor, this is the CPU, this is the processing unit, this is the memory, whatever. The software is not physical.

You cannot pick up the software. You can pick up a CD which contains the software. You cannot touch the software and pick up the software.

But the software is also material. So, like that, there is a difference between the physical and the material. Material is like a big box, within that physical is a subcategory.

So, the laws of physical nature don't apply to ghosts, because they are at a subtle level. So, that's why normally if I want to open a door, I have to physically push the door, then I can open it. But they can do that kind of, ghosts can do that kind of things.

In some ways, they have the capacity to non-physically affect physical matter. Now, those capacities are limited. And there is a whole branch of scientific studies.

There was a whole department in Princeton, Princeton University, which is devoted to paranormal studies. And there has been telepathy, for example. Ryan was a scientist, was a pioneer in that.

And he did demonstrate that. So, many experiments, some people are just able to communicate with some other people. They had the recipient kept in a completely, in an iron medium or a metallic medium, which would, or some kind of medium, some kind of container, where no kind of waves will go through it.

And still, when a person would say, the telepathic transmitter, person would say, think about this, this is like this, and get it like that. So, there are subtle, the most well documented among this is the phenomenon of random number generators. Random number generators means that if there is something which is the, say, a number generator will generate a number from 0 to 9. And if in between, the probability of that number coming is just 1 out of 10, any number.

But if somebody is standing in front of that number generator, and it comes 6. Now, over billions of number generations are done like this, then they found statistically significant deviation. It is not every time it comes 6, but the probability will be 1 10th, it becomes substantially more than 1 10th. And this is remarkable.

And what has been found is that it is, the random number generator may generate the numbers on Friday. But this person may desire on Monday also, and it comes. This person may desire in London, and the random number generator may be in New York.

And still it happens. So, the normal laws of time and space don't apply the way we think. So, there is much more to matter than, much more to existence than just the laws of physical nature.

So, in mainstream science, Einstein found a principle called non-locality. There are entangled particles. If you apply a force on one particle, the other's particle, even if it is separated by millions, by thousands of kilometres, still it gets affected.

So, quantum entanglement is a mysterious phenomenon. It is a well-documented phenomenon, but it is not explainable by mainstream laws of physics at the physical level. So, the holes, their bodies are also under material nature, but they are not under physical nature, because they don't have physical bodies.

So, to what time should we go on? We generally hear that the duration of our life is also according to our past karma. If I am going to live for 80 years, it is my karma. So, the ghosts, they are in that state because their new body is not yet formed, and they make sudden death.

Is that sudden death due to their some karma, or if that was their karma, then how can they be ghosts and not go on a new body? So, if our duration of life is determined by our past karma, and if they went to live for 80 years and somebody dies at the age of 30, and that's why that person has to stay as a ghost for 50 years, then is their dying at the age of 30 also determined by past karma? See, destiny is not something which is completely set out in iron. Destiny is dynamic. It is not static.

It's not like, it's like a weather forecast, that rains are going to come, but whether I am going to get fever because of the rains or not. You know, if I go into the rains foolishly without any protection, and just let myself get soaked for hours together, then I get fever. So, it's not that every single thing that is going to happen to us is destined.

Now, certain things will happen to us, but our response to those things will also determine the magnitude of the gravity of that event happening. So, even this whole idea that our exact number of breaths are fixed, that also, that's one fact. But even, we can't just take one fact and absolutise it, one statement from scripture and absolutise it.

In scripture itself, there is Ayurveda. Ayurveda is the Veda of Ayu. The whole idea is to increase your Ayu.

If our Ayu is fixed, then how can the Ayurveda increase the Ayu? The whole idea is that there are certain actions which when done, will enable us to live more healthily. And the body is a machine. So, if it's well maintained, it will live longer.

So, we can't take one fact and absolutise it. Yes, it is a fact. Generally, I have got a whole three-part seminar on destiny, because it's a very carefully understood destiny concept.

So, that's one thing. We should not think that, like one devotee is asking me, his doctor has told him to exercise, to jog, because he's got heart problems. But some other told him that if you jog, you are breathing faster.

If you are breathing faster, then you will die. Because now, this is ridiculous reasoning. The Pandavas, they would exercise every day in the forest.

Now, the Kshatriyas, they have to maintain their bodies. And their exercise is not just going for a stroll in the forest. They would do physically severe exercises.

So, it's not that we have to take one principle and absolutise it. That is the first point. So, taking that point further, some souls, because we do have free will, and our free will affects how we function.

So, once some devotees were going on Buddhist mission, while they were going on Buddhist mission, at that time, they just drove very fast, very recklessly. Sometimes the devotees have this idea that I am doing it for Krishna. So, Krishna will take care of everything.

