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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?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Be a part of the Live Sessions: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/enquir...
Want to read Acharya Prashant's Books?
Get Free Delivery: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/books?...
Read 3 handpicked wisdom articles, just for you: https://acharyaprashant.org/en/articl...
#acharyaprashant
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?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00I'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 sunaate.
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, T. Krishna, Tej Yajnavalkya or
01:18philosophers 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 root
01:42of their work is philosophy.
01:49Sant Tulsidas is a great and a very recent poet.
01:56That 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, 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.
03:10Nobody will tell you who authored the Upanishads for example.
03:14Because it is not taken as a product of the normal human mind, therefore human authorship
03:22is disallowed.
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.
04:27Anyone 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, it's awesome.
04:57It'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.
05:15It is not a great Upanishad.
05:21It is Mahakavya, it is not Mahadarshan, so that's all right.
05:31Great poets write great poems, whom I really adore to see.
05:36Do 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.
06:05Give him credit for the beauty that he has given you and don't be too harsh on the other
06:11things.
06:12Don'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?
06:36Obviously, they will not come close to you, that does not mean that only material things
06:52come close to you.
06:54Aren't your imaginations very close to you?
07:01Mahavir, Hanuman is to be taken as the representative of truth.
07:08When you are close to the truth, then stupid imaginations do not bother you.
07:15When you are close to the truth, then stupid imaginations do not bother you.
07:23That's what these words mean.
07:28That's all.
07:32The one who believes in Bhoot Pishad, for him they exist.
07:38Do they or not?
07:40When you are asleep and are engaged in some nightmare, for you does the nightmare exist
07:48or not?
07:49Later on you may say it was all imaginary but when you are experiencing it, you feel
07:54it actually exists.
07:57Similarly, the one who deeply believes in all these fantasies, he actually thinks that
08:01these things exist.
08:04How to dispel these notions?
08:08Truth is the answer.
08:12Truth is the answer.
08:14Mahavir, Hanuman, the one who is devoted to Ram, Ram who represents the truth.
08:21If you can be close to the representative of the truth, you will get rid of all nonsensical
08:29and horrifying imaginations.
08:32That's how these words 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
08:54Pishad stood for Niharohan.
09:01Spirituality is not just about getting into regious literature.
09:07When you are performing an experiment in a science lab, that too is spirituality.
09:20Those who do not know science fall 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.
09:55They have never bothered to examine their own tendencies and thoughts and desires.
10:01So even 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.
10:13We 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.
10:30We have drifted too 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.