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Shri Arunkumar asked: Dear Swamiji! My humble pranams. I have a doubt regarding the sacred thread. I am a Veera Shaiva Shiva Acharya Jangam by birth. People in my caste do not wear a sacred thread. But one group within the community says they follow the Vedas and the other says that they do not. In Kedarnath, people of our caste perform pūjā to Lord Śiva. My question is, I do not know whether...
Smt. Tanuja asked: Padanamskaram Swamiji! Kindly help me in the situation I am in. How can I resolve the quarrelling in the family? How can children communicate to their parents when they are feeling unsatisfied due to disturbances with their siblings or partner?]
Swami replied: The belief in God and the fear of His punishment for breaking justified traditions of elders and for violating justice in general, alone can bring perfect discipline in any soul. This is equally true whether the soul is a father...
[This question was asked as part of the evening satsaṅga with Swami, at the house of Shri Pavan K.
Shri Kishore Ram asked: Swami, could You please explain the meaning of “Viśvaṃ Viṣṇuḥ” from the Viṣṇu Sahasranāma Stotram, which contains a thousand names of Lord Viṣṇu? ]
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Literally, viśvaṃ means the world and Viṣṇuḥ means God. So, “Viśvaṃ Viṣṇuḥ” would mean that the world is God. But this is not the correct meaning of the statement. In this particular context, viśvam means worldly knowledge and Viṣṇuḥ stands for spiritual knowledge. The statement means that you can build all the concepts of spiritual knowledge with the help of worldly knowledge. It means that every concept of spiritual knowledge is found in worldly knowledge. Not only that, but the knowledge of God...
[This question was asked as part of the evening satsaṅga with Swami, at the house of Shri Pavan K.
Shri Karthik asked: Whenever we attempt to follow Your knowledge and do service without any aspiration for the fruit, we are discouraged because immediately, we get trapped by the desire for some fruit in return. It causes us to stop making any further effort. How can we overcome this problem?]
Swami replied: There are three types of people. The lowest type never start any work due to the fear of failure in the future. The middle type start, do some work and then stop, due to some failure. The highest type of people start the work and finally stop only when they achieve success in it, even if they have to face a hundred hurdles on the way. You have ascended from the lowest type to the middle type. Now you have to ascend...
[This question was asked as part of the evening satsaṅga with Swami, at the house of Shri Pavan K.
Shri Nitin asked: Elders give us some instructions and ask us to follow those instructions without any analysis. Is this acceptable?]
Swami replied: This is not correct in any way. Even God Krishna asked Arjuna not to blindly follow whatever He had said, but to follow it only after thorough analysis (Vimṛśyaitadaśeṣeṇa…). If the shopkeeper is sure that the gold sold by him is genuine 24 carat gold, he will ask the purchaser to subject it to any test and purchase it only after he is fully satisfied. This is because he is totally confident of the purity...
[Swami visited the house of Shri. K. Pavan Kumar and had the following spiritual discussion (satsaṅga). Kumari Sarada Snehitha asked the following question to Swami: “Swami, You said that Śaṅkara left His mother, Prahlāda left his father and Buddha left His kingdom, son and wife for the sake of God. But how is it justified to leave these legitimate worldly bonds?”]
Swami replied: We totally agree with your point, as far as pravṛtti or worldly life is concerned. All family bonds are legitimate worldly bonds that are within the boundaries of worldly life. This means that you should vote for these legitimate worldly bonds over illegitimate worldly bonds. You must give top priority to your mother, your father, your life-partner (wife or husband), your son, your daughter, your property etc. If you neglect your life-partner for the sake of an illegitimate bond with some other person, you have failed at pravṛtti. You are in the state of duśpravṛtti, which is the lowest level of injustice. Pravṛtti or the worldly life following justice, is the middle level. One must vote for pravṛtti over duśpravṛtti. But the highest level...