Yes, Krishna will take care of everything. But one way Krishna takes care is by giving us intelligence about how to take care. Isn't it? So, if there is a red signal and I just run through the red signal, Krishna will take care.

Well, Krishna has given you intelligence to take care. So, some of these devotees drove very recklessly. Unfortunately, they had an accident and they died.

Several devotees died in that bus party accident. And when the news came to Prabhupada, all the devotees were very grief struck. So, some of the devotees asked Prabhupada, Prabhupada, was it their destiny? And Prabhupada enquired about the circumstances.

Prabhupada said, it was their responsibility. They should have been driving more carefully. So, by our misuse of free will, by our acting irresponsibly, we can worsen things.

And we are meant to take care of things. So, same way, suicide is one way by which we can cut short. By misusing our free will, we can weaken or strengthen our body by the way we handle it.

Similarly, we can destroy our body. It is interesting that I gave a seminar in Ohio State University on the topic of suicide. So, actually, only one out of ten suicides are successful suicides.

Now, what do you mean by successful suicide? Because suicide itself is a defeat. But when people try to make, try to commit suicide, somehow things don't work out. You know, they decide to do something and then somebody, somebody comes along and this happens, that happens and they don't commit suicide.

So, even sometimes we may decide, somebody may decide to do it, it may not work out. So, the point here is that we do have free will. We don't have absolute free will.

I may decide to commit suicide, but I may not be able to commit also. You know, I tie my neck to a rope and the rope breaks. Or there is one boy who tied his neck to a fan and the fan only broke.

So, sometimes, in every situation in our life, there is something which is in our control, something which is not in our control. And so, suppose somebody commits suicide, we have the free will and by using our free will, sometimes we may destroy our body. So, if I destroy my body, then because I have prematurely destroyed my body, I do not get the next body.

So, it's not, okay, you could say that I was just trying to live for 80 years. But that question, that statement itself has to be carefully understood. It cannot be made into absolute truth.

It has to be counterbalanced with other things. How we act also matters. But even if somebody assumes that, just for simplicity, we take it mathematically this way, somebody is meant to live for 80 years and then they destroy their body when they are 30.

Then for the remaining time duration, they will not get a next body. And that's how they may exist in a disembodied state. And Sri Prabhupada also explained that suicide is not the only way.

Sometimes some people live very much in tamoguna, in the lower modes, and they may also get a ghost, they may not get a physical body in the next life. Tell me, till what time? Sometimes we have heard, some temples or some places, they… Some people get possessed. Possessed by some higher… Higher gods, yeah.

So, some places, some people get possessed by, say, the goddess or some other higher beings. Yes, it's possible. Possession by goddesses.

In Marathi, they say, Angatale. So, actually, they have, in the tradition also, in the Shakta tradition especially, usually it is talked about, see, there is the goddess, she is worshipped in two ways. One is the, we could call it like the Mandarupa, Saumya Rupa, the other is the Ugrupa.

When the goddess is with her consort, when, say, Durga is with Shiva, then she is generally very gentle. And generally, that goddess never possesses anyone because she is with her lord. But when the goddess is worshipped separately, that time she is often in the Ugrupa, like Chandi, Kali, the very fierce ones.

And it is usually in these temples that sometimes people get possessed. So, in that, the Shakta tradition also, they have their tests. That is a person really, is like impersonating or is it really possessed? So, they have an idea that if you take a flame or a candle or a light close to the eyes and normally the person, if a sudden light comes, our eyes will blink.

Even against our, even without our noticing, without our wanting to, even if I move my hand close, my eyes will blink. But if somebody is possessed, their tradition says that if the goddess has really entered into their eyes, even if you take the flame very close, their eyes will not blink. So, the point which I am making over here is, not getting too caught in the specifics, that there is the possibility that higher beings can enter into somebody.

But there is also the possibility that there can be some impersonation. So, we don't have to make a qualitative judgement. This is right or this is wrong.

It's possible. The devatas are higher beings and they can sometimes enter into some people. And generally speaking, our focus, there are many examples of paranormal phenomena like this of various kinds.

I was in Singapore. I was giving a class and after that one Chinese lady, she came and she said that, you know, when I was 17, I had a near-death experience. And I had an accident and I saw that I left my body and I was like a brown particle and I was, I entered into a river and the river I flew and then I found that there was, I was just going along and a log passed by.

I climbed on that log and that log went into a bank. And there I saw two people coming. One elderly, bearded, wise-looking person and one other person like a student.

And they approached me. And they were about to speak something to me. And at that time I woke up.

So, I wanted to know, what is it they want to speak to me? What is the meaning of all this? So, I told them that there is a specific phenomenon that is universal principle. If there was some specific message that you were meant to learn through this, then you would have been told that clearly. Since that didn't happen, focus on the universal principle.

