Why does God do miracles?

 

148.  System of the World. Part Six

 

This leads us to a paradox: On one hand mankind is supposed to develop on their own, without outside interference, on the other hand glaring examples of divine intervention. No doubt is left in the mind of the participants (like prophet Muhammad^pbuh, Giri Bala, and Therese Neumann) and the people around them, that this is the finger of God doing it, because the two women lived on air for years, for everybody to see. God is supposed to be hidden. Why manifest Himself by miracles? 

I do not know the answer, but I can try. 

God intervenes in a major and a minor way due to His three eminent qualities. I have picked these three, in a litany of others, with some consideration. These are Goodness, Mercy, and His desire that people should appreciate Him, and if possible love Him.

 

Goodness. The proof of His goodness is that when He intervenes in a major way through prophets like Moses, Jesus, Muhammad^pbuh, Buddha, Krishna, the ensuing teaching is to love the fellow man. To create a good society. All the preaching of prophets and mystics, inspired by God, is to do good and make the society better.

Mercy. Although He appears indifferent, but He is merciful. If a society becomes selfish, a major reformer, like Jesus, is sent. Here is a thoughtful verse in Gita, the Hindu scripture: Lord Krishna (human incarnation of God, according to Hindu religion) said;

 

“Whenever dharma (Divine way) declines and the purpose of life is forgotten, I manifest myself on earth. I am born in every age to protect the good, to destroy evil, and to re-establish dharma.”                                                                                                                                  The Bhagvad Gita. 4:7-8
 

Why would God take the trouble of helping if not from mercy? 
 

Consider the two prayers of Mufti Sahib (blog 112). He begged God to help him in feeding his guests. Prayer was immediately answered. Money was provided. His other request was for helping him to spend Eid with his family. Again his request was granted, and money came through the hands of a stranger. The person who wept so much that skin under his eyes broke down.  He importuned God for a huge debt relief (blog 112). His request was granted. All these three episodes denote mercy. Out of all the qualities of God, this mote, appreciates His mercy the most.

 

To be appreciated if not loved: When Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was, he replied; to love God.

There is something in God which is attracted towards the people who love Him. The person, who loves Him without any reward, and without any answer (from Him), is indeed rare. Because it is very difficult to love somebody which is just an idea in the mind in the form of infinite expanse of empty space; Dionysius the Areopagite gave it the name of Divine Darkness. It is difficult to love a concept. To love Goodness, Justice and Beauty. It is much easier if there was a human form to love, such as Jesus, Muhammad^pbuh, Buddha, Krishna, and Ram, or an object such as Kaaba ( the holiest site of Islam ).

 

2. What is the purpose of life? I don’t know.

 

3. Is God personal or impersonal? By personal God is meant that He is approachable. He has human qualities such as joy, sadness, love, and justice. Requests can be sent to Him as supplications. He takes interests in the affairs of the world. And finally, he interferes in the world. 

By impersonal God it is meant that He is somewhere, far, alone, absorbed in Himself. Nobody can reach Him. He is not aware of the affairs of this world. 

He is neither happy nor unhappy

He is neither angry nor jealous

He is neither just nor unjust

He is neither merciful nor cruel

He does not love or hate

He is neither good nor bad

 

From my own personal experience and from centuries of mystical thought, I am certain, as certain can be, that God is personal. To experience Him, one has to invite Him in one’s life. As I have said earlier, this is a cardinal principal. I have narrated so many incidents of His (or His deputies) interventions in blogs 102-112, that there is no doubt left of a personal God. 

But part of God is impersonal. Unapproachable.

 

The only fact which is still unclear is that what if all these instances of miracles, answering of prayers, prophecies, spirits of dead connoting life after death, are perpetrated by His deputies and not by Him? He may be remote and unattached to this world. It is an unanswerable question, but it does not bother me at all, because the system under which these deputies operate has been created by God, and all the prophets and thousands of mystics have said the same thing ( except Buddha ), on rooftops, at peril of life. These systems, such as spirits of bygone human beings, (trillions of them, over millions of years) and life after death, are huge systems. They cannot be created by humans, since they predate them. The spirits could not have developed spontaneously, because brain, like the rest of body, disintegrates.

