The Holy Vedvani & its Glory

HOLY BELOVED GURUDEV, THE AUTHOR OF VEDVANI

 Each and every disciple of our Gurudev are having this holy scripture at their homes which guides all of us in our all types of difficulties & problems.  I don’t know how many of you know the actual making of this holy book called Vedvani which was published in three volumes.  Vedvani is a collection of various divine messages written by Sri Sri Thakur through letters to all His devotees at different times. Actually, a great devotee of our Gurudev called Sri Indubhushan Banerjee who was a friend of Sri Prabhat Chandra Chakraborty and who was also a Professor in Calcutta University like Prabhat babu worked hard to collect various letters written by Sri Sri Thakur to His various devotees at various times.  Indu babu used to avoid the beginning & concluding paras of these letters which used to include the personal matters of those devotees and collect only the divine messages given there which were mostly given in the centre paras of those letters. This task was not an easy one which required enormous dedication & patience and of course pure devotion at the holy feet of Sri Sri Thakur.  When many of our Gurudev’s devotees came to know of Indu babu’s desire they all supported him whole heartedly and started sending him those letters for the benefit of the mankind and so infact we all should be thankful to all those devotees who had helped him in this pious deed. We all have a debt towards that great devotee of Sri Sri Thakur, Indu babu because of whom we are having great words of wisdom of our holy Gurudev through Vedvani!!  Vedvani can be referred to as Sri Sri Thakur Himself  and who guides or rather I should say talk to His devotees through this book!! I am sure many of you would have experienced this thing during some time of your life. At least I can mention some of my experiences here. It so happened once that I was in a utsav of our Gurudev listening to mahanaam sankirtan & was fully lost into it. Many devotees present there were crying while listening to the naam sankirtan, whereas I wasn’t!! Suddenly, a person sitting next to me remarked that one should cry out of love for his God while listening mahanaam & if you don’t then it means you have committed loads of sin so thats why tears are not coming out of your eyes!! I felt very dejected & sad at heart after hearing that remark and thought that may be what that person is saying is correct and I have committed many sins!! In the night while going to sleep, I took Vedvani and prayed to Gurudev to guide and opened it. The message which was given in Bengali was “Samoyik Kirtone boshe Haslam Kandlam, Pore Abar Jogote Moje Gelam, Ete Kichu Hoibo Na” (the moral was that if you laugh or cry while listening to the Kirtan only or for that period only and afterwards resort back to your old traits or habits that will not yield any results!!) can you imagine here the message is so clear and to the point!! Now here try to understand this divine message given by Sri Sri Thakur.   Actually this is done by almost all of us!! I have seen many people even some of our Guru brothers/sisters who regularly visit ashrams or temples, listen to sankirtan or discourses given by the acharyas, read Vedvani, Srimad Bhagvad Gita or Bhagvatham, Ramayan etc. all their whole life but their natural habits never change!! Same jealousy, hatred, anger, lust, greed, proudness etc. remains forever in them till their death!! Why?? The answer lies in the above message of Vedvani!! The meaningfulness of these holy scriptures lies in changing your inner self not just mere reading like a parrot or copy/pasting (what we do in computers)!! Now this reminds me of a story told by one acharya. It goes like this that there were some parrots in a sadhu’s ashram and that sadhu daily used to teach them to say as “a hunter would come, lay his trap, he will put some grains & don’t fall into his trap”. Now these parrots would chant these words daily and then one day actually a hunter came, laid his trap & put some grains there to trap these parrots!! These parrots continued saying those mugged up words but subsequently on seeing those grains fall at the trap of the hunter also!!! While caught in the trap also the parrots were chanting those words!!! So most of the people have become like those parrots who without trying to understand the indepth meaning of the holy scriptures and trying to imbibe those divine messages into their life just repeat them again & again!!  Taking this opportunity I would also like to mention here that just like discussing the divine past times or leelas of Lord can be treated as equivalent to naam sankirtan similarly discussing about these divine messages or teachings given by our Gurudev can also be given the same status as naam sankirtan!! Remember discussion is always good but argument is bad as discussion is to find what is right and argument is to find who is right!!  Discussion can be like what I told earlier about my experience, in the same way another devotees can share his also or what message we are getting from it!! Moreover, a devotee can always discuss on these spiritual matters very easily not a gyani (learned) who doesn’t want to listen anything because he thinks that he knows everything!! If your glass is full and there is no space for more then you cannot have it but a devotee always keep his glass half empty to accept!! Just as what I said aforesaid about discussion, I will tell you about a friend of mine who is also a devotee of our Gurudev, about his experience. He wanted to purchase a flat in Delhi and had applied for a house loan in his office but the loan was not sufficient to meet the cost of the flat so he applied for a partial withdrawal from his Provident Fund Account. But you know the working speed of our Indian Government offices, PF office was taking too much time and subsequently the day of registry came near & that friend of mine became very much worried!! The owner of the flat was not agree to wait even for a single day as he was staying abroad and he had came to India for selling off his flat. My friend was left with no other option but to take the balance money from somewhere else but he had read in Vedvani somewhere that lending money to somebody and taking debt from somebody both are wrong as it takes away the peacefulness from both sides (means one who has given & one who has taken because who has given will always worry about his money till he gets it back and who has taken will always worry till he repays it back)!! He told me about his problem and asked that Sri Sri Thakur had prohibited about this practice of taking debt then what to do?? Here I would like to point out one thing that understanding Vedvani properly required Gurudev’s divine blessings and moreover those divine messages were written by Him to His various devotees depending upon their mental status, situation, time, problems etc. Whatever it is, I asked him to take the shelter of the same Vedvani again which had prohibited him from debting the money earlier and pray to the holy Gurudev and seek its guidance. Accordingly my friend prayed to Sri Sri Thakur and opened it & what message he got it was “Boro Loker Sahajjo Bhinno Obosthar Marjona Ki Koriya Hoibo, Nunyota Shikar Koira Lao” (which means it is not possible to solve the current situation without the help from a rich person, so accept that)! After that my friend requested his office colleagues to help and they all came forward very happily to his rescue and asked him that why he didn’t informed them earlier about this problem of his!! Like this there are hundreds of examples I can give!! If you read the Holy Vedvani daily the same divine message or letter what you would have read earlier for a different problem would give you another solution for another problem!! This is the greatness of Vedvani!! So one should not treat Vedvani as an ordinary book, actually it is Sri Sri Thakur Himself!!

All Glory to Sri Vedvani!! Jai Ram!