[Shri Anil asked: Padanamaskaram Swamiji! With regard to Your discourse dated February 25, 2020, on retaliatory sins, I present a case before You for Your kind advice: Person A harms Person B. Suppose this is a case of retaliation in which A harmed B in return for a previous harm done by B to A, in the previous birth. How can one console B after the incident, if B does not believe in the concept of previous birth? B expects B’s relatives to take some action against A since A harmed B in front of B’s relatives. But B’s relatives might not be taking action against A, as per Your advice, thinking that it might be a case of retaliation. At Your Divine Feet. Anil.]
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! In the case of harm done by a person to you in retaliation to a previous harm done by you to that person, the circumstances will be such that you cannot take any action against your opponent. Even the relatives...
[A devotee asked: Guruji, You are giving the highest knowledge. Jai Guru Datta! Is karma behind corona virus? Why is it spreading to all countries? In the Mahabharata, the karma was borne by the people who supported both the parties which were at war with each other. Now, why is the world bearing the karma, when people are far away from each other and have no relationships with each other? Please Lord Datta (Datta Swami), I beg You to protect world from the corona virus!]
Swami replied: Were there no deaths before this corona virus epidemic? If we eliminate this corona virus, will all deaths stop? Is it not a meaningless question? When the time of death comes, there are one crore (10 million) ways of implementing death to a soul. This does not mean that you should not take all the necessary scientific precautions to prevent...
Swami replied: In your question the word ‘how’ is obscure. Does it mean the procedure of cooking the food or the tools and utensils used for cooking or the food ingredients used? I will take it in the sense of the procedure and answer your question. God is unimaginable and there is no possibility of even imagining God. God punishes unjust people and thereby maintains justice in the world. But since this ultimate giver of the punishment is beyond our imagination, a direct proof of perception...
[Smt. Priya, wife of Shri Pavan asked this question to Swami during a satsaṅga at their home.]
Swami replied: You cannot blame God or the astrological planets for this situation. You can neither blame the judge who punished you nor the police department that arrested you. You have to blame your own crime which you had committed previously. It is that crime which made God who is the divine judge and the planets (deities) who are the divine police officers, act in a way that has given you pain. Some people are very clever and they say that the present bad fruit...
1. Does śaktipāta from the sun mean receiving its nuclear fusion energy?
Tinku K. asked: Jai Guru Datta! Namasakaram Guruji! Please explain the following doubts that I have. What is the importance and scientific reason behind the Śani Trayodaśi? Will it give results only on performing the evening abhiṣeka to Lord Śiva? I read in the Śrīpāda Śrīvallabha Charitāmṛtam that this pūjā is one of the reasons for the birth of Śrīpāda Śrīvallabha Swami. In the Charitāmṛtam, Śrīpāda Śrīvallabha said that His maternal grandfather did śaktipāta from the Sūrya mandal to Śrīśaila Mallikārjuna Swami. What is śaktipāta? Is it the tremendous energy that the sun generates by nuclear fusion?
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Śakti here does not mean the inert energy generated in the physical sun. It only means the unimaginable power of the unimaginable God given to the deity Sūrya...
Shri PVNM Sharma asked: Most people say that the soul present in all human beings itself is God. Is this the truth?
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! There are two extreme ends. One end is Śaṅkara, who said that the soul is God and that God exists in every zoological living being having awareness. It means, the awareness present in all animals, including humans, but excluding plants, is God. The other end is Maharshi Dayānanda and Prophet Mohammad, who said that God is formless and that He never exists in any form. It means that God cannot be in any inert object or even in awareness which is non-inert. Both these ends are not correct and the truth lies in the middle golden path as told by Aristotle. Does this mean that Śaṅkara, Maharshi Dayānanda and Prophet Mohammad were wrong? Not at all! I have only told what the truth is. I never said that the three were wrong. All these three preachers were Human Incarnations...
Shri Anil asked: Padanamaskaram Swami! Could You please enlighten us on why Jesus rebuked Peter and called him Satan? Given below is an excerpt from Mathew 16, from the Bible:
21. From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. 22. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” 23. But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's.”]
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! There is a difference between the interests of God and man. Man is interested in God only to get some sort of benefit...
Shri Anil asked: A Father in a church was unable to explain and correlate the word ‘persecutions’ in Mark 10:28-30 as given below. Could You kindly explain it clearly?
