Do you believe in miracles?The question is as simple asthat.But,for the vast majority ofhumanity who fall somewhere in betweenstaunch believer and die-hard sceptics,the anFrom time immemorial,there’s been amiracle for every season and every reason.Ifonly our senses were open to perceive it! On ahot summer afternoon,sitting in a garden,under the cