114. God  part eighteen 
 

 Please read blog 113 for continuity

Science has no explanation for prophecies, miracles, spirits, and granting of prayers.

               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 Kasha 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.

               As for as miracles are concerned, Indra Devi transformed sandy earth into sweets, Sri Yukteswar appeared in flesh and blood, twice, to Yukteswar, once when he was waiting for him to come by train from Calcutta, and once when he was resurrected from dead. I have narrated Data Gunj Bakhash’s miracles: protection from rain and mud, appearance of dates and out of season grapes, talking to a pillar in the mosque and getting the answer, and the mystic knowing what the three dueveshes had in mind.

               The episode of ‘Ninety’ and appearance of letters from thin air, are miracles. Beyond scientific explanation.

               Finally, Dilip Kumar Roy gets his wish, and the lamp lights up, and then is extinguished.

               Levitation of St Teresa of Avila was a miracle, and so was Christ restoring vision to the blind and taking away the severe pain of the sick man.

               The Yogi created the perfumes out of thin air, both for Paul Brunton and the young Yogananda.

               What powerful miracles of Therese Neumann not eating and drinking for twelve years and Giri Bala for fifty-six years! Do you need any other proof, it shows the power of God

               The great yogi Pranabananda assumed another replicate body and thus had two bodies at the same time, when young Yogananda visited him (I think it was for Yogananda’s education).

               The raising from dead of Rama, by Lahiri Mahasaya, was a powerful miracle (I think it was for Sri Yukteswar’s education)

               The proof of spirits of people who once inhabited earth, is, in the end, a proof of a Divine system, and God. We were made aware of the restless spirit of Bimla Kumari in the haunted house. In blog 108, Prophets Jesus, Muhammad^pbuh Krishna, visited the devotees. Data Gunj Bakhash, an eleventh

Century mystic, cured 3 brothers suffering from plague, in twentieth century.

               The resurrected Sri Yukteswar talked not only to Yogananda but also to his disciple, Ma

               The spirit of Yogananda came out of his picture and helped Sri Daya Mata.

               St Teresa of Avila saw the spirit of Jesus and Fray Peter of Alcantara many times.

               The spirit of St Mira came hundreds of times to Indra Devi, and dictated her songs, sometimes in a language which Indra did not know.

               Paul Brunton, became his own spirit, and saw his own motionless body lying on the stone slab in the Great Pyramid of Egypt. 

As I have said before, nothing convinces me more about the existence of God, than His granting the prayers. I have narrated seven examples. Three prayers were unique, and the other four had the quality of last appeal. Shahab’s prayer to God, to allow the spirit of Fatima^pbuh to talk to her father, and getting his permission for Shahab to travel in search of God, through a particular path, was unique. And what a way of confirmation; a letter from Germany! Mr. Shevani’s prayer to meet the greatest Qalndar of this era, and his spending his life with him was also unique. Who would ask for such a thing? Giri Bala’s prayer, wanting not to eat anything, was so unique, that even the guru remarked that God was touched by its extraordinary nature.

               God listened to Mufti Sahib (even Mufti Sahib himself told it to a friend, that God listens to him) and came to his help, twice. This is the same Mufti Sahib (I have mentioned it in Foreword to book two) who did not have the courage to enter Kaaba for several days, and sat outside. He prayed to Allah “make me Yours”

               The prayer of the man for debt relief shows that God has compassion. Not Spinoza’s passionless, inaccessible, remote God. 

At the end, let me answer the question: is God personal or impersonal? Let me explain, by personal God, it is meant that God is approachable. He listens to you, and helps you, if He deems it fit. A friend once said, “I tell God, even if my shoe lace breaks, and ask Him to give me one”. On the other hand,  impersonal God is not approachable. He does not have human feelings like joy, anger, compassion.

