Posted on: 28 Mar 2020
Shri Phani asked: Recently, a devotee argued that the sound of reciting Vedic hymns with the proper accents (svaras) can even break a glass item. He claimed that it proves that the sound (accents) of the Veda, when recited by traditional priests, has the potency to give divine fruits.
Swami replied: Let us consider the experiment mentioned by you involving the person who broke the glass by reciting the Vedic hymn. It is important to know whether the person performing the experiment was a devoted theist or an atheistic scientist. (1) Assuming that the performer of the experiment was a devoted theist, his devotion to God might have brought some grace of God on to him, due to which the glass broke. In that case, the experiment only proves the unimaginable power of God and not the power of the Vedic accents. (2) But if you still think that the glass broke only by the power of the Vedic accents, you should repeat the same experiment with an atheist, after training him to recite the Vedic hymn with the correct accents. If the glass breaks again in this experiment repeated with an atheist, it means that the glass broke by the power of the sound energy incident on the glass at that specific frequency corresponding to that accent (svara). But it only proves the power of inert sound at that particular frequency. It has nothing to do with the unimaginable power of the Vedic accents! It only becomes a concept of science and there is no question of any supernatural or unimaginable divine power of the Vedic accents. Neither is it a question of God’s unimaginable power since your friend does not even mention God. He is only interested in proving the supernatural power of the Vedic accents, irrespective of God.
I submit the analysis of the two experiments described above to your devoted friend and request him to conclude wisely. Without this analysis he cannot conclude that the Vedic accents have supernatural power. If the performer is devoted, there is a confusion whether the glass broke due to the performer’s devotion or merely as a result of the sound of the Vedic accents at a certain frequency. In order to clarify this doubt, the second experiment is required. In the second experiment, if the glass does not break, the power to break glass certainly lay with the devotion that brings the grace of God to perform any miracle.
I am sure that any miracle, which is an unimaginable event, is always associated with the unimaginable power of the unimaginable God alone. God possesses absolute unimaginable awareness. His awareness cannot be the imaginable awareness found in living beings, which is a work form of the inert energy flowing through the material nervous system. This is because, God existed even before energy and matter were created. In fact, He created both energy and matter. Matter and energy are inert. The awareness in living beings is non-inert. Matter, energy and awareness can only produce imaginable phenonmena that can be analyzed by science. But a miracle is an unimaginable event. It means that even though the event, which is the effect, can be perceived, its cause is unimaginable. That unimaginable cause is the unimaginable awareness, which is not different from God. Miracles are important since they provide perceptible proof of the existence of the unimaginable God.
Kumarila Bhaṭṭa also performed a miraculous event to prove the authority of the Veda. Authority means the true basis, which enables us to assess whether a certain concept is true or false. The Veda, which is the revealed word of God is the ultimate authority. When we say that the Veda is the ultimate authority, we are referring to the meaning or the concepts conveyed by the words in the Veda and not merely the sound of the Veda. The sound of the Veda is merely energy. Kumarila Bhaṭṭa jumped from the top of a hill saying that if the Veda is the true authority, he will survive. He did survive the fall, which was a miracle. This event made several kings, return to theism. They accepted the existence of God, as established by the Veda. The kings had become atheists under the influence of a misinterpreted form of Buddhism. In fact, the original Buddhism was indeed theistic since Buddha Himself was the 9th of the 10 famous Incarnations of God. I request everybody to not misinterpret Kumarila Bhaṭṭa’s miraculous incident as a proof of the supernatural power of the Vedic accents. It was the proof of the true authority of the Veda, which says that God exists.