Experience of water tasting bitter without any reason followed by distressed feeling

Yogita Apte has been doing spiritual practice under the guidance of the Spiritual Science Research Foundation (SSRF) since the year 2000. She has been living in the hermitage (Ashram) of SSRF in Goa, India since 2003. As part of her spiritual practice, she offers her time free of charge in the section that looks after compilation of holy texts. In this case study she describes in her own words her experience about the water in her water bottle suddenly developing a bitter taste, whilst serving in the holy texts section.

On July 1st, 2005 I was working on my computer in the holy texts compilation section in the Ashram of SSRF in Goa, India. A seeker sitting next to me requested a drink from my water bottle. I was surprised at her request as I could see she had her own bottle filled with water. I asked her why she wanted water from my bottle when she had her own bottle. She explained that the water in her bottle had developed a foul smell. As I knew she was regularly attacked by ghosts (devils, demons, negative energies etc.) to create obstacles in her spiritual practice, I realized that the foul smell in her water bottle was due to attack by ghost.

I passed her my water bottle. In the act of passing it I got a feeling that ‘I should not drink that water anymore’, as I felt that this water too would now be targeted by ghosts.

As I got engrossed in my work, I completely forgot about the incident and drank the water from my water bottle. As soon as I drank it I got a bitter taste in my mouth. This bitter taste was then followed by nauseous feeling and heaviness and pain in my head.

– Yogita Apte, SSRF Ashram, Goa, India.

Spiritual science behind the experience

The aim of ghosts (devils, demons, negative energies etc.) is to discourage the spread of Spirituality. The spread of Spirituality results in spiritual practice that ultimately results in the rise of the subtle basic Sattva component in the environment. Just as humans are distressed by the subtle basic Tama component e.g. foul smell etc., the tamasik (tāmasik)  ghosts (devils, demons, negative energies etc.)  are troubled by sattvikta (sāttviktā). They invest every effort to trouble seekers through various ways and means with the objective of creating obstacles in their spiritual practice. The primary weapon that the ghosts use is black energy.

All of God’s creation is made up of the five Cosmic Principles (Panchatattva). Depending on the specific Cosmic Principle used by ghosts (devils, demons, negative energies etc.)  we experience this black energy in various forms. For example if the black energy manifests through the Absolute Earth Principle(Pruthvitattva) we experience it as foul smell. If it manifests through the Absolute Water Principle we experience it as bitter or sour taste etc.

In the above case the ghosts first used the Absolute Earth Principle  to create a foul smell in the seeker’s water. When she drank water from Yogita’s bottle, the ghost that was troubling the seeker influenced Yogita’s water bottle too. Here in the next stage the ghost used the Absolute Water Principle to create the bitter taste in Yogita’s water.

On consuming water that is infested with black energy, the black energy gets transferred to the person’s body. The black energy then functions at the physical and subtle-level in the body of the targeted person to create distress. The symptoms of this distress are varied like nausea, heaviness of the body, lack of clarity in thinking, lack of enthusiasm to do spiritual practice etc. As a result, it obstructs the seekers spiritual practice in some way or the other.