 

Therefore, God is both personal and impersonal. The great saint Sri Ramakrishna said that impersonal and personal God cannot be separated; they are the same, like milk and its whiteness.

This mote thinks that the Holy Spirit in Christianity is based on the same principle; it is the kinetic energy of God.­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_____________________________________________________________________________________

(1) Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘De Mystica Theologia’. Taken from the book, ‘Mysticism’ by Evelyn Underhill

146.  System of the World. Part four 

 

We were discussing that you have to invite God in your life.

 

How do you invite God in your life? By praying to Him. You have to beg God again and again. He may or may not grant your prayer. But if you are earnest in your desire to reach God (and God will look in your heart), this mote is certain, as certain can be, that He will grant you your prayer. He will transform you. Some people are lucky (because they are ready) and get transformed quickly; otherwise, most often it is a gradual process and may take decades (two or three decades in the case of this mote)

God enters your life, often, in an unobtrusive way. Law of cause and effect is not violated, although there are exceptions. For instance, in the case of Shahab, a letter came from Germany, which was a supernatural event, because the spirit of Fatima (daughter of holy prophet) could not have known the prayer of Shahab (blog 65). There are other examples.

 

The principal that is never violated is that the sanctity of the overall experiment is preserved. The rules of the game are not changed. One is not allowed to interfere in God’s system. Let me give you some examples to illustrate this important point.

               Giri Bala did not eat or drink for fifty six years (blogs 79- 80). Therese Neumann did not eat and drink for twelve years (except for a wafer each day). When Sri Yogananda asked Giri Bala that why didn’t she let the public know her secret of living on air, it would eliminate hunger in the world, she was shocked. Her answer was most revealing. She said it would be against God’s plan.

               A seer learnt the seven winning lottery numbers, one day in advance of drawing, by a spiritual technique (blog 135). He was strongly warned by higher powers, never to do it again. God’s laws, such as hiding the future, are for important reasons. To look into future, without God’s permission, is against God’s plans

               Jesus Christ performed miracles left and right. Why didn’t he (or other powerful mystics like Sri Yukteshwar, Data Sahib) disclose the secrets of making electricity, or a fusion nuclear reactor, or disclose the existence of American Continent, etc. Because, that would have interfered with God’s plans. It would violate the sanctity of the experiment.

               I used to wonder in the past (I don’t anymore) that why don’t Data Sahib, the highest saint of Pakistan, help the inhabitants of Lahore in a major way (Blog 62-63). He helps in the form of daily free food for hundreds. Perhaps few dozen are helped, monetarily, each day. In a city of 6-7 million, and in a country of 190 million, these efforts seem to be very insufficient. I used to wonder, why doesn’t he eradicate the basic problem of poverty, and thus help millions. Perhaps he could do that. He could provide the secret of cheap solar energy, or to produce rain on demand, or reveal a cheap way to convert sea water into fresh water. I don’t wonder anymore, because he is not allowed to do so. It would interfere with the basic premise of the experiment, that human beings should progress ( or regress, as in the case of 16 centuries of stagnation in human thought from Greek period to Renaissance ) on their own.

 

Before we proceed any further we must address what is meant by supernatural. Miracles are supernatural events, because they apparently do not obey the existing laws of nature. They may yet obey some other undiscovered laws of nature.

 

 It is clear that there are souls. I have provided ample evidence (107-110). Now how do we explain souls scientifically? We simply cannot. A dead body is no different from an inanimate object like a lump of coal or a cup. Brain disintegrates after death. I suppose if we were to ask this question to Mr Einstein who reportedly did not believe in God, after showing him a soul and convincing him that there is life after death in the form of souls, he might have answered in the following way. “There must be physical laws governing the existence of soul forms, just as there are laws which govern the visible universe. It is just that we have not yet discovered those laws. After those laws are discovered the explanation will be very simple. Think, how our ability to predict solar eclipse to a second, might appear to a man living thousands of years before Christ. Or what would he think of a man walking on the street talking in a few inches long cellular telephone to another person who may be thousands of miles away, and only the recipient, out of 7 billion inhabitants of earth, can hear him. Think of a bird pecking at his own reflection in a mirror, a reflection that looks and moves like real.  Soul may be like a reflection in a mirror, both real and unreal, but obeying the laws of nature.”

