I have been recently giving an interview to a journalist, who once found the strength to overcome alcoholism.
It was an important interview, I recommend you read it; excuse my immodesty, but the beginning made me laugh. I read it and was laughing for a very long time. Then I went on to ask my wife and an employee whether they understand what kind of epoch they live in. To my regret, unlike this wonderful journalist, they did not realize the importance of the epoch 🙂
Do you experience the importance of the time we live in? 🙂 Maintain a healthy lifestyle and be happy! I hope this interview will help you with that.
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Several years ago, while still living in Kazakhstan, I discovered for myself the magazine ‘Blagodarenie’ (www.blagoda.com.) and in one breath I read the first few issues. It was like meeting a refreshing mountain stream or a flower that bloomed in the middle of the concrete jungle. As a journalist, I was very surprised by the format of the publication, which a) operates for free; b) does not incline its readers to debauchery, success at any cost and consumerism. «Blagodarenie» in a loving manner delivers eternal truths to its readers: harmony with yourself, sobriety and healthy lifestyle, parenting and family values, spirituality, awareness and moral purity. This is the only magazine I know that appeals directly to the soul, not to the ego.
I think many people, who set foot on the path of spiritual development, would be familiar with both the magazine and its publisher Rami Bleckt — Ph.D., an active promoter of healthy lifestyle, spiritual teacher, psychologist, businessman, Vedic astrologer, coach and consultant, husband and father of four children.
After talking to Rami on Skype, I found that he is a very wise and energetic person. Cheerful and resilient. Loving and unselfish. Also I thought that we all, my dear friends, are very lucky to live in the same time as him, to have the opportunity to learn from him. Rami is one of those people who make this world a better place every day.
Yulia: Rami, have you had any experience of alcohol consumption?
Rami: Yes, but it is much less than yours! {Laughs}
My grandfather was the director of three breweries at the same time. He had three breweries and three children. The eldest was my mother. There was another son, who was an anchor of everyone’s hopes, but he became an alcoholic and did not reveal his talents. A gifted boy from a successful and rich, by Soviet standards, family began to drink, smoke and went down in the world. My mother was a witness of this tragedy. After receiving a medical degree, she studied the terrible effects that alcohol has on people and she taught me, her son, to not consume even a drop of alcohol. Since childhood I knew that alcohol is bad. I had a strong bond with my mother: I knew that if she forbid something, it was for a reason.
Yulia: Of course, your mum forbid you from smoking as well?
Rami: It was easier with smoking. When I was 7, my classmate stole cigarettes from his dad and we tried to smoke. When my father, who was a teacher at the same school, found out, he beat me strongly and warned that next time he’d kill me. The modern pedagogy doesn’t accept such methods but it helped me that time.
My mum, too, constantly talked to me about the dangers of smoking and adolescent masturbation. I am very grateful to my parents for their education, because if a person wants to achieve something in his life, he must be sober. He must not smoke, drink, and be able to set goals and reach them. Alcohol, even in small quantities, destroys human consciousness, making it prone and easy to manipulate for all sorts of egregors, matrix or, as they say now, by the pendulums.
Yulia: Have you ever tried vodka?
Rami: Yes, I did. I used to play water polo and once, on a team meeting, our goalkeeper brought a bottle of vodka. We all drank it. I drank half a glass. Everyone felt very sick. I remember that everyone was lying down and they were not able to get up, and then I, as the most sober, dragged them down the street, and they were shouting, bullying, then I was vomiting … In the morning I felt awful. I didn’t understand what it is people enjoy when they drink. Of course, you can get used to everything, including alcohol, but as for me, since that time I almost never drank again, and even when I was in the Military Institute, where my friends would go to pubs on weekends, I was studying and engaging myself in self-development. I considered drinking to be a waste of time. I tried a cigarette once more, but when I found that it makes it harder to exercise, I gave up forever. Once, I remember, I inhaled marijuana a couple of times and did not understand it as well: so you walk around having fun for a little bit, then get a headache, sickness, your lungs get closed. What’s the point? Years later I saw how alcohol and marijuana turned many of my friends into morons. In many areas these guys were much more talented than me, but where are they now? They ruined their lives themselves!
