Question::
How can yogis perform miracles? What sort of miracles can they do?
(or)
Perfect Masters shows no special interest in performing miracles. Why so?
(or)
Can yogic powers help transcend “illusion/Maya”?
(or)
Why is it said that Perfect Masters perform miracles effortlessly, when compared to Yogis?
(or)
It is said that “impressions” are the reason why we cannot see God. Is it so?
(or)
Can anyone prove the existence of God, intellectually?
(or)
Why Jesus said “Sell all and follow Me”?
(or)
Can miracles show us God?
(or)
What is a worth-while miracle which ONLY a Truth-realized/Perfect-Master can do?
(or)
Why seekers of Truth/God are advised to keep away from the “allurements of the world”?
(or)
What is the PRICE one has to pay to attain the “knowledge of God”?
(or)
To Whom does God reveal Himself?
Answer::
(Extracted from Meher Baba’s literature, which is a copyright of Avatar Meher Baba Perpetual Public Charitable Trust(©AMBPPCT), Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, Bharat/India)
The ‘powers’ which the yogis use are based upon an energy which is comparable to ‘electricity’, though it is different from and much more powerful than electricity, which is under the control of scientists. However, for the purposes of intellectual explanation, we might look upon that energy as a sort of “electricity”, which is in the third layer of the world and is inexhaustible.
By means of “breath control” and other practices, the yogis combine this inexhaustible source of ‘cosmic energy’ or ‘electricity’– with the energy or ‘electricity’ in the third layer of their own body.
And this combination enables them to perform many “miracles.”
After combining the two stores of energy or ‘electricity’, the yogis have merely “to think” to obtain the desired result. Any “desire” which they bring into their mind, finds its immediate fulfillment.
- They can read the ‘past’ and the ‘future’.
- They can read the minds of others.
- They can see or hear happenings from any distance, e.g., they can see from America what one is doing in India.
- They can split up stones into pieces.
- They can even raise the dead.
As compared with the limited powers of human beings, these powers are indeed very great. But they have nothing to do with the “Truth” or with “true spirituality.” The Truth is far beyond the exercise of such powers.
The yogi can make things appear entirely different to you from what they really are. It is like putting coloured glasses on your eyes, so that a thing which in fact is ‘white’ appears to you to have the colour of the glasses you are wearing. There can be no spiritual advantage in being shown a white thing as coloured. The coloured as well as the original white thing are both false. They both are parts of a waking dream.
A Perfect Master would never bother to exchange one illusion for another. He would, on the contrary, show the illusory nature of the entire world, and would exhibit the Truth in its ‘bareness’ and ‘unqualified simplicity’.
In the same way, a juggler or a magician may before your eyes convert a card-board into a bottle. But what does it avail you to see the transformation, since the card-board as well as the bottle are both FALSE? It may appear anyway and anything to the eye; but it is “false”. It cannot reveal to you the unchangeable Truth.
Such miracles may serve the purpose of attracting the multitude and winning the admiration of the world; but the Perfect Master is NOT INTERESTED in any of these things. He is interested in making you realize that everything except God is just illusion; and this knowledge cannot be given by any “yogic powers”.
Suppose a man wants to know what is happening in a distant city. He will have to go there personally, if necessary even on foot to find out for himself. The “yogi” is able to get there in his “higher body” in no time and find out what is happening there. But he has to go there. This is like a person, who would go to the spot in a motor car much more quickly than a person who goes there on foot. The difference between the one in a car and the one on foot is only of degree. Both have to go, and both take what they see to be real. But they have not found the Reality. They have looked upon their “waking dream” as having substance.
What they all find after going to the distant city is only a part of the “Great Illusion”. The Perfect Master is concerned only with taking the ‘mind’ away from the ‘Great Illusion’ by means of which the multitudinous things of this world appear to exist, though, in fact, what really exists is only the invisible Reality known as ‘Self’ or ‘God’.
The ‘powers of the yogis’, great as they are, are nothing compared with the ‘infinite powers’ which one gets upon union with God.
God may be compared to the sun. The yogis are nearer to this Sun than ordinary persons and they can therefore attract to themselves some rays of this Sun.
These rays become their diverse ‘occult powers’. But in order to use these powers, the yogis have to manipulate these rays and make efforts; the miracles of the yogis are wrought laboriously. But the miracles performed by the Perfect Master involve no such effort– the Perfect Master is one with the Sun itself, and all His miracles are effortless.
