187. Jesus Christ in the eyes of a non-Christian. Part three

 

We were discussing the miracles performed by Jesus Christ                                                                                                                                                                      

1. One of the most spectacular events was his transfiguration. His appearance changed and his clothes became dazzling white. He talked with mighty prophets like Moses and Elijah, and a voice was heard from the cloud. All this happened in front of three witnesses, Peter, James and John. Here is the account:                                                                                                        “After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. ³ His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. ⁴ And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus” (9:2-4).                            Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!”

This event is described in all three synoptic Gospels and in a letter by Peter:                                ¹⁷ He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”^{[a] 18} We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.(2. Peter: 17-18 )

When a modern reader like yourself, reads all that which I have written above, if he or she is not an unquestioning devout Christian, one of following reactions arise in him/her:

1. It is not true. Such things don’t happen. Bible should not be taken literally. Why don’t these miracles happen now? Not one miracle has been recorded in recent times.
2. There may be some truth in these tales; rest is all exaggeration, carried out by an army of authors, over two thousand years.

You don’t want to appear gullible and superstitious, so you deny the miracles. In a discussion with your scientific-minded friends, you are apologetic about miracles recorded in Bible..     

There is no need to be apologetic. It is they who are close-minded.            They fail to appreciate that Divine power can cause miracles by using as yet undiscovered laws of nature. The known laws are not suspended but other undiscovered laws are brought into action which make it appear supernatural.

But what about the argument that why don’t miracles happen now?

The answer is that miracles happen now also. The same Source from which prophets derived their power still exists. Men of God (mystics) appear in all times and go to the same Source where prophets had gone and got powers, though not in the same order of magnitude as prophets possessed. We see glimpses of such powers. Here are some examples:

Jesus cured sicknesses. My brother suffered from incurable sickness. He went to the Great Mystic of Khyber Pass, who sealed his disease (see blog 104 ).

He suffered from a chronic illness for years, which affected his daily life. He had surgery, but that did not help. Soon he started vomiting blood. He fell down in streets couple of times and was taken to hospital. He was diagnosed with cancer (although that part is not documented). One day he met a dervish. The dervish said that in a far flung area a Qalander lives; only he has the ability to cure him. That man took that difficult journey, (considering his sickness). He met the Qalander the following day. The Qalander heard his story. He gave that man some goat milk to drink, and told him, “I have sealed your disease. It won’t progress. You won’t have vomiting any more. All your symptoms will gradually get better, and you will be alright in a month”. That is exactly what happened. Several years have since passed

St Augustine narrated the miracle of restoration of vision of a blind man (blog 163). Let me repeat it for the sake of continuity:

1. “While the bodies were being carried, on the way, several people who were tormented by evil spirits were cured. There was also a man who had been blind for many years, a well known figure in the city. He asked why the crowd was running wild with joy, and when they told him the reason, he leaped to his feet and begged his guide to lead him where the bodies lay. When he reached the place, he asked to be allowed to touch the bier with his handkerchief.  No sooner had he done this and put the handkerchief to his eyes, his eyesight was restored. The news spread”.
   St. Augustine was there in the city of Milan. He would not have recounted it unless it was authentic. He may even have witnessed it. Augustine was a highly rational man, as is clear from his struggle to understand time, astrology, and how prophets could see future. He was not likely to suffer from what Hume called ‘superstitious delusion’.
   St Teresa of Avilla narrates in her book, how she prayed for vision (blog 78). Here is the account from my blog:
                  “Once she was earnestly begging Jesus to restore vision to a totally blind man. The Lord appeared and talked to her. Then He said that He would always grant her anything she asked, because she won’t ask Him anything which did not tend to His glory. The vision was restored within a week.”

To be continued

 

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

 

 

139. Fate versus free will. Part Six

 

What are the arguments against free will, or hypothesis two?

 Actually there is only one argument against it, and that is if the future does not yet exist (because it has yet to be made), then how come some men of God are able to tell it, sometimes in precise detail? In blog 135, I narrated how a man of God who foresaw the seven lottery numbers, one day in advance of their live drawing on TV. It is as if future existed somewhere.

 

Thus we arrive at a paradox:

 

1. Some persons can see future, therefore it exists somewhere

 

2. Future does not and cannot exist, because it has not been made yet.

These are two mutually contradictory, immovable statements. Only one of them can be right, or is there some way in which both are right?

Let us first examine the actual evidence of prophecies. I have chronicled 13 such events (excluding the one in blog 135) in blogs 102-3. A summary of them is in blog 114. Since many persons do not have access to computer, I will restate the summary here:

 

               How can anybody tell the future which has not been made yet? To have my grandfather buried in the same grave with his son, required a colossal event to happen, in which millions suffered. For Swami Vivekananda to see the event of the silver cup 43 years in advance, only a Divine power had to be involved. How did Swami Yukteswar know that the veterinarian will fall ill soon, recover, and die 6 months later? How did he know that Yogananda will be fed strawberries in America? And Kashi did die, as predicted.

               How can one explain the vision of the teacher putting a garland of flowers on the president’s neck and receiving a check; Baroda Babu’s telling Dilip Kumar Roy, 12 years in advance, that he will have to wait for Indra Devi to join him as his disciple for his real progress, and also telling him about what Sri Aurobindo advised him regarding his hernia.

               One does not have any explanation of Indra Devi’s vision of the pilot dying in crash one year in advance and then his spirit coming to Indra.

                Brother Lawrence predicted on Friday, that he will die on Monday (blog 15-7). That is how it happened.

                In blog 91, I have narrated the incident of Paul Brunton meeting Chandi Das. Chandi Das, reluctantly, narrated some incidents of Brunton’s future. Some of them came true, by the time book was published.

 

What are the possible explanations of prophecies?

 

1.  All these anecdotes of prophecies are false. They never happened.

2. The anecdotes are true, but the predicted events were made to occur, when their time came, by some powerful living persons or spirits.

3. The causes or signs of future start appearing in the present, from them the future can be predicted.

4. The people who predicted, had the ability to travel in the future

5.  There is a parallel world, which is a copy of our world, like the image in a mirror (or we are the image). It is ahead of us in time. Whatever will happen in future over here has already happened in the other world. Therefore access to that world enables us to know our future.

 

Now, let us examine these speculations in greater detail.

 

1.   All these anecdotes of prophecies are false. These episodes have been carefully selected by this mote. I heard the story of my grandfather and uncle, from the lips of my mother (blog 102). Mr Dickenson told the story of silver cup many times, and Sri Yogananda, being a man of God, would not have chronicled it in his autobiography, were it false. The source of other anecdotes (3-8, in blog 102) is also written by Sri Yogananda in his book. I, myself, talked to the teacher who put garland of flowers, around the president’s neck. He verified it. I, myself, talked to the seer who foresaw the seven lottery numbers. The other episodes are also taken from the books of men of God, like Paul Brunton, Brother Lawrence, and Dilip Kumar Roy. So all these episodes are authentic.

There is a valid criticism, that all of these episodes are hearsay or could have been fabricated by the authors, themselves. I have not mentioned a single episode, watched by me, or experienced by me. I have no answer to this argument. Maybe God will one day grant me such an episode. But it still will not answer the criticism, because how will the readers know that I am not making it up.

 

To be continued