Yulia: I have read, that you can use marijuana as a teleport: smoke it, go to the astral realm and even achieve enlightenment. Is that true?
Rami: According to Eastern psychology and medicine, everything exists in three modes, three energies of nature (gunas). People, who are in ignorance, tend to achieve the spiritual progress through ignorance – these are alcohol, drugs, stupid actions, negative emotions, self-destruction. Such people have their own «spiritual» experience: I flew, I experienced universal love, expanded consciousness, saw something mysterious… It doesn’t end well. In Shivaism there is couple of paths in which a person recites mantras and smokes dope, but this technique is intended for people in tamos, in ignorance. You can jump into a huge pit full of feces and, while choking, see a mirage. But that does not mean that everybody needs to jump there.
Yulia: There is an opinion that certain psychotropic substances have the role of a beacon in the spiritual development: expanding consciousness and showing where we should go. I think that Castaneda had something similar.
Rami: First of all, nobody has ever seen Castaneda — that’s a fact. Most probably, it is a creative fiction of the author. Think for yourself: some Western man made a lot of money from these books, but why do we need to accept them? I deeply analyzed the works of Castaneda: there are wise things in his books, but not all of what is written there, we need to implement. Over 25 years of counseling, I have met many spiritual people, including those who followed Castaneda. And I did notice that not one of them has achieved harmony. All they can do is show off their intelligence, smoke, talk about the sense of self-importance, about the assembling point and that’s it.
In order to make a quick spiritual progress and reach the perfection you need the guna of goodness, the energy of candor. I have described that path in my book «Three energies.» This is not just my opinion; it is a millennia of experience and knowledge of the enlightened sages. I fully admit that books like the works of Castaneda could be sponsored by the drug mafia, because it is one of the types of manipulation: you say the right things, and add, in parallel, what is profitable for you.
The use of heavy drugs in the USA is now about 25% of the global norm. They sell drugs in every school. Official alcohol circulation in the United States is equal to the budget of the Ministry of Defense. It is so much money that we cannot even imagine! It is obvious that these people can easily hire some Don Pedro, who would write what he is asked. Next, the best psychologists of the world, after reading this book, will recommend it, because a billion dollars was laid out in the campaign. Therefore, we have to be very careful even with such, in some way, remarkable books as «Conversations with God» by Neal Donald Walsh. When you are advised to do whatever you want to achieve the goal, you must be cautious.
Yulia: How does alcohol affect a subtle human body?
Rami: It transfers us into the realm of ignorance immediately. It destroys us at all levels: physical, social, intellectual, spiritual. The brain suffers as well as the reproductive function and the mind. A man falls into the ignorance and this energy of tamas acts like a nuclear weapon: you cannot see it, as if you ate apples in Chernobyl.
I love an anecdote on this subject: A woman is selling apples on the market: «Take the apples! For ten rubbles! From Chernobyl! Just came back from there!» A man comes to her and says: «Why are you shouting this, woman, are you stupid or what? Everyone here is selling for one rubble. And keep it shut, that you are from Chernobyl, otherwise no one will buy them”. She answers: «What do you mean, mate, everyone comes to me and happily takes them, some buy for their mother-in-law, some- for their neighbours!..»
The point is this: we cannot see how alcohol affects us. We can think that it’s good or it’s fun. But it puts us at a very low level. Pay attention: people-consumers are most prone to the alcohol addiction, because they are used to getting positive emotions and everything they need from the outside world. The more emptiness you have inside, the more you try to fullfill it from the outside. More parties, more entertainment, more food, more alcohol. But if you are full inside, you don’t need this. Why is alcohol a drug? Because it causes addiction.
Yulia: I had an experience with drug use, and I can say, that getting rid of alcohol addiction is much more difficult. The reason is the availability.
Rami: Because the alcohol in the modern world is like mass media. It is sold everywhere, it is in beautiful bottles. So people see it as something noble, natural, like a festive attribute. Though in fact it is the same drug.
Yulia: Let’s say a person has decided to stop drinking. He has excluded alcohol and found “the hole” inside himself. How he can fill it?
