Environment can influence a person and always does, but it depends on what kind of environment this is. The more seemingly closer the environment is to the spiritual, the more dangerous it is if it is the wrong environment. This means that if you find yourself in a certain group and encounter certain people who talk to you about the spiritual, you have to check, very accurately, whether these people are true or not. How can this be checked?
The first and foremost principle of determining whether this is a right teacher is that he only studies the original sources with you—only the original sources. On no account does a genuine teacher have a right to add something of his own: no psychologies, or technologies—he cannot mix this with anything. Meanwhile, today you know how widespread this is: people mix this with some exercises, some medicines, or some other theories. All of that is absolutely out of the question. This is already not spiritual. This is a surrogate that serves only to confuse yourself and the others. This is why the most important criterion is whether you study the original sources in the original language or, if worst comes to worst, in translation.