One of the deepest influences on me, while I listened to ancient spiritual stories as a child, was the power of words, especially the curse given by sages, when someone does something harmful or egotistical. Once given, a curse cannot be revoked, such is the power of words or realized beings. Imagine having such a power that whatever you speak becomes true. There would be no need for visualization and manifestation books and classes.
Yogananda, the spiritual Guru of the 20th century, recounts in his book, one such story from his childhood. It certainly gave me an insight into the power of spoken words. Can you imagine the power of such an ability? It is called "siddhi" in the Sanskrit language. There are revered figures like that in the stories, the most being the "Asta Siddhi" (having eight such powers). Those figures never use them for material gain or manifestation as seems to be the obsession of the current age.
Anyway, in this story, the child Yogananda, when he was still a mortal being, a child, has a verbal tiff with his elder sister and makes an innocent pronouncement. It teaches him a great lesson. Here is the excerpt from Autobiography of a Yogi.
Another early recollection is outstanding; and literally so, for I bear the scar to this day. My elder sister Uma and I were seated in the early morning under a NEEM tree in our Gorakhpur compound. She was helping me with a Bengali primer, what time I could spare my gaze from the nearby parrots eating ripe margosa fruit. Uma complained of a boil on her leg, and fetched a jar of ointment. I smeared a bit of the salve on my forearm.
“Why do you use medicine on a healthy arm?”
“Well, Sis, I feel I am going to have a boil tomorrow. I am testing your ointment on the spot where the boil will appear.”
“You little liar!”
“Sis, don't call me a liar until you see what happens in the morning.” Indignation filled me.
Uma was unimpressed, and thrice repeated her taunt. An adamant resolution sounded in my voice as I made slow reply.
“By the power of will in me, I say that tomorrow I shall have a fairly large boil in this exact place on my arm; and YOUR boil shall swell to twice its present size!”
Morning found me with a stalwart boil on the indicated spot; the dimensions of Uma's boil had doubled. With a shriek, my sister rushed to Mother. “Mukunda has become a necromancer!” Gravely, Mother instructed me never to use the power of words for doing harm. I have always remembered her counsel, and followed it.
My boil was surgically treated. A noticeable scar, left by the doctor's incision, is present today. On my right forearm is a constant reminder of the power in man's sheer word. Those simple and apparently harmless phrases to Uma, spoken with deep concentration, had possessed sufficient hidden force to explode like bombs and produce definite, though injurious, effects. I understood, later, that the explosive vibratory power in speech could be wisely directed to free one's life from difficulties, and thus operate without scar or rebuke.
The point here is the power of being truthful. What I found out was that if someone never speaks the untruth, and from the purity of heart, speaks anything, that comes to true, as the universe notes the purity of heart and fulfills the pronouncements. Naturally, there are hundreds of stories about the power of boon and curse in the spiritual stories I was fortunate to listen to when growing up. It is a power to have for good of the world.
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