Ghosts Flee from Hanuman’s Power || Acharya Prashant, BITS Goa (2024)

Acharya Prashant

🧔🏻‍♂️ Want to meet Acharya Prashant? Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/hi/enquiry-gita-course?cmId=m00021  📚 Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books? Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?cmId=m00021  📝 Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articles?cmId=m00021  ➖➖➖  #AcharyaPrashant #आचार्यप्रशांत #Philosophy #BhagavadGita  ➖➖➖  Video Information: 03.09.2024, BITS, Goa  Context: भूत-पिशाच निकट नहीं आवे।  महावीर जब नाम सुनावे ॥  - Hanuman Chalisa  ~ What do the above words mean? ~ Who is Mahavir? ~ What is Shruti, and what does it consist of? ~ Whom should we follow when Smriti contradicts Shruti? ~ What are the consequences of lacking knowledge in both science and self-awareness?   Music Credits: Milind Date  ~~~

Transcript

00:00Okay, I'll introduce myself as I didn't do so previously.

00:09My name is Virok.

00:10I'm a second year student.

00:11I'm pursuing chemical engineering.

00:13So there's this line I'd like to quote from the Hanuman Chalisa which is pretty famous.

00:18Bhoot pichach nikat nahi aate, Mahavir jab naam sunaave.

00:23This among many other literary pieces has been misconstrued and obviously used to justify

00:28the presence of ghosts.

00:30I have a couple of questions springing from this.

00:33One, what does this line exactly imply?

00:36And two, is most of the Andh Bhakti in India because of the poor understanding of literary

00:43devices?

00:45One of the issues is we do not put people and books in perspective.

01:04There's a difference between let's say Tej Ashtavakra, Shri Krishna, Tej Yajnavalkya

01:18or philosophers like Kapil Muni, Karnad Muni, Gautam Muni and Sant Tulsidas.

01:32Except for Sant Tulsidas, all others belong almost to antiquity and what lies at the

01:42root of their work is philosophy.

01:49Sant Tulsidas is a great and a very recent poet that should answer your question.

02:00A very recent one, just 500-700 years back, that's all.

02:12The rule is very clear.

02:15What is to be taken as inviolable when it comes to the scriptures is the Shruti and

02:25the Shruti consists of Ved and Vedanta, that's all.

02:37All else is aggregated under the umbrella term of Smriti.

02:46The difference being that Shruti is taken as inviolable, not something that the normal

02:58human mind has created.

03:03If you talk of a Shruti scripture, nobody will tell you of its author, nobody will tell

03:10you who authored the Upanishads for example, no.

03:15Because it is not taken as a product of the normal human mind, therefore human authorship

03:22is disallowed, no.

03:25But all the other religious books, they are taken as authored by human beings and therefore

03:33not necessarily the truth.

03:38The rule is very clear, Smriti will follow Shruti and where Smriti seems to contradict

03:50Shruti, Smriti has to be rejected, simply rejected.

03:57And while Shruti is a small corpus, Smriti is almost infinitely large.

04:05Anybody who writes anything significant in the field of religion has contributed to Smriti

04:11literature.

04:12Ramcharitmanas belongs to Smriti, which is fine.

04:18It is the creation of one saint who was pretty recent in the Mughal era.

04:27People can write things which is all right, which is all right.

04:35Look at the beauty that is there and ignore what is controversial over there.

04:45The way the entire epic has been rendered by Tulsidas is magnificent.

04:56It's awesome, it's a great poem, it's a great poem.

05:06These are not to be taken as infallible verses.

05:12It is a great poem, it is not a great Upanishad.

05:21It is Maha Kaavya, it is not Maha Darshan, so that's all right.

05:31Great poets write great poems, whom I really adore to see, do we scrutinize them the same way?

05:41And lots of illogical things you will find in other epics of the world as well.

05:51They are to be taken as the poet's thought, the poet's imagination, which is all right.

05:57The poet is a human being, he is entitled to imagine, he has imagined something and

06:03written something, give him credit for the beauty that he has given you and don't be

06:09too harsh on the other things, don't take the other things as the truth, they are what?

06:18The poet is always said to carry the poetic license.

06:23The poet always has the license to imagine and he has done that, that's fine.

06:30Why do you need to take that as some kind of religious dictum?

06:37Obviously, they will not come close to you, that does not mean that only material things

06:52come close to you, aren't your imaginations very close to you?

07:01Mahavir, Hanuman is to be taken as the representative of truth, when you are close to the truth

07:12then stupid imaginations do not bother you, when you are close to the truth then stupid

07:21imaginations do not bother you, that's what these words mean, that's all.

07:31By the one who believes in Bhoot Pishach, for him they exist, do they or not, when you

07:41are asleep and are engaged in some nightmare, for you does the nightmare exist or not, later

07:50on you may say it was all imaginary, but when you are experiencing it, you feel it actually

07:55exists.

07:56Similarly, the one who deeply believes in all these fantasies, he actually thinks that

08:01these things exist, how to dispel these notions, truth is the answer, Mahavir, Hanuman.

08:17The one who is devoted to Ram, Ram who represents the truth, if you can be close to the representative

08:24of the truth, you will get rid of all nonsensical and horrifying imaginations, that's how these

08:32words are to be interpreted.

08:39And obviously the second part is overall misconstruing other pieces of literature because of the

08:47lack of understanding overall in this country of literary devices, like for example, Bhoot

08:54Pishach stood for your own.

09:01Spirituality is not just about getting into religious literature, when you are performing

09:10an experiment in a science lab, that too is spirituality, those who do not know science

09:22fall prey to superstition.

09:29Spirituality involves both, knowing the external world by way of science and knowing the internal

09:34world by way of honest observation.

09:38If either of these are missing, you are bound to be superstitious.

09:45Even great scientists are often seen to be very superstitious because they have knowledge

09:50in the world of material, but they don't have knowledge about who they are.

09:56They have never bothered to examine their own tendencies and thoughts and desires.

10:01Even scientists can be superstitious.

10:05When you have both of these, then you are not superstitious.

10:08In India, the problem is we have neither of these.

10:12We are neither formally educated in science, humanities, arts, we are not really educated

10:21people and also because we have some kind of very bogus religious system, we have drifted

10:31too far away from real spirituality.

10:34Even though we are the progenitors of spiritual philosophy, India is the land from where spiritual

10:49philosophy came into being, yet we have unfortunately drifted too far away.

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