Universal principle is that our consciousness is not limited to our body. That we are more than physical creatures. And that's why even when the body gets destroyed, we continue to live on.

And even if the body is dysfunctional, the brain is dysfunctional, even then we continue to live on. So, focus on the universal principle. So, rather than getting in the same principle, rather than getting caught in, oh, can the goddess really possess? Yes, the goddess can possess.

Some higher beings can possess. But whether specific cases of possessions are true or not, we don't have to get into judgement. We focus more on the principle that there is more to life than simply the physical existence that we are living.

And the summit of that more is the connection of love between the soul and the world. We focus on developing that. So, we gave this example of a man who was shot in his head.

So, at that time the soul is very much in a shock state. And then we also denied this fact of that brain produces consciousness. My question is that why is a bullet when hit on the head, the soul leaves the body and the same bullet when it is hit on the leg, the soul doesn't leave the body? Okay.

So, why does a soul hitting the leg does not cause a person to die or a soul to leave the body? But why does the bullet hitting on the head cause the person to leave? Two reasons. First is that the body is a machine. And that is in any machine there is some damage that is repairable and some damage that is irreparable.

So, now in the West they have a culture that if a car gets damaged, repairing the car will cost you more than purchasing a new car. Especially if there are 2, 3, 4 parts to be repaired. So, fixing is, yes they have this culture of use and throw.

There are whole areas of cities. There is an Oklahoma, there is Oklahoma, I think Oklahoma only. So, like 10 by 10 mile area is just filled with cars.

Car debris, used cars, they just don't know what to do with those cars. So, the point which I am making is sometimes some damage is just irreparable. So, when the damage is to a machine is irreparable, then the owner just discards the machine and goes somewhere else and takes another machine.

So, like that some damage to the body is irreparable. And that's why when a major part of the body which is central for the functioning like the brain or the heart or even the stomach, if that gets wounded then the soul has to leave the body because the body is no longer functional. Along with that also there is another factor.

That sometimes some people exhibit what is called as medical miracle. The person should not be alive but still that person is alive. One of the most famous cases, late part of the 18th century, 19th century, there was this worker, construction worker who actually was working and he fell off.

There was an explosion, he fell off and there was an iron rod which was lying there. He actually fell on the rod and the rod went through his head. It went from his head like this, came out like this.

And he was just hanging on his head like that. Can you imagine the rod entering the brain, coming out of the brain? And he stayed conscious. And then he actually managed to, the other people saw what happened.

Actually there was nobody there, he was alone over there. So he managed to use a device and he broke the rod. And then he walked for almost 750 metres with that rod in his head.

You know, coming in, going out. And he, everybody was shocked to see him. They rushed him to the hospital, they got the rod out and he lived on.

He lived on for many years after that. And actually his skull is preserved in a museum. I forget his name.

If you search on Google, you will find it. So the point is that there are, normally speaking, certain bodily functions, certain bodily damage is so irreversible that a person will die. But if some person by their karma is meant to live in a particular body, then no matter how much they damage their body, they will live on.

That's how something called medical miracle happens. This is something similarly, normally also we see. Some people, their digestive system is very delicate.

They eat a little bit of this or a little bit of that, their stomach gets upset. There are other people who treat their tongue like a conveyor belt. They eat anything and everything and nothing happens to them.

So that body's toughness, digestive system's sturdiness is more in some people. That is their past karma. So like that, in some cases, it may happen that despite major damage to the body, the soul lives on in that body.

But normally because the body is a machine for the soul, the machine is severely damaged. Then the soul leaves the body when the machine gets irreparably damaged. One last question.

Some people are able to see the ghost, which is the subtle body, and some are not. Some people can see ghosts, some can't. Why is that? See the ghosts, their possession, there are three ways.

There is three kinds of interactions out there. There is communication, there is possession and there is apparition. So communication means like you may have heard of planchets, where there are some people who are trained mediums.

And somebody says, you know, I want to communicate with my grandfather, I want to communicate with my uncle who has died. And then there are mediums. So these mediums, they have some mystical power, some kind of strange powers by which they attract those people.

And then they start writing something. Or there is a board on which they write. And then the messages from the deceased people are transmitted through that board.

Now, most of this is hocus pocus. But there are some cases where it's very clear. These are those people who sometimes write in a language which they themselves, the mediums, they write in a language which they themselves don't know.

And it's legible, it's intelligible, but they don't understand. Somebody who knows that language, they understand it. So mediums have been well documented.

Many hoaxes, but there are some authentic also. So that is one kind. That is simply communication.

We don't see anything, we don't feel anything, but the person writes something. So that's communication. Another level of interaction with non-physical beings is through possession.

That they enter into us. Another level is apparition. Apparition means you see a particle.