 

To be continued

 

 

144.  System of the World. Part Two

 

We were discussing the Materialistic Theory 

The trouble with string theory is its lack of data. However, if we disregard this problem and discuss it just as a possibility, still there are at least three problems with Materialistic Theory: 

(a). How did the universe come into existence? Scientists did not follow Sherlock Holmes dictum, because they did not consider all the possibilities. They should have considered the possibility of a Creator, and then refuted it, if they could. It cannot be refuted. The philosopher Bertrand Russell, in a debate with a bishop, conceded that he cannot disprove the existence of God.

(b). Where did string/brans come from? You see the scientist believe that universe was created out of nothing. But their nothing is not really nothing (an absolute vacuum, where nothing is present). The nothing of scientists is full of positive energy and an equal amount of negative energy, cancelling each other.

Thus we are led to the next question, where did all these particles, fields and energy come from? If there were precursors of them, where did they come from? And so on.  At some point the process has to start from absolutely nothing.

 

 That brings us to the point where we started. Can this huge, infinite universe or for that matter anything start from nothing? Prove it. Create one particle in an absolute vacuum.

 

(3). How do you explain miracles, answering of prayers, foretelling the future, and the existence of the spirits of dead persons who once inhabited earth, without a God. I have dealt with these phenomena, in great detail, in my eleven blogs; 102-112 in part three. If I narrate them here again, it will be needless repetition.

However, who, except God (or His deputies) could transform sandy soil into candy (blog 104)?

Who, except God ( or His deputies ) could answer the prayer of Mr Shevani’s to meet the greatest Qalander of present time, or for that matter Giri Bala’s prayer to learn the way to live without food or drink (blog 111)? Who, except God (or His deputies) would have inspired Swami Vivekananda to tell Mr Dickenson, 43 years in advance, that his guru will give him a silver cup? Who, except God (or His deputies) could provide proof of life after death, in the form of spirit of Bimla Kumari haunting a house in Cuttack, India?

 

A logician will say, where did this Creator come from?

The answer is that this mote does not know. This is an unanswerable question.  Our small mind is not capable of answering this question, just as a cow cannot learn to read.

 This mote has offered his arguments (blog 113). I will repeat them in an abbreviated form for purpose of continuity:

 

1. God can be conceptualized as energy, or something even more subtle than energy, with a supermind.  Human brain is an example. It is made, mainly, of nerve cells, created and fed by our daily food. These cells have the power to think, feel, and create movements and store as memory. These cells communicate with each other instantaneously, at the speed of light. If our brain, a collection of billions of cells, made of atoms, and atoms made of subatomic particles, such as electrons and protons and neutrons, can have thoughts of pain, pleasure, compassion, jealousy, and anger, why not God, a collection of pure energy, have a mind?

               2. How can such supermind arise, out of sheer nothing? The answer is that the same process of evolution, which caused the atoms to combine with each other and make chemicals such as amino acids, which led to the formation of a cell, and then to man, in 3-4 thousand million years( blog 99), could have created God ( I shudder at my own temerity ) in a limitless amount of time.  It may have happened with the same two engines of mutation and natural selection. There is no logical or biological reason for evolution to stop at a certain point. If not mutation, then deliberate experimentation, by the supermind, on the leptons and quarks, to continue its improvement.

 

Religious theory. God created this universe. He runs it. He is responsible for all the happenings in the world and universe, because everything happens by His divine will. I have discussed this theory in great detail in four blogs; 134-137. There is no need to repeat it. But, let me reiterate the points against it. 

Now, let us discuss the arguments against the Religious theory: 

1. It does not explain evil

2. It does not explain injustice

3. Makes God, indifferent, cruel and unjust

4. Why is God hidden?

5. If everything is preordained by God, then what is the purpose of creation?

6. It flies against our daily experience of events happening due to free will.

7. Does not explain the cruelty of predator animals to prey.

8. All human effort is completely useless.

Each of the above mentioned points are examined in detail in blogs 135-137. 

This theory is not valid

 

To be continued.