Ghosts Flee from Hanuman’s Power
Questioner: Okay, I'll introduce myself as I didn't do so previously. My name is Viroh. I'm a second-year student, and I'm pursuing chemical engineering.
So, there's this line I'd like to quote from the Hanuman Chalisa, which is pretty famous. Bhoot Pishaach Nikat Nahi Aawe Mahavir Jab Naam Sunawe.
This, among many other literary pieces, has been misconstrued and obviously used to justify the presence of ghosts. I have a couple of questions springing from this.
One, what does this line exactly imply? And two, is most of the andhbhakti in India because of the poor understanding of literary devices? Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: See, one of the issues is we do not put people and books in perspective. There is a difference between, let's say, Sage Ashtavakra, Shri Krishna, Sage Yajnavalkya or philosophers like Kapil Muni, Kanad Muni, Gautam Muni, and Sant Tulsidas.
Except for Sant Tulsidas, all others belong almost to antiquity, and what lies at the root of their work is philosophy. Sant Tulsidas is a great and very recent poet. That should answer your question. A wonderful poet, a very recent one—just 500–700 years back, that's all.
The rule is very clear. What is to be taken as inviolable, when it comes to the scriptures, is the Shruti, and the Shruti consists of the Vedas and Vedanta. That's all. That's all.
All else is aggregated under the umbrella term of Smriti. The difference is that Shruti is taken as inviolable, not something that the normal human mind has created. If you talk of an A Shruti scripture, nobody will tell you of its author. Nobody will tell you who authored the Upanishads, for example. No. Because it is not taken as a product of the normal human mind; therefore, human authorship is disallowed.
But all the other religious books—they are taken as authored by human beings and therefore not necessarily the truth. The rule is very clear: Smriti will follow Shruti. Smriti will follow Shruti. And where Smriti seems to contradict Shruti, Smriti has to be rejected—simply rejected.
And while Shruti is a small corpus, Smriti is almost infinitely large. Anybody who writes anything significant in the field of religion has contributed to Smriti literature. Ramcharitmanas belongs to Smriti, which is fine. It is the creation of one saint who was pretty recent, in the Mughal era. People can write things, which is all right. Which is all right. Look at the beauty that is there and ignore what is controversial over there. The way the entire epic has been rendered by Tulsidas is magnificent. It's awesome. It's a great poem. It's a great poem.
These are not to be taken as infallible verses. It is a great poem; it is not a great Upanishad. It is a Mahakavya; it is not Mahadarshan. So that's all right.
Great poets write great poems. Homer- Odyssey. Do we scrutinize him the same way? And lots of illogical things you will find in other epics of the world as well. They are to be taken as the poet's thought, the poet's imagination, which is all right.
The poet is a human being. He's entitled to imagine. He has imagined something and written something. Give him credit for the beauty that he has given you, and don't be too harsh on the other things. Don't take the other things as the truth. They are what?
The poet is always said to carry the poetic license. The poet always has the license to imagine, and he has done that. That's fine. Why do you need to take that as some kind of religious dictum?
Bhoot Pishaach Nikat Nahi Aawe. Obviously, they will not come close to you. That does not mean that only material things come close to you. Aren't your imaginations very close to you?
Mahavir Hanuman is to be taken as the representative of truth. When you are close to the truth, then stupid imaginations do not bother you.
Bhoot Pishaach Nikat Nahi Aawe Mahavir Jab Naam Sunawe.
When you are close to the truth, then stupid imaginations do not bother you. That's what these words mean, that's all.
To the one who believes in bhoot, pishach—for him, they exist. Do they or not? When you are asleep and are engaged in some nightmare, for you, does the nightmare exist or not? Later on, you may say it was all imaginary, but when you are experiencing it, you feel it actually exists.
So, similarly, the one who deeply believes in all these fantasies, he actually thinks that these things exist. How to dispel these notions? Truth is the answer. Truth is the answer. Mahavir Hanuman, the one who is devoted to Ram—Ram, who represents the truth. If you can be close to the representative of the truth, you will get rid of all nonsensical and horrifying imaginations.
That's how these words are to be interpreted.
Questioner: And obviously, the second part is overall misconstruing other pieces of literature because of the lack of understanding overall in this country of literary devices. Like, for example, bhoot, pishach stood for your own...
Acharya Prashant: Spirituality is not just about getting into religious literature, huh? When you are performing an experiment in a science lab, that too is spirituality. Those who do not know science pray to superstition.
Spirituality involves both knowing the external world by way of science and knowing the internal world by way of honest observation. If either of these is missing, you are bound to be superstitious.
Even great scientists are often seen to be very superstitious because they have knowledge in the world of material, but they don't have knowledge about who they are. They have never bothered to examine their own tendencies and thoughts and desires. So even scientists can be superstitious. When you have both of these, then you are not superstitious.
In India, the problem is we have neither of these. We are neither formally educated in science, humanities, or arts—we are not really educated people. And also, because we have some kind of very bogus religious system, we have drifted too far away from real spirituality.
Even though we are the progenitors of spiritual philosophy—India is the land from where spiritual philosophy came into being—yet we have unfortunately drifted too far away.