Sometimes some people say that, oh, I saw my grandfather over here. I saw my spouse over here or whatever. So now, again, much of it can be imagination.

But some of it is well documented. So sometimes these ghostly beings have that power. And some people, especially their communication, their connection with that person is very strong.

Then they will be able to perceive it. Some ghostly beings, some deceased beings may have that power to appear in a particular form. And some people may have the capacity to perceive that.

The connection between them is very strong when it happens. So the exact mechanism of how this happens, we don't know. But there is a research published called where science and spirituality kiss.

What is the idea? That they said that if there is a person who is sick, especially this is about spouses, if the wife is very sick and she has a very loving husband and that husband repeatedly gives positive messages, you are going to be well, you are going to be healthy, you are going to be fine. They found that where there is a loving environment, then in medical cases, two cases were exactly identical. But one person is loved, the other person is unloved.

The loved person heals faster. So now what exactly is the cause of this? Scientists will say that, oh, actually it is the body has its own healing mechanism and this person feels good because somebody loves them and that's how they are healed. That's fine.

But what was also found was that just the thoughts, sending the thoughts, you know, okay, you are going to be alright. See, normally when we are disturbed and somebody comes and pacifies us, we feel better. So how do we feel better? Somebody may say, oh, actually when you are anxious, when you are paranoid, certain chemicals are secreted in the brain and they increase our feeling of paranoia.

But words also have therapeutic value. When somebody speaks, assures us, calms us, embraces us, we feel calm. So words affect the consciousness.

So just as words can affect consciousness, similarly, thoughts can also affect consciousness. So basically, rather than going into specifics, we can focus on the principles. Principle is that there is more to life than physical reality.

One last question. So beauty is a spark of Krishna, but it causes us to forget Krishna. So what is the solution? Yes, I gave, in London I gave a whole class, I think three-part class on spiritual perspectives on material beauty.

I'll explain these three points over here very quickly. First is that everything attractive comes from Krishna, but everything attractive doesn't take us to Krishna. So there is things in goodness, there are things in passion, there are things in ignorance.

So we have been given the intelligence to discriminate. So if I, for some people, for alcoholics, alcohol has an intoxicating taste, but that taste is also a spark of Krishna, but that is not going to take them towards Krishna. So we have to use our intelligence to discern what is going to take me towards Krishna, what is not going to take me towards Krishna.

And then we have to minimise our exposure. There is unavoidable exposure which we will all have because we can't live in the world with closed eyes. But there is also exposure that is sought out.

When there is exposure that is unavoidable, over a period of time, initially there may be a little agitation, but over a period of time you just get used to it. That it is, this is the way it is, and maybe for some time there is some agitation, but afterwards this mind gets used to it. The real problem is not just the perception.

The real problem is the imagination. After we perceive something, we imagine something based on that. And when that imagination happens, that is where the agitation comes.

So perception doesn't usually cause agitation. It is imagination that causes agitation. And if you can avoid that imagination, dhyayato vishayan pumsakshas, that is when we contemplate.

Contemplation means essentially imagine. So if you avoid the imagination, then the agitation can be substantially decreased. So, firstly we avoid unnecessary exposure.

It's not that we have to run away from unnecessary exposure. Just living in the world we have to expose ourselves to something. But we can minimise our exposure as much as possible and avoid imagination-based exposure.

And most importantly, this is all in the form of regulative, but in the form of positive, we all need to find out some things that stimulate us spiritually. In the Bhakti Sambha Sindhu, the word is used uddhipan. Uddhipan means spiritual stimulus.

And we need to keep these spiritual stimulus very readily accessible for us. So for example, some of us may like darshan. So not just the darshan of Krishna, but maybe a particular darshan.

We find it very attractive. So keep that very readily accessible. So when the mind gets agitated, have it in your phone and just see that darshan.

Or some of us may be more verbal in our experience. So we may like to remember some quotes, some verses. Keep that readily accessible.

Some of us may have more musical. So some Hare Krishna dhrona, some bhajans, some kirtan. So we hear that.

And that gives us, that connects us to Krishna, that directs our thoughts spiritually towards Krishna. So we have to find out individually, by our experience of bhakti, what is it that will direct our thoughts towards Krishna. And keep that readily accessible to us.

So whenever we find some exposure to some objects which trigger us materially, then we immediately check that exposure. And to avoid the imagination going in that direction, we redirect our imagination towards Krishna. We focus on trying to connect our senses to Krishna, expose our senses to Krishna.

And through not just Krishna generally, generically, but specifically in terms of some stimulus which connects us with Krishna. And by that we can move towards Krishna. So thank you very much.

Shri Prabhupada ki jai. Gaur Bhakta Vrindu ki jai. Gaur Premaan ki jai.