Overcoming Loneliness in a Disconnected World

Overcoming Loneliness in a Disconnected World

[00:45] Pheromone Clouds

See, our connectivity is very artificial, and it’s limited to an electronic reproduction of a facsimile of another being. When you’re texting somebody and they say, “Wasn’t that a wonderful dinner that Robert Downey Jr. had the other night on Instagram?” then, you can’t even get voice tonality in that. It’s not, “Wasn’t that a wonderful dinner that Robert had the other night when we got to view that on Instagram?”

Or is it, “Wasn’t that a wonderful thing that Robert Downey Jr. had the other night on Instagram?” You have no idea of what kind of actual quality is there. It’s just a text about something that somebody has seen in an electronic reproduction of a relatively artificial scene that really has almost nothing to do with Robert’s dinner.

So, there’s a part of us that knows this is all fake. It knows that this is all fake. We are built as gregarious human beings for relatively close personal contact. Surrounding us, in a cloud of about a six-foot radius, depending on whether the wind’s blowing or not, there’s a cloud around us of skin-released airborne hormones. 

These are called pher—P-H-E-R—pher hormones, or pheromones, which is a constructed word from pher hormones. These pheromones are endocrines and hormones that are skin-released, airborne, and which we are in constant exchange whenever we are in physical proximity of another person’s pheromone cloud.

And what’s in that pheromone cloud? All of their mood, their reactivity, their experiences, their view of the world is there in molecular format. And when you breathe in, if you are within 6 to 10 feet of another human, then you’re breathing in some of their pheromones—millions of them. 

[02:50] Adaptive Mechanisms

You have receptors in your nervous system that are designed to receive and have those pheromones of somebody else dock into your receptors, and it will cause you to have an empathetic experience of what the other person is experiencing.

This cannot be replicated— in case I don’t need to tell you—but this cannot be replicated by a FaceTime call or a Zoom meeting or by Instagram or by text messaging. Certain mammals, notably dogs and cats, but other mammals as well, have the ability actually to smell the fragrance of different pheromones. 

And so if you’re experiencing fear, sadness, anger, bliss, ecstasy, mania—anything that has different fragrances to it—most humans aren’t able to detect and consciously decipher, distinguish, and describe fragrances in pheromones. However, we do get naturally affected by other people, and we’re designed to be adaptive mechanisms where our pheromones interact with the pheromones of others.

So much of that is being lost because of the way in which we choose to isolate ourselves intentionally by having a phone call, or by having a Zoom meeting, or having a FaceTime, or shooting a text, instead of having actual physical proximity. Actual physical proximity turns out to be a truly rewarding, enriching, full-spectrum human experience.

Now, even that is somewhat marred by the fact that we’re not only breathing in happy-to-see-you pheromones from other people, but we’re also breathing in, and they’re breathing in our—maybe not-so-happy-to-see-you, maybe a little nervous about seeing you, maybe a little bit agitated or annoyed by you—maybe all of those things too.

[05:36] Enriching Our Presence Through Vedic Meditation

And so then, what is it that alters our pheromone cloud? Our consciousness conceives and constructs, governs and becomes, the molecules of our body. And so when we practice Vedic Meditation, we’re sweetening the quality of our pheromone cloud. We’re making our own presence something that is richly rewarding and enriching for anybody to come in contact with.

And so then, people may not realize why they’re having a particularly wonderful experience when they’re around you because you’re a meditator, but much of it has to do with the way that your molecular cloud is affecting them. And there are other subtler phenomena—for example, subtle vibration, which is non-molecular, its waveform—that is causing resonance at their deeper level and awakening their deeper vibrational experience of themselves, sympathetic vibration.

That’s occurring from deep inside you because you meditate every day. You’re awakening that deepest, most omnipresent quality of friendliness and happiness and compassion that’s in you, capability that’s in you, and it awakens that feeling in other people, vibrationally.

[07:03] Stepping Out of the Illusion of Loneliness

So then, loneliness, when we are working only on the human level, then there’s one other element of this disease of loneliness. When we limit ourselves only to the human spectrum, the fact is, every room actually is a crowded room. There’s no such thing as a room that’s not crowded. Crowded with what? You’re sitting in that room all by yourself, so you think.

In fact, as you practice Vedic Meditation and sharpen your perceptual acuity, you’ll make a discovery. And this is what we refer to as the beginnings of the sixth state of consciousness. You’ll make a discovery that there is no form or phenomenon that is not personified.

All forms and all phenomena have personified within them an intelligent aspect of personality. That is to say, we’re living in a living, breathing, conscious, sentient universe. Things are not non-sentient. This is a fundamental teaching of the Veda. Absolutely everything—every form, every phenomenon—is an impulse of Creative Intelligence that has personality about it, that has character.

