by Purnima Coontoor

Dr Jayalakshmi, a chest physician from Mumbai, narrates a case that came into her purview. A 12-year-old patient would experience the entry of a black woman into her being every night. The child would turn breathless and suffer anxiety attacks. Nothing brought release and finally, the doctor, a follower of Sri Bhagavan of the Oneness University, sent her to some healers belonging to that order. Subsequently, the child could see the manifestation of Amma and Bhagavan from the portrait she was given of them. One night she experienced the emergence of the black woman from within her and saw that she was overpowered by Bhagavan. She felt a profound sense of release and relief, and the next day, had severe diarraheoa. Within a day, the diarraheoa ceased and the child's breathlessness and other problems came to a halt. Says the doctor, "I read somewhere that negativity leaves your system through severe vomiting and diarraheoa. It was a clear case of back magic because they had just moved into a new house and many of their acquaintances were jealous."

The doctor herself had a small brush with unknown powers when she put her hands on the head of her ailing maid to heal her, and found herself tussling with a strange force. "I literally had to use all my strength to retain my hand on her head and I invoked Bhagavan's grace. After a while, I could sense that the power had left her, and my maid felt much better."

Ever since Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, things have never been the same again.

In the long and painful process of evolution, man, stuck midway between being animal and God, struggles to overcome his baser instincts and reclaim divinity. While he has the immense potential of rising above the former, he is equally capable of plunging into the depths of degradation and depravity when gripped with emotions of anger, jealousy, hatred, selfishness, ambition and the like. Animals have a code of conduct, but man has none when his dark side takes over. He will try any which way to harm his fellow human beings in order to realise his ambitions and establish sole supremacy. Devilish man has mastered the art of black magic to do this, and has been practising it since the dawn of civilisation.

Black magic or dark magic is the branch of magic that is used to perform evil acts, that draws on malevolent powers to harm others. It can be invoked to kill, injure, and cause destruction. All ancient civilisations have their own brand of black magic. Across the world, Vietnam is famous for the practice. Parts of Asia including India, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia, practise variations of 'lefthand Tantra' In the West, voodoo witchcraft is practised in America, Mexico and parts of South America, England, Eastern Europe and Africa.

None of us can claim to have been untouched by negativity of some sort at some point of time in our lives. That's because life energy becomes vulnerable to any negative energy it may come into contact with. Our auras, i.e., energy fields that surround the physical body, are electromagnetic in nature, made up of live and intelligent frequencies. Every animate and inanimate being in the universe has an aura, and the human aura has layers of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual elements.

Auras are vulnerable and it's very easy to direct negative forces towards them. Black magic is nothing but negative energy programmes that are sent into an aura of an individual by another. This can seriously affect physical and inner vitality, and effectively slow down, block, disrupt and damage our energy systems. Black magic can affect the alpha and beta waves of the brain, and impair logical thinking. This can easily be accomplished in places where oxygen (or pranashakti) is low in the atmosphere or the aura.

In India, the most common act of black magic is to place strings of negatively charged lemon and chillies at busy crossroads so that the practitioner transfers his negativity to an unsuspecting pedestrian. Indian movies frequently show mantriks involved in various vile rituals involving skulls, boiling cauldrons and animal/human sacrifice. It's a common practice in rural India to use black magic to cure even minor ailments, and sometimes to avenge insults, acquire property or an unwilling mate. At the very least, violent and negative thoughts are always doing their rounds in the universal consciousness, influencing and harming the vulnerable.

In this day and age of Kaliyug, where standards of morality amongst humans are at an all-time low, it's vital that we arm ourselves against evil intent and harness all the positivity that we can get, through physical, mental and spiritual means.

Dealing with Black Magic
It takes superhuman effort not to react and to face negativity with equanimity. The first impulse of a mere human would be to bemoan his fate and entertain violent thoughts against the black magician. Not the best of attitudes to adapt, because one will again incur bad karma by reacting in a similar manner to the situation. The purpose of human life is to rise above animal instincts and exercise restraint. "Be like a stone in the face of negativity," says Art of Living guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. We have to empower ourselves with superior methods to become invulnerable to the influence of evil, because, as the wise say, "Ethical existence is the highest manifestation of spirituality."

Traditional Indian culture has evolved certain practices through the ages, which are intended to protect us from evil by default. Drawing auspicious pictures in front of the threshold of a house (rangoli), hanging green mango leaves on the front door, lighting lamps, agarbattis and dhoop, hanging pictures of deities, playing music and chanting mantras, praying, doing havans and celebrating innumerable festivals throughout the year are but some of them.

But the most effective armour against evil is faith - either in goodness, or in a Higher Power. Indian mythology is replete with stories that demonstrate the same. Prince Prahlad, as a little child, smilingly goes through all the evil that his father, demon Hiranyakashipu, unleashes on him, only due to his unshaken faith in his god Narayana. Impressed by the child's faith in him, God himself comes down to earth as Narasimha and vanquishes the evil demon.