Rami: What do you mean “a hole in a soul”? Let us go away from these esoteric terms. This man is simply an egoist. Because that one who lives unselfishly for others, cannot be unhappy at all. When a person serves others, and objects for service are always around us — family, close friends, all living beings in this world — when we serve, we have no problem, we are happy. The modern “zombie” mass media, along with the educational system, teach children from the very cradle to be consumers, be selfish, be sexually preoccupied. Live for yourself, have no limits and so on. Such a person can’t be happy, because for the happiness he needs external things. Therefore, if you have emptiness inside, go serve others! Try to remember how you got rid of the alcoholism yourself? You started to serve others, you got on the right track, and you helped people. When you serve, the energy of happiness comes to you. This world was originally created this way: everyone here serves each other. Only a human being has this choice: either to become happy, healthy, successful, selfless; or to become an alcoholic and drug addict; or just an egoist, who moderately consumes alcohol or drugs.
Yulia: Is it possible to return a heavy drinker back to a normal life?
Rami: If his brain and liver are destroyed, hands are shaking and he involuntarily wets his pants, it will be difficult to bring such man to the level of enlightenment in one day. Although many times I have seen good changes when a woman starts to keep the house in sattva, goodness. It is important to feed an alcoholic with vegetarian food. It is easy to prove: you will never find a vegetarian, and even more — a person who only eats raw foods, who would be an alcoholic!
If a person eats corpses, under the disguise of some of his theories, he gets the lowest vibrations – tamos, and for tamos you need alcohol. It is known by all drug sellers.. Why it is much harder for vegetarian restaurants to survive and so easy to thrive for ordinary ones, where meat is served? Sellers of alcohol know that vegetarians are happy without alcohol, especially raw-foodists. Thus, I suggest surrounding the alcoholic with the energy of goodness: it is purity, it is food cooked with love and, ideally, consecrated, and it is, of course, love. Usually in three months a person reforms himself, but if the case is heavy, then it will take longer. Here we must understand that energy of tamos can cause a person to sleep more, he may be attracted by some cheap information on the Internet. But we can work with that too.
Julia: Vegetarianism is now in fashion and, in my experience, not everyone refuses meat for spiritual motives. There are even vegans, who do not give up alcohol. Whom does alcohol affect worse — a vegetarian or carnivore?
Rami: In vegetarians the effect of alcohol is more noticeable because their energy is higher and more pure. Of course there are vegetarians who refused meat, but still eat GMO foods, chemicals, white sugar, white flour, fast food, but we will not consider these guys. The classic vegetarian, especially if he is half raw-foodist, has pure energy level, his body is pure and, accordingly, the result of drinking alcohol will be seen immediately. Lets see, if you take a clean, snow-white sheet, the dirt on it will be visible from afar. And if you take the dark one, well, add to it a little mud — no one will notice. But if you decided to make progress, then you will have to wash out all the dirt.
A person, who constantly drinks alcohol, even in small amounts, is just rolling down, a little faster or a little slower, it is no difference. So, for a vegetarian, vegan or, especially, someone who only eats raw foods, even a relatively small dose can be a serious stress.
Yulia: What do you think, is the reason for even intelligent people to still continue intaking alcohol, even though in small amounts? They are consciously rejecting this natural gift – absolute sobriety.
Rami: That is the influence of «culture», which for the last twenty or thirty years has been leading to complete degradation of the person, and includes regular consumption of alcohol, even in small quantities. But this is ridiculous, you know? This shows that a person is on a low level of development. But, on the other hand, it is better when one practices yoga, is a vegetarian and occasionally uses some wine, than if they weren’t doing any of these things! I mean — just drinking wine, without yoga and vegetarianism. Ideally, all people need to understand one simple thing — in our magazine we published a picture on the subject: «drink on holidays» being the same nonsense as «smoke on holidays», «steal on holidays», «beat ourselves with a frying pan on the head on holidays». What’s the point of this?