28. Peter began to say to Jesus “Look, we have left everything and followed You.” 29. “Truly I tell you,” said Jesus, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for My sake and for the gospel, 30. will fail to receive a hundredfold in the present age—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields, along with persecutions—and to receive eternal life in the age to come.”]
Swami replied: Persecution is the ill-treatment of a person by the people with whom the person has worldly bonds. This happens when that person is of no use to those people. The love in any worldly bond is only based on selfishness, as said in the Veda (Ātmanaḥ kāmāya…). The love of God is free...
[Reply to a question by Shri Phani.] Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Every human being is blessed with some talent and that talent can be used in God’s service. All such different services contributed by different devotees are registered as God’s service alone. In your bank account, somebody donates 100 rupees. Some other person donates 10 dollars. Those 10 dollars are also converted into rupees and they get added to the balance in your account in rupees. You might initially think that 100 ruppees are greater than 10 dollars because 100 is greater than 10. But when the 10 dollars are converted into rupees, the amount will be roughly 750 rupees, which is greater than 100 rupees in value. So, one should not overestimate the value of the propagation...
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...
Shri Phani asked: In discussions, one of my friends asked reason for the God to take such a long time for creation that proceeded through evolution in various stages having very long gap between any two successive stages.
Swami replied: There is an important concept in the spiritual knowledge of Hinduism. As per this religion and its scriptures, the time scale of God Brahmā, the Creator, is greatly condensed compared to the time here on Earth. A second of Brahmā is equal to millions of years on Earth. Einstein says that the length of an object moving at a very high speed shrinks. According to him, time is only the separation between two incidents taking place in this universe. The two incidents are bound by the three dimensions of space. Space is only geometrical and it only exists relatively between two existing objects A and B. If the two objects are destroyed, the distance between these two objects also gets destroyed. The destruction of space between A and B upon the disappearance of the two objects...
Smt. Priyanka Sethepalli (USA) asked: I have a question that has been bothering me for a while now. It is advised that one should never buy a south-facing home as it is believed to lead to some problems. But it is also said that, depending on one's birth star (janma nakṣatram), a south-facing home is especially beneficial for certain people. To such people, the main door of the house facing south is more beneficial than a door facing any other direction. How true is this? Also, some business-owners particularly look for south-facing main entrances which they believe are lucky for them. There are so many variations in people’s beliefs and the Vāstu texts, all over India. I would love to have some clarity on this relation between the birth star of a person and the main door of the house facing different directions. Also, why does this matter seem to be so important in South India (especially for Telugu people) and not so important for people from other states of India? Expanding this further, do the same Vāstu rules apply everywhere, irrespective of the country you live in and the weather in that region? Thank you. Regards, Priyanka.
Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! Vāstu Śāstram is the ancient Indian science of architecture. It is part of Vedic astrology or Jyautiṣa Śāstram. According to Vāstu, the main door of the house should not face the south because Lord Yama, the deity of hell, is situated on the south side. It also says that you should not sleep with your feet towards the south and that instead, your head should be towards the south. The residents in a south-facing house receive bad results, which are having a second marriage, financial loss...
Shri. Prakasa Rao, a retired Indian Navy officer asked: Aṣṭāvakra Gītā was supposed to have been taught to king Janaka by sage Aṣṭāvakra. What is the main difference between it and the Bhagavad Gītā?
Swami replied: The same spiritual knowledge is the basic subject of both the Bhagavad Gita and the Aṣṭāvakra Saṃhitā (Aṣṭāvakra Gita). The Gita was told directly by God, whereas, the Saṃhitā was told by God through the mouth of a great devotee, known as sage Aṣṭāvakra. The orientation of the Saṃhitā is that Aṣṭāvakra is advising king Janaka to give up the fascination for worldly bonds...
[Reply to a question by Shri J. Prasad, Professor of Sanskrit, Central University, Hyderabad] Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! The first step is the attainment of the Sadguru and the attainment of complete spiritual knowledge from Him, which includes getting all doubts clarified from Him. This first step is the slowest step in the sense that this step takes almost all the time. The second step is the attainment of devotion which is a result of the spiritual knowledge. The third step is the attainment of practice...
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