"The Spirit helps us in our weakness; if God is for us who can be against us?" says the Holy Bible. Bhakti yoga is one of the four yogas propounded by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Many of us place faith in a guru. Chanting the mantra or wearing a talisman given by a guru psychologically empowers an individual, and thus strengthens his aura. Many gurus can also help avert or combat the effects of black magic by virtue of their spiritual prowess. St. Augustine, thinker and theologian of the middle era, exhorts people to have faith in God's compassion. "The Lord says to you, 'I will never abandon you, I will always be with you.' If a good man made you such a promise, you would trust him. God makes it, and do you doubt? Do you seek a support more sure than the word of God, which is infallible? Surely, He has made the promise, He has written it, He has pledged His word for it, it is most certain."

Faith is the strength in a human being. But it requires either enormous courage or utter innocence to unconditionally surrender to it in the face of a crisis. A tall order, and not many of us can claim to possess such faith in a Higher Power.

The Faith of Sceptics
It's not necessary to put faith in an unknown entity - utter rejection of the notion of negative forces itself is also faith of a different kind - the kind that says "No one can harm me but myself." This strong feeling of security also strengthens the aura, and repels negativity. To have this faith, it's necessary to develop a scientific temper. Mothers play a very important role in inculcating spiritual and mental strength in their children. If the mother is given to too much superstition and irrational behaviour, she will transfer the fear of the unknown to her children too. They will then grow up to be insecure individuals who turn to faith out of fear rather than love. But this faith is no faith at all, because this faith expects rather than gives.

In the oncoming New Age, where knowledge of spirituality affords us a view of the world as composed of energy and intelligence, we are no longer as well shielded by the faith of the sceptic as earlier, when it was possible to simply dismiss black magic out of hand as a figment of imagination. All the more reason to device intelligent and spiritual methods to counteract negativity so we do not have to cower under superstitious dread.

Fear and Attachment
Fear is the exact opposite of faith. It is the basic ingredient that weakens the aura, and renders it susceptible to negativity. Fear for oneself, fear for loved ones, fear of losing health and worldly possessions… fear exists because of attachment to oneself and to the known. Fear and attachment make us weak and vulnerable. All spiritual masters exhort us to drop desires and attachment, and thus become mentally and spiritually strong, and thereby develop detachment.

The Buddhist Alchemy
It requires extensive sadhana to attain this detachment, and once there, no black magic can penetrate the aura around such a person. Osho says that such a person can become an alchemist, and transform evil into virtue. "Have you ever looked at the word evil?" he asks, "it is live, backwards. Life can become evil, and evil life; it all depends on how you read it." Jesus has said, "Resist not evil." And the way to achieve that is to assimilate it through the heart, where evil is absorbed and poured out of the bodhichitta as compassion. This is the Buddhist alchemy. Atisha, a spiritual master, says that to be compassionate is to become the transforming force in existence - the ugly into the beautiful, the frog into the prince, and darkness into light. Resent nothing, bless everything. What you resist persists, and what you stare at in the face, disappears. That's the only intelligent way of dealing with negativity, the way of spiritual seekers, the way of the bodhichitta.

The Three Monkeys
Life is a mirror - it just reflects our true self. What you release into the universal consciousness comes back to you. What you give is what you get. So if you attract evil, perhaps there is good reason behind it! Confucius has said, "If out of the three hundred songs I had to take one phrase to cover all my teachings, I would say, 'Let there be no evil in your thoughts.'" Jainism avers that "to whatever extent the five senses are suppressed by a person who is well established in the path of righteousness, to such extent the doorway for the entrance of evil is closed for that person."

So, see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil seems to be sound advice. Add 'brook no evil' to that and you have an effective formula to steer clear of attracting evil in the first place. 'A man should always incite the good impulse in his soul to fight against the evil impulse' goes a saying from the Talmud in Judaism. That is the importance of attending satsangs and doing nama japa - they keep bad company and bad thoughts away. This will automatically raise the frequency of vibration of life energy and effectively block evil from within and without.

Black or White, Everything is Magic
Duality is the nature of the universe. Health and disease, good and bad, the beautiful and the ugly, joy and sorrow, life and death, evil and virtue - they exist in pairs. It's inevitable that a human being is exposed to both dimensions of life, but the trick is to rise above the duality and perceive life as 'maya' - an illusion and a 'lila' or play of God, and remain unaffected, unruffled, detached.

To quote Swami Rama from his book, Path of Fire and Light, "Learn to live in the world, and yet remain above and unaffected. A lotus does exactly that. It grows out of the mud, yet remains unaffected by the mud. That is why the symbol of yoga and meditation is the lotus." Man's ultimate destiny is to bloom into a thousand-petalled lotus and realise the Divine. It's the promise of eternity that despite our efforts to the contrary, we'll all get there someday!