               The answer, according to this mote’s understanding, is, Both.     Part of God is remote and inaccessible and part of it is personal and approachable

 

The End.     

www.afnta-questforallah.blogspot.com

Collection of chants at: mkadk.afnta

 “On a dark night…………without light or guide, save that which burned    in my heart”

                                                                          St. John of the Cross 

Email address; mkadk2012@gmail.com

 

 

100. God. Part four.

 

               Now let us present the evidence supporting the concept of God.  All the evidence is anecdotal and circumstantial. But if you have an open mind, and connect all the dots, you will arrive at the inescapable conclusion that there is a Supreme Being. We see His or His assistants’ handiworks through the examples I provide. Don’t reject them outright. If you don’t believe me, examine the raw data yourself, by reading them in the books (whose list is provided) yourself. If you still don’t believe, intellectual honesty demands that you should provide an alternative theory which should explain all the facts. Don’t just say authors lied or had hallucinations (blog 11-12). Did all these writers lie? Is there evidence that they were habitual liars or had a mental disease? If you still don’t believe then investigate yourself, by methods (blog 26) this mote and others have outlined. Go to the source, The Divine Current, yourself (blog 38). It is an extremely difficult road (blog 6), and it may take your whole life.

               There are five lines of evidence supporting God

1. The beginning of the universe

2. Foretelling the future (prophecy)

3. Miracles

4. Spirits

5.Prayers are answered

Let us first start with the beginning of universe: I have used these four books in writing this part. I want to acknowledge their help with gratitude.

               1. A history of Western philosophy by Bertrand Russell

               2. A Britannica Guide to Particle Physics. Edited by Erik Gregersen

               3. The fabric of universe by Brian Green

               4. 4 percent universe by Richard Panek

The scientific view states that the universe started about 13.8 billion years ago. It started with a big explosion called Big Bang. Most scientists believe that all the known universe; you, me, this house, this city, this earth, the solar system, all the galaxies, all the matter including dark matter, all the energy including dark energy, all the empty space including its fields, all the Higg’s particles____________ were compressed in a tiny space which was much smaller than a single atom, as a matter of fact the size of a Planck length. A Planck length is a centimeter divided by 1 followed by 33 zeroes. May be you did not grasp the size, 1000000000000000000000000000000000 of such Planck lengths will fit in a centimeter. For a sense of proportion, remember a million is I followed by 6 zeroes, a billion is 1 followed by nine zeroes, and a trillion is 1 followed by 12 zeroes. Because such an amount was compressed in such a space, the temperature of this singularity was incredibly high. It exploded and underwent great expansion (inflationary period) at greater than the speed of light. It cooled off, from 10³² degrees K to 10⁹ degrees K (one billion degrees) in 100 seconds. Atoms formed about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The first stars appeared at about 100-200 million years after the Big Bang. Our son and earth are about 5 billion years old. Earth had to cool off sufficiently for life to start. Life started about 3 billion years ago because of the electrons, which have the quality of inter-atomic bonding and chemical bonding. You and I exist because of this capacity of electrons. Our species Homo arrived on the scene about 2 million years ago.

               In 1929, Hubble made a great discovery with his telescope. He showed that the universe was not static but expanding. Furthermore the expansion velocity is proportional to the distance, farther a galaxy is faster is its speed; galaxies that are a 100 million light years from us are moving at about 5.5 million miles per hour, whereas galaxies that are 200 million light years move at about 11 million miles an hour. This is hard to believe. It is as if I throw a ball in the sky and the velocity of the ball, instead of decreasing, as the time elapses, keeps on increasing, and the ball disappears in the sky! Now Hubble and others were able to calculate the speed of the galaxies, from their distance from us, and the distance could be calculated by the shift in color spectrum of their light; distant stars appear red (red shift) and closer stars appear blue (blue shift ). Therefore, this discovery gave an irrefutable argument in support of Big Bang model and the time of its occurrence. If one goes to a site where debris is flying outwards, one can conclude that an explosion took place and one could pinpoint the time it took place by the present location and the speed of the debris and plotting it backwards.

               You may wonder, why so much detail? And why on a spiritual blog? The detail is necessary because my audience is high school educated persons in Asia or Africa. I want to convince them that the broad principles of science of Big Bang are impeccable. If Scriptures say earth is 5-10 years old and human being started from Adam and Eve don’t believe everything that you read. Don’t fight with science. Back ground microwave radiation, supernovae explosion (which showed that the speed of expansion decreased in first 7 billion years, but increased after that) provided further data supporting Big Bang model. I may not agree with the details. For instance the size of the universe at Big Bang may be bigger. I agree that the small size was due to the force of gravity which was pulling everything towards each other and crushing the atoms. I think that initially everything was Energy. Mass and energy are interchangeable by Einstein’s famous equation, E=MC², where E is the energy, M is the mass, and C is the speed of light per second. The singularity was just huge, phenomenal, amount of energy. Some people equate the singularity to God (this mote doesn’t)

To be continued