And you can interact with those characters only if you have the capacity to perceive at that level—that is so fundamental to the human capability base. And so, we need to awaken our fullest potential and step out of this illusion of loneliness.

[08:56] Social Chocolate

When great masters go off into the forest to get away from humanity, they’re not just getting away from humanity. They’re joining the crowds that are out there in the forests who have a higher vibrational level than the masses of humans, many of whom are living a life as a repository of accumulated stress. And the celestial world of beings—small “b”—is not a repository of accumulated stress.

So then, to what extent are we relying, A, on technology, and then B, relying only on the gross, superficial level of perceptual acuity in order to have communality? It is good for us to be seeking out communality, including the challenges that exist within it. If you avoid human contact because you’re afraid of what you might consider the polluting effect of other people’s consciousness state on you, then it’s like a child who only ever wants to eat sweets, and the mother is always saying, “Eat your vegetables.”

“I don’t want to eat my broccoli, I don’t want to eat my spinach, I don’t want to eat my asparagus, I don’t want to eat my vegetables; they don’t taste like chocolate, I only want the chocolate.”

When we don’t engage a variety of consciousness states, then what we’re doing is we’re isolating ourselves and all we’re having is like social chocolate. We’re not giving ourselves the challenge to meet of social interaction, and so we’re not bringing to bear our adaptive qualities. We’re trying to maintain only stability, and doing that is a formula for disaster because we live in an evolutionary reality. Use it or lose it—that’s the evolutionary reality.

If we don’t use our adaptive capability for interaction with a vast variety of states of consciousness, then we can’t feel the satisfaction of successful interaction. It’s not successful for us simply to resile—very good word, resile; it means withdraw—into loneliness or all aloneness because the alternative is to have to eat your veggies.

[11:36] Sociological Exercise

The alternative is to have to embrace and engage and interact with varieties of consciousness states. The people who are more balanced are the ones who have done their sociological exercise. Consider it to be like calisthenics that you have to do in order to exercise your intersocial skills.

First thing is practice Vedic Meditation twice a day. Enliven and awaken your ability to be an interactive human being and then go out and interact.

If you’re a coffee lover, for example, and you have a choice between buying the best Italian espresso machine and installing it in your kitchen, which would give you the capability to make the best possible coffee right there in your own home, better than any barista can make in any coffee shop. 

Or you can leave your house and walk or ride your bicycle or go on your electric scooter or go in your electric vehicle and arrive at a coffee shop where, let’s hope, you’re going to be thrust into the company of strangers while you sit down and have your well-made coffee.

I recommend the latter. You know, turning your home into the place where you can have better coffee than the baristas can make, and you get the glory of never having to meet anybody. While you sit all alone and guzzle down your expert coffee that you made for yourself, you’re not exercising your socially interactive skills.

[13:16] Social Relevance

It’s very important to have to experience that moment of interactivity with other human beings and discover what their demands are, what their levels of expectation are, and to learn how to interact successfully with those. Bring those meditator skills, that meditator smile, that meditator capability, that meditator nobility into interaction with strangers.

It’s a fabulous thing, and very good for you. So, when people say as a joke, “I’ve got to get out more often,” I don’t think it’s a joke anymore. We all need to get out more often. We’ve made our homes too cushy. It’s so much more convenient to stay inside your own secluded, insular environment.

But it’s actually bad for you. You lose your social relevance. Whenever we have an experience of any kind, it is incumbent upon us to make that experience relevant socially.

[14:28] Human Interaction – Surgeon General Recommended

The greatest singer-songwriters, say for example, somebody like Bob Dylan or somebody like Joni Mitchell—I know I’m harking back to 55 years ago, but, you know, bear with me, because they were actually great—they didn’t just specialize in breakup songs. 

When you read their poetry, in the form of lyrics set to fabulous chord changes and instrumentation, then what you have is a kind of poetry where they’ve made their personal experience relevant socially. 

They didn’t have to do that, but they took their personal experience, put it into poetic lyrical form, set it to chord sequences that are pleasant to the ear, and then gave everybody the opportunity to share an experience and think, “I’ve had this experience that she’s talking about.” It’s not just a rhythm and a beat and some meaningless phrases. It actually has in it some phraseology to which one can relate.

This is making your personal experience relevant socially. We all of us have a responsibility to make our personal experience relevant socially, and the only way you’re going to do that is to find a way of interacting with other human beings.

Very important thing. High priority. Surgeon General recommended.

Jai Guru Deva.