How You Affect Others Even When You Say Nothing to Them

You can say nothing and do nothing — and still influence the people around you. In this conversation with Olga Stolyarova, I look at how thoughts, words and your inner state affect other people, and why a person’s influence is not limited to individual words, thoughts or actions.

What matters is not only what you say, but also the state you say it from, what lies behind the wish to be understood and what you bring into the world as a whole. The main question is not how to forbid yourself bad thoughts, but what foundation underlies your attitude toward other people.

Influence beyond words and actions

– How do our words or thoughts affect other people? If a person feels irritation, some negative states toward another person, they see it — they see how it affects both themselves and the other person — but it grips them so strongly that they can’t do anything about it. What should they do at that moment? And one more small question: do words and thoughts have the same energy of influence, or a different one?

– When we talk about influencing another person, people in society endlessly raise the point that not only words have an influence, but thoughts too. This is simply some social description of what is happening. Because another person is influenced not only by actions, not only by words, not only by thoughts, but by your interaction with them as a whole.

What interaction? You walk past a person on the street; you have no actions toward them, no thoughts and no words. Is there interaction between you? There is. Even from the point of view of ordinary psychology, an ordinary description, an image of this person may remain inside you and later — not right away — surface somehow, and you will make some decision based on it without even connecting it with this person.

Because, look, for an ordinary person actions, words and thoughts are basically interaction in the material world. Although real thoughts, of course, are not the material world. Real thoughts come through a structure: an inflow, spirit, soul and awareness of this thought — a true awareness of the thought’s emergence. I’m talking about true thoughts now. And clearly a thought can be born from the spiritual world.

The thing is, aversion to a person may come to you, you become aware of this thought and think that with this thought you are harming the other person. But the thought of aversion came to you for a completely different reason. Your spiritual system saw something, or generated something for itself, or interacted in some way with that person’s spiritual being.

If you set everything else aside and say: if you live by the spiritual world and by the understanding that the spiritual world exists, then there is interaction of spiritual beings in the spiritual world and there is mutual influence in the spiritual world. That is enough — it doesn’t matter what kind it is, but it exists.

And this is above any interaction of thoughts, actions or words. Because your action also has a cause. Your thought has a source. A word also has a cause: why did you say it, why did you decide to say this word now? Where are you transmitting words from? Are they dead thoughts sitting in your space? Or is it a truth you have just read from the space and passed on? Or did someone else pass this truth through you altogether?

Imagine: a message was sent to you, and I tell you: “Olya, someone asked me to pass this on to you.” And you got upset. So who is the source? The one who asked to pass it on? Me, who passed these thoughts on? Or did you get upset on your own — because of my words, while I have nothing to do with your being upset?

Some people are glad of bad weather, others get angry. My wife sometimes goes: “Rain again.” And I say: “It’s so great that it’s raining.” Two opinions. She, for example, didn’t like the rain, and I liked it. Then we walk down the street, and she says: “Rain again.” I say: “But yesterday you said rain again was bad.” She says: “Not today — I never said that. I like it.”

What matters more than the fear of harming others

There is a reason for a certain state — for what you like and what you don’t — or a reason certain thoughts arise. Why did you think about this at all? Why did it affect you now? Why does the weather affect you at one moment and not at another? At one moment the noise of children affects you, and at another it doesn’t: everyone is noisy, and you are completely calm, you don’t even pay attention. And at another moment everyone is noisy, and you want to destroy them all. And you don’t understand at all what is going on.

If you are worried, keep looking: why was the question asked? You say: “I’m worried about my influence on other people.”

You will have a mountain of unconscious influence, and to some extent it may be negative, and it may also be positive. You can have a positive influence on other people too. Does that worry you? You’ll say: “No, no, no, I only mean the negative.” But positive influence is influence too: it is changing another person, intruding into their life and changing their life.

I recently talked about the phrase “I hope you’ll understand.” What lies behind this phrase at all? A specific, explicit desire to change another person’s opinion. A desire, a real craving to change it. And the absolute understanding that the person who says it is outside of consciousness. If someone says this phrase to you, the other person is in absolute unawareness of everything that is happening. They are absolutely not interested in how you live, what you do for a living, what you are doing, what you are looking at.

Love as the foundation of influence

But if a person thinks about love for other people — about love without a reason, about love simply for a human being as truth, for each person, no matter whether they have done a good or a bad deed… You say: “This person has done bad things; he should be put in prison.” But no one will take away my love for this person. You try to understand this other person: what is driving them right now?

Every day I see people doing very bad things. And the first question about these bad deeds is: what is driving the person in this deed? What is driving them right now? Why did they act this way? This doesn’t mean you need to discuss it with that person — discuss it with yourself. Why did they take such an action? What energies stand behind it? What impulses are behind it? Is it this person’s nature or some external influence on them?

This doesn’t mean you don’t need to defend yourself. Sometimes you need to defend yourself very seriously. Why does a person act this way? People want to change other people’s opinions. They want others to think the way you want, the way you hear, the way you know. For people to think about you the way you want, the way you know, the way you hear.

What influence you create for others

Do these thoughts have an influence? An incredible influence. The very energy of this person influences everything around them, the whole world. Do you see what the point is?

If there is an energy in you of craving power, craving importance, craving recognition, it will influence the world around you. Not in a good way.

And as a consequence, of course, it will influence an incredible number of people you interact with. But you affect other people not only by thinking about those other people. If a bear walked in here right now, I would be frightened of it. Even though the bear, say, had no intention of doing anything bad to me — it just happened to end up here. It’s the same with a person: they walk into some space grumbling, angry, angry with themselves, upset, being negative, with some suicidal thoughts going around in their head. How do you think the people around them will feel? Does this person influence other people? And how!

Everyone wants awareness. People say: “That’s unconscious, it doesn’t matter.” Everything matters. And this person influences all the other people: their children, their parents, the surrounding space — absolutely everything.

And people like to watch this. People like to scroll their feed and look at people who are extremely happy or extremely unhappy. Healthy people, by the way, we often don’t feel like watching: they don’t create any dependencies, any attachments. Why should I watch them? An important aspect here is whether you, as a person, create dependency in other people.

How to relate to your own reactions to other people

The point is not simply in a thought. You thought badly. So you did — so what? Look, you say: “An energy came to me, and I thought badly.” Do I like thinking badly? I don’t. Is it the truth of my life? Not at all. I don’t want to think badly of other people. I want to live with people from care, from love.

And if a person hasn’t treated me very well — is it normal to think badly? It is not normal to think badly. You need to live from love and care just the same. Clearly there is the social world, and within the social structure this will be resolved. But that has nothing to do with me as a person relating to another person badly — wishing them death, destruction or a bad state.

This, by the way, Olya, allows you to stay incredibly sensible about your own social actions. In fact, it is a very strong sensibleness of perception as a whole. Some would even call it manipulation. If you are aware of everything that is happening, you are able to act correctly even from the point of view of society. Where decisions have to be made not simply from the idea of love, where from time to time you need to defend, where you need to set limits for people, because people will eat you — simply eat you, devour you.

And setting limits without harming other people — this lets you sense the social world much better, perceive it much more fully and much more clearly. It is enormous work.

The main question: what you bring into the world

And look at where you bring crap and where you bring butterflies. Observe it. Will you make mistakes? You will. So make mistakes. There is no super-problem in that. What is the problem with having made a mistake? There is no problem at all. Punish yourself, throw tantrums, beat yourself up, write in your diary afterward about how you made a mistake. I made a mistake — so I made it. Did I want to make it? Actually, I didn’t. Did I want to behave like that? No.

A healthy, normal, sensible consciousness in relation to yourself is the only possibility.

This, by the way, is very easy to see when interacting with other people. You interact with me often. I often tell you: “If you asked this question, it’s an example of one thing. If you asked this one — an example of another. And if you finished like this and started justifying yourself, it’s an example of a third.” These are very clear, obvious, extremely understandable, elementary things.

And indeed, a person can use other people to understand where they are. And there is a need for that, including some partial need. But a real outcome is possible only through communicating, talking with yourself, only through yourself. This is the only way to find the outcome, the one unique way. No other ways exist. No one will help.

I would like the people around me to help me. Yes, I would. I would like many things, but I know these are delusions and illusions. And the more I remember this, the better.

The influence you don’t notice

And the most important thing in today’s answer is what I said at the very beginning.

There is an incredible layer of influence that you don’t notice at all. That is precisely the task of expanding perception: step by step, more and more, better and better, to notice this influence, to become aware of it.

That doesn’t mean it won’t exist, that there won’t be bad states, bad thoughts, bad actions. The question is what your foundation is. Do you have something to rely on? The question, as always, is: what is the foundation?

This is very easy to find out when interacting with a person one on one. It is very easy to see what a person’s foundation is. It is very visible in interaction, in discipleship — in a person’s ability to step into the role of a student.

We are now entering such a time… One could talk about this endlessly. I don’t like this kind of reasoning, because in the social world people like the idea that our times are constantly changing somehow. I have been living all this time — and it is a time that changes endlessly. Forty years ago this idea wasn’t really around.

The ego-computer and the focus on personality

But what is a fact? The fact is that a revolutionary change is now taking place in people’s access to knowledge — seemingly incredible knowledge. And what has that given in terms of a person’s development as a human being? Has it made people better? In terms of relating to one another from love — has it improved the everyday state of love for other people? Has it improved it at all? Look around. Look at yourself. Has it improved anything at all?

But we live in a world where people are afflicted by the ego-computer, and the basic principle of the ego-computer is that the most important thing for a person is themselves, their personality.

It would be one thing if at least the spiritual world mattered, and the whole spiritual being. But here the focus is very clearly on the person’s personality. And that’s it. And that is a cause for mourning.

What impulse makes people act

But all this will be resolved not by people becoming smarter, not by people studying something, but by other causes, Olya. Even if you think about it logically, it can only be resolved by some other causes. For example, an impulse of goodness will switch on in people, another impulse of awareness of everything that is happening will switch on. The question is not how it switches on. If such an impulse has switched on, people have become kinder. If an impulse of evil switches on, everyone will simply become more vicious, more vicious still.

I gave an example. There was a situation just now when fifty or seventy thousand people crossed the border from Morocco into Spain — climbed over a pier and came into another country. What energy in the spiritual world could create such a movement — move fifty thousand people from one space to another in complete unawareness and lack of understanding of what is happening? Even the very people performing this action do not adequately understand what is happening.

There will be talk that they were paid — you know how people usually love to say all that. First, that isn’t what is there. Second, what kind of influence must there be for a person to want to do such a thing? And, by the way, there is no talk about them being paid. There is talk about someone having prompted them, organized it, told them a lie that the borders had been opened. And then how do you intend to get to Spain — swim? Or do you want to seize something? What do you want to do? It’s just stupidity in itself.

So what is the cause of this? What energy switches on in people that makes them perform certain actions — for example, go and kill other people? What is the source of this energy? Or they lie — what is the source of that energy? Where is it? Looking from this angle greatly helps to expand perception.

Not everything may be clear from the very beginning, not all energies may be accessible, because these videos are always filled with energies. This is a very powerful opportunity to expand your perception, to truly become aware: what is actually happening? What is really happening?

Here an undeveloped person, a person who lacks energy, will feel bad, because they will feel like a complete robot. Why don’t people like it when we say that something comes from outside? Because a person wants to keep for themselves the importance of making the decision. They want to tell themselves: “I brought myself this joy.” But it is enough to say: “There’s no need for me to bring it to myself. Can joy be poured into me — let it be someone else’s? I don’t need anything; I don’t even need my own beside me. Can everything that isn’t mine be poured into me, a goodness that isn’t mine?” Not mine — not in the sense of other people’s, but from the world as a whole. “My good state, a good flow of events — I didn’t do all this at all. Can all this be poured into me? Something is simply happening in my life.”

People don’t like this. They really don’t want it to happen. A person is ready to live in a tent and say: “I bought this tent myself,” rather than have a house come to them from the space. They say: “No, no, no. If it wasn’t me, I won’t accept it.”

And what have you really done yourself in your life — genuinely, truly? This is the question a person needs to work on, the question a person needs to deal with.

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