The Infectious Nature of Vibrations in Our Social Environment

Authoritarian states throughout history have understood, intuitively, the power of collective vibration and suggestion. Nazi Germany created a propaganda ministry that had as its goal continuously repeating certain key phrases, to raise up specific emotions and sentiments, and then to enforce them through the implicit bullying impact of their control both of the levers of power, the police power, the ability to spy and the ability to control one’s livelihood, as well as through the ‘street level’ bullying that occurred through aligned individuals and groups who used brute force, if not to obtain outright support for what they wanted to do, at least to suppress any objections out of fear of repercussions.

The experience of Nazi Germany was, however, not unique, and similar tactics have been used to harness the power of a collectivity to either modify or coerce the actions of individuals, since true individuality, true independence from the collectivity and the society and environment is actually something of an illusory concept. In his book 1984, the author George Orwell described a ritual used to inculcate certain responses and reactions into the body of the citizenry through the use of the “two minute hate”. Even mild-mannered, thoughtful and considerate individuals found themselves caught up in the intensity of the moment and would react with rage and hatred on cue.

In today’s world we see people being manipulated in this way through political discourse and social media. Some group of individuals, generally a minority lacking strong political power, is chosen as the object of hatred and they are then demonized, de-humanized and made into objects of scorn and hatred, with a resultant uprising of rage and hate crimes that begin to tear apart the very fabric of society. This tends to break people into camps and opposing interests and anyone who tries to either remain ‘neutral’ or who tries to bring people together in a more reasonable manner is castigated and ostracized. Fearful of losing their friends, their jobs, their involvement in their community, many remain quiet and simply try to weather the storm; while some, more ambitious perhaps than others, choose one side or the other and engage in the battle.

Underlying all of this is the fact that we are not separate islands of consciousness but are receivers of vibrations and transmitters of vibrations and we are thus subject to responding to intense vibratory patterns, or even less intense but more persistent patterns that continually come to us in one form or another. In most instances, we may not even be consciously aware that we are absorbing and responding to certain vibrations. This lack of awareness is also an element used by those actively attempting to manipulate masses of people without anyone identifying the source of the manipulation. Suddenly it arises all around, on many sides, with many different voices and inflections, and we begin to slowly respond to, adopt and then disseminate the vibrations that have infected us. It is the rare individual who can stand against this bombardment and hold to a different set of values and ideas in a society consumed with the need to conform to widely held beliefs and emotions in any societal grouping.

Of course, not all such vibrational pattern developments are ‘negative’. That is why sages and spiritual leaders counsel the benefit of ‘satsang’, the coming together of devotees to share the energy and experience of their spiritual development and thereby strengthen the aspiration, the consecration and the spiritual receptivity of all.

While we may be able to identify these forces relatively easily when they are writ large in extreme ways in the society, we do not generally recognise that in fact, this is the normal process that makes up, on a day in and day out basis, the general way we develop our ideas, opinions, emotions and patterns.

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The Mother observes: “You must… understand that you are not separate individualities, that life is a constant exchange of forces, of consciousnesses, of vibrations, of movements of all kinds. It is as in a crowd, you see: when everyone pushes all go forward, and when all recede, everyone recedes. It is the same thing in the inner world, in your consciousness. There are all the time forces and influences acting and reacting upon you, it is like a gas in the atmosphere, and unless you are quite awake, these things enter into you, and it is only when they have gone well in and come out as if they came from you, that you become aware of them. How many times people meet those who are nervous, angry, in a bad mood, and themselves become nervous, angry, moody, just like that, without quite knowing why. Why is it that when you play against certain people you play very well, but when you play against others you cannot play? And those very quiet people, not at all wicked, who suddenly become furious when they are in a furious crowd! And no one knows who has started it: it is something that went past and swept off the consciousness. There are people who can let out vibrations like this and others respond without knowing why. Everything is like that, from the smallest to the biggest things.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.8 Life — A Mass of Vibrations, pp. 182-183