The Perfect Master has the authority to use the Infinite Power of God with whom he has established union. But he rarely uses his power. When he does use it, it is only for the “spiritual purpose” of leading the bound souls to God or Truth.
The Perfect Master can not only show you what God is, but he can also lead you to the Goal of attaining complete Union with Him. But this does not mean that the seeker should, time and again, pester the Master with his pressing demand, “Show God to me!”
The desire to see God and realize Him is all right. But to imagine that God can be shown or seen like some object in the cinema is to falsify the real search.
You cannot see God without rising to the necessary mental state. The ‘nothingness’ and ‘emptiness’ of the gross world has to be thoroughly realized before one can get a glimpse into the nature of God. There is absolutely no use in putting the cart before the horse.
The immediate objective of the aspirant should be to struggle with those ‘psychic limitations’ which bind him to the false. God will automatically make His appearance when the blinders– which man has fastened upon his own mind– are removed.
In fact, God is not very far at all from the seeker. Nor is it really very difficult to see Him. He is like the Sun, which is always shining right above your own head. But you yourself have held on your head the umbrella of your variegated “mental impressions”, which hide Him from your view. You have only to remove the umbrella, and the Sun is already there for you to see. He doesn’t have to be brought from anywhere. But such a tiny and trivial thing like an ‘umbrella’ can deprive you of the sight of such a stupendous fact as the Sun.
‘Impressions’ are like this umbrella. Though they might seem to be insignificant in themselves, they create a curtain between you and God.
The Perfect Master helps you to remove these ‘impressions’; and when this curtain is removed, you are face to face with God as Truth.
It is never possible to give a purely intellectual proof for the existence of God. Any arguments which appeal merely to the “intellect” will have a tendency to induce belief in God. But they can never be absolutely convincing. How can that, which is really above the intellect be brought within the domain of the intellect?
To ask for a purely intellectual proof for the existence of God is like asking for the privilege of being able to see with the ears.
Ears can only hear. They cannot see. In order to be able to see, you have to make use of your eyes. If you close your eyes tightly and clamour that your ears may be given the sight of things, how can any one help you in the fulfillment of such an absurd demand?
And yet, it is this very absurdity in which the so-called educated get trapped. They want an intellectual proof for God as if God could be known through the use of bare intellect, howsoever keen.
The fact is that these intellectuals are not at all interested in God. They are only keen about argument and their own vanity. If they really wanted to know God, they would pay the price for that knowledge.
- They would forthwith renounce the ‘things’ that prevent them from seeing God.
- They would begin by being ‘humble’ and ‘selfless’ and ‘loving’.
- And they would start attaining complete purity of heart.
This will lead them to God more surely than any amount of barren argumentation.
People are not willing to part with their worldly attachments even for the sake of seeing God. They would risk their very lives and even die a brave death for securing the objects of their attachment. But they find it difficult to fast even for two days for the sake of spiritual advancement. This shows the firm grip which ignorance has on them.
God will surely reveal Himself to those who are willing to welcome suffering for His sake. They have to be staunch in their “determination”. God will certainly come to those who have courage to burn up all “desires”.
Worldly attachments and entanglements may be carried on forever without leading you anywhere. Therefore, it is incumbent upon the seeker to be aloof from the allurements of this world. That is why the Masters of all times have, like Jesus, called: “Sell all and follow me”.
When anyone wants an intellectual proof of God, what is sometimes desired is the performance of some miracle, giving a rude shock to the complacency of the ordinary man, who is immersed in the world and treats it as the ultimate and unchallengeable reality.
But ‘God’ is not to be confused with the supernatural world or its happenings.
What “miracles” can prove is that there is something beyond the things in which the man of the world is fully engrossed. But they cannot bring him the vision of God. From unreality, he moves on to another unreality only to be caught up again in the next illusion. And he will be nowhere nearer the Truth.
The Perfect Masters have always treated the demand for miracles with disdain. They know the real goal of life and they are bent upon taking the world to that goal– instead of catering to the idle curiosity of the worldly-minded. They wish to enlighten humanity, not to astound it or stupefy it.
If and when they perform miracles, it is always for leading men on the spiritual Path. It is never for self-display. The only miracle which for them is really worth doing is the miracle of making man realize that he actually is the Truth.
– Meher Baba
Source ::
Sparks of the Truth, Pg:: 29-33
© AMBPPCT, Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, Bharat/India