You just need to clearly understand that drinking alcohol is absolutely absurd, that it is a tradition alien to us, imposed on us, and only a few hundred years old! During this time though whole nations, whole generations were wiped out by alcohol from the face of the Earth. This is happening to our country now. It is important to understand that alcohol leads to destruction! It destroys, and instead gives some temporary pleasure, even though, what kind of pleasure is that?! It is just a drunken stupor. After that come headaches, hangovers, divorces, women become ugly, man become weak, spineless and impotent. At this point, many readers, of course, would not agree that all become impotent. So see for yourself, the drug mafia also sells Viagra! And besides, you easily find sleeping pills, tranquillizers, anti-depressants. It is all controlled by the same hands. They arrange all the music: show for these foolish slaves a movie where a person smokes and drinks, and then goes out to be happy and successful. People watch these movies and believe it. Be sure, no one remembers American actor Eric Lawson, who, at first, played a tough cowboy in Marlboro advertisement, and later on died of lung cancer.
If a person still has some of his brain, he must understand this and look for happiness in something else.
Yulia: You are right; the alcohol propaganda is so powerful now. Many people believe that alcohol in small quantities may even be useful.
Rami: It is important to understand one thing: any use of alcohol and cigarettes is strong destruction of yourself on the physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels. Drinking and smoking are as ridiculous as jumping from the fifth floor to the ground! It is stupid and unnecessary; our bodies need to be protected! Look: alcohol is responsible for 85% of criminal activity. It is also responsible for destroying marriages: 16% of Russian families break up because of alcoholism. Children are born with disabilities. Parents abandon children, and they end up in orphanages. All these troubles because of so-called «cultural» drinking, invented and imposed on us by these brutes — drug mafia, to bring people to degradation. Pay attention to how clever the promotional articles are compiled: “Five myths about health”. For example, running 40 kilometers every day is harmful. It is obvious, isn’t it? Eating five fruit buckets in half an hour is harmful. And in the end: to completely give up alcohol is harmful! Unconscious person takes it. Once, I flew on a plane and one advertisement for vaccinations caught my eye. Some doctor in an interview was saying that it is necessary to lead a healthy lifestyle. You read it and everything seems to be OK and correct. Then at the end of the article there is a postscript: a healthy lifestyle necessarily involves vaccinations. And this doctor keeps a clinic, which makes a lot of money on vaccinations. You see? Advertising today is being introduced subtly, you need to understand this and not fall for marketing.
Yulia: What do you think about the program “Alcoholics Anonymous”.
Rami: Once I talked with the man, who was recovering by the system of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he said that the essence of this program is almost taken from my books, just written in a more simplified language. I was very pleased. After all, what are they being taught? To be selfless! Because a selfless person, especially a vegetarian, just wouldn’t manage alcohol. Imagine that you are walking in the heat, 45 degrees, and suddenly you feel the stench. You come closer, there lies a dead donkey: guts out, pus, flies, snakes are crawling around … Apparently, it was lying there for about five days. And then you tear off his tail and start to suck this very tail or drink this donkey’s blood. The alcohol is even more harmful than the blood of that dead donkey, you know?
Drug mafia gets huge profits from selling it, so they pour it in pretty bottles, pack it beautifully and widely advertise, making a lot of money from this. In reality, nothing is attractive about it.
Yulia: You have huge experience in consulting a wide variety of people around the world and, as far as I know, you have worked with alcoholics too. What is the key to successful rehabilitation?
Rami: First of all, the alcoholic himself needs a strong desire to stop drinking. It must be his desire and his family’s. Then he needs a desire to serve selflessly. Let him live for the sake of someone else. Let him serve others. He should have fewer claims, feel more gratitude and be in a state of gratefulness. That is on the spiritual level. When the spiritual energy starts to come, he will learn to find happiness inside himself. Alcoholics are egoists. They live for themselves, they do not care at all, and they believe that everyone owes them. So let them be grateful and thank! Thank a hundred and eight times a day. This can be done in ten minutes. I thank my wife, I thank my country…look for any occasion. And have no complaints! Serve others. Food should be pure, sattvic. Never communicate with people who believe in these scary stories about «cultural» drinking: that you can drink in moderation, that sometimes it’s all right to smoke and so on. Communicate with more exalted, harmonious, sober, healthy and resourceful people. If you cannot communicate in person, then listen to their lectures, read their books, attend trainings and seminars. A diet is very important. This is one of the basic conditions in order to be healthy and sober. If a person really can’t live without dead meat, let them then, at the very least, restrict the amounts: instead of eating it three times a day, reduce to just once a day to begin with. Eat more fruits, more vegetables. Or just say to yourself: I won’t eat meat for a year. I don’t reject it entirely, but for one year I am not going to eat it, I’m cleansing my body.
Yulia: I have started with one month, and, finally, I have not eaten anyone for seven years.
Rami: Exactly. For a person, saying “I will give up meat till the end of life, forever and ever, Amen”, can drive us crazy.
Yulia: In one of your speeches you told us that the successful people, who you consult — politicians, businessmen, millionaires — lead, as a rule, a healthy lifestyle, and many of them are vegetarians. Is it more of a Western tendency or do Russian millionaires also show awareness?
Rami: Yes, I do advise the first men of this world, including well-known politicians of the country, where you come from. I can confirm that many of them lead a healthy and sober life. The fact that a man must drink and smoke is the philosophy of the plebeians. Billionaires almost never have a problem with alcohol, you can see them drinking only in movies. Rich people clearly understand that the promotion of alcohol is designed for idiots, and for those still normal people, who potentially can be turned into idiots. Successful people do not drink — it is a worldwide trend. As for Russia, this country now is under the strong pressure of drug mafia. Today, almost any film — is propaganda of debauchery, violence, alcohol and smoking. There is a shameless propaganda on TV. By the way, Canada hasn’t gone far away from it. I have recently read in the newspaper, how with a clever marketing move they raised the demand for a certain brand of rum. Some music group sang a song about this rum, how good is to drink it, and if you drink it, you will be a cool dude, cheers! As a result, people listened the songs, shouted hurray, and ran to buy this very rum. During one month the company earned tens of millions. The journalist in the article admires them: “Wow, what a brilliant marketing move”. It is a crime! It is necessary to punish for this, because a whole generation will degrade, both in Russia and in the West. A few years ago I have read a statistic that every German student at least once a week gets drunk. The reason why it happens – is a widespread promotion of free sex, alcohol, and drugs. Young people are taught to be consumers, and they become consumers. Some people are ready to deprave, to corrupt others for money and glory. That is the tragedy of our time.
Yulia: Speaking of tragedies… People are used to flooding their grief in alcohol. They just do not know any other way to manage sorrow. What would you advise on this?
Rami: Let’s return to the three main energies of the material world, with which the material nature is woven. There is a way out from crisis in ignorance, through passion and goodness. Recovering from crisis in ignorant way means heavy doses of alcohol. Though in traditions of Slavic and Muslim cultures, a hundred or two hundred years ago, there was no custom of getting drunk at funerals. This, again, was introduced by the drug mafia in the late 19th century. Sometimes before, it used to be nonsense, a taboo for a woman to have even a sip of wine before she gives birth and raises children. Now it seems as a rule, a tradition that at the funeral it is necessary to have a drink, to eat a piece of meat, as we say “for the memory”. It’s a way out through ignorance. A person must know that in doing so, he condemns himself to even more serious consequences. Best case scenario — he will push his grief into the subconscious and this will cause harm to his health.
Recovering from crisis through the energy of passion is to begin to move actively, communicate, exercise, clean around yourself. I know a woman who, in spite of the extremely difficult circumstances, had a vital principle: feeling bad? — go to work! Her husband left her with small children, career went wrong, but she didn’t complain, didn’t whine and didn’t drink. She worked! Cleaned the house, worked in the garden – she was always doing something. And the crisis was going away. Therefore, if a person has a serious crisis, if he is crushed by grief, it is unlikely that he would read a philosophical book — there is still a high level of spiritual development needed for this. So he needs to do something active.
Think about it, would the soul, which is gone, be enjoying that, because of it, close people destroy themselves? Do something for the soul. Pray, make a penance. Say: I’ll clean toilets for ten sick old ladies, and the fruits of this penance will be dedicated to my dead mother or grandfather. This will be a thousand times better to do. There is a way out from the crisis through the goodness — this is when a person has a simple philosophical understanding that his grief is impermanent, like everything else in this world. I’ve had such an experience. When my mother suddenly died of cancer, I was studying in university. I realized that I am going to die one day, too. Six months later, a close friend of our family has died, we were very good friends, and I realized even more clearly how short-lived everything is, how impermanent is the nature of this world. So what is the meaning of drinking? It is better to devote ourselves to self-development, because no one knows when we are going to die. Our search for material happiness may end at any moment. What is the point to build sand castles on the beach, if they will soon be destroyed by the next wave? Therefore it is better to have a philosophical approach to the crisis and also to philosophically leave it. Even at the funeral I have just had a little sip. I knew that my mother doesn’t need this, and I didn’t care of other people’s opinion.
Yulia: How is it for the soul, when relatives are mourning and drinking at the funeral?
Rami: It is very bad. In this case, the soul is escorted in ignorance, in tamos. For the soul it is very important what energy accompanies It. If the energy of ignorance is widespread at home, if close people are drunk, the soul may not even get to paradise because of this, but stay on the lower planes. In some European cultures, the funeral was celebrated as a holiday: everyone laughs, have fun, make chocolate coffins, remember the good moments of the life of the deceased and wish him luck and happiness. I’m not saying that we should do this, but it’s definitely better than getting drunk and grunting like a pig. By eating, you do not commemorate the dead. You commemorate by your good deals, by your pure life. That is the best gift to the dead one.
Julia: Which measures, in your opinion, may help to stop alcoholism in Russia? Prohibition, in my opinion, is a great option, but disputes around it are never-ending.
Rami: First of all, the paradigm of television has to undergo dramatic change. All alcohol advertising has to removed, even indirect one. Instead, exalted, pure movies need to be shown, where characters don’t drink and don’t smoke. After some time, of course, prohibition is needed. And there is nothing to be afraid of! In China, they banned drugs and that’s alright with them, nobody suffers. They have a leading economy, they procreate perfectly. It is very simple there: they catch you with drugs, you get shot and that’s it. Yes, they do shoot. About 40-50 per billion men each year. Russian country is so humane: we don’t have such laws. Instead, hundreds of thousands of people die each year from alcohol. Families are destroyed. The country is going to hell. Of course, Prohibition and strict measures are necessary. Because people, who, for the money, are willing to sell own mother and own country, will always deal with alcohol. We live in an era when it is very profitable. It was predicted that in Kali-Yuga the most advantageous businesses would be alcohol, pharmaceuticals and funerals, as well as selling people. The lower are the vibrations of the person, the faster he agrees to do all this, especially if the person is greedy, covetous. Otherwise, that is done on purpose, to quickly clear out large areas, and to make slaves of the people.
Yulia: Rami, thank you very much for this amazing interview! Please, could you wish something to the readers of the Sober blog.
Rami: I wish you to lead a sober and healthy lifestyle! I wish you to always keep a sober head and to realize the need to abandon alcohol once and for all and to not believe all these imposed deliriums and tales about the cultural and moderate drinking. In the same way that you do not need to jump from the fifth floor into a big cesspool filled with shit, you do not have to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes. And now we have come up with Jesus supposedly drinking wine, even though there is a Greek translation, in which it was not wine but grape juice! Think, in biblical times, what kind of tanks were there? — one or two degree wine got fermented, but it was still diluted one to four with water. Not any stronger than kefir (fermented milk drink). Besides, modern powder wine is dangerous altogether: what kind of benefits can we talk about? And how illiterate does a person have to be to believe in them?
Usefulness of wine can only be compared with the usefulness of cyanide: you are laughing in vain, cyanide can also be very much good for you! You drink it and in the first few seconds you feel the adrenaline rush, dizziness, convulsions, heart rate slows down and then, in fact, death. But everything started so well! It is the same story with alcohol, just the agony lasts a little longer. So I wish all readers to give up alcohol once and forever, as you have done. And remember, sobriety — that is only the first step, because we came into this world, not in order to learn to be sober. Sobriety is a principle before religion, it is not even considered. The next step to genuine spirituality and harmony is to become a healthy, happy and successful person. Work on yourself and find the happiness in that. Serve every day, do something for the benefit of all living beings. That’s what I want to wish your readers.
