Is the concept of good and bad omens a superstition?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna is the concept of good omens and bad omens a superstition different people have different ideas of this or that happening, then it is a bad omen so are these actually, is there something real behind this or are they just superstitions answer the omens are like traffic signals sometimes if we are going along a road there is a speed breaker ahead, slow down so what that means is we have to take some caution over that so life is like a journey and certain things happening in certain situations they are indications of some danger ahead so in the Anand Vrindavan Champu written by Kavi Karnapur, it is described that there are three kinds of omens the omens that manifest in our body the omens that manifest in the on land and in other living beings and omens that manifest in the air in the atmosphere at large so for example when Duryodhana is born at that time it is said that suddenly fire started raging and the fire started spreading in various directions and then the the vultures started screeching the jackals started howling and the asses started braying so Vidura seeing this warned Dhritarashtra that this sun these omens indicate that this sun will become the cause of destruction in future of the whole dynasty so he abandoned this sun and you will still have 99 suns and you can live with those suns eventually what happened is Duryodhana’s evil mentality spoiled all the other suns also that when Krishna came as Shanti at that time Dushasan was persuaded by Krishna’s message but Duryodhana put his foot down and then again he perverted Dushasan’s mentality so the point is omens especially when they are as given in the scriptures so they are signs of what is going to happen to us in future now that doesn’t mean that everything is fatalistic that doesn’t mean those things have to happen just like when a speed breaker is there that indicates not that there is going to be an accident but you have to slow down otherwise there will be a jolt and if you go very high speed there might be an accident also so there are omens good omens and bad omens and in a traditional culture people would know this is a good omen this is a bad omen and then accordingly they would modify their actions in today’s culture most people do not know about these omens good omens and bad omens and Srila Prabhupada did not emphasize this too much he did not emphasize devotees going to study Jyotish Shastra or some other books to understand what are omens so how does it work out how do the omens indicate future trends actually in this world everything is ultimately controlled by the super soul through his various agents so suppose when a particular thing is going to go wrong so some people say that say when I am just giving this as an example not necessarily as a scriptural truth some people say that when a black cat goes across one’s path then that is an auspicious so going back to the example of say when Duryodhana is born at that time the vultures start screeching screaming so or the asses start braying and jackals start howling so how is this happening actually they may not be aware that something is happening that Duryodhana is born and now that’s why we are screaming obviously they are not aware of that but what they are aware of is that actually they are not aware of anything but super soul is present in the heart the devatas are present and devatas control various parts of the body super soul controls everything ultimately and the super soul inspires them at that particular time through the agency of the devatas to act in particular ways so by this basically it’s like a traffic signal just as the speed breaker is not conscious and the speed breaker is not aware that there is a traffic signal over here but there is an overall government which provides those signs which constructs the speed breakers and which provides the warning signs also the traffic signals similarly there is an overall arrangement of the cosmic government and whenever some dangers are supposed to happen at that time in its own way the cosmic government arranges to give us some signals so even in modern science they have found that when earthquakes are about to occur there are certain living beings which seem to certain creatures like say dogs or honey bees or mosquitoes or whatever I’m not going to go into that field but certain living beings they seem to get an indication okay now an earthquake is going to occur and they become very cautious at that time so like that now how what is the mechanism by which these living beings understand that earthquake is going to happen they don’t have as far as we know any seismic sensor which will look into the future and know that there are going to be seismic disturbances in the future but they just come to know and science accepts that they come to know and many places their behavior there are proposals to track their behavior so that the so that the earthquakes can be predicted so there are many more things in the universe than what we can understand and omens are one of them so as devotees we accept in principle that omens do exist and they do indicate future trends but Srila Prabhupada did not encourage devotees to bother too much about omens and to study jyotish or other books to understand what is a good omen and what is a bad omen he focused more on practicing pure devotional service and accepting that which is favorable to bhakti and rejecting that which is unfavorable to bhakti so we accept in principle the idea of good and bad omens but we focus not our decisions not on what is good what is a good omen and what is a bad omen we focus it primarily based on what can best how we can serve Krishna best and we make our decisions accordingly if we have been brought up in a culture where we know about omens then we can even base our decisions we can make that as one of the factors in making our decisions for example according to some astrologers the idea is that one should not travel on Thursdays Harishavari Prabhupada gives this example in his one of his transcendental diaries so Prabhupada would sometimes arrange his itinerary in such a way that he would not travel on Thursdays but if an opportunity for preaching came up suddenly and that required him to travel on Thursday he would still travel on Thursday so like that we don’t have to if we have a past knowledge and a past culture then we can take omens as one of the factors in our decision making but if we don’t then we don’t have to we accept them in principle but in practice we focus on bhakti and act according to what is anukun for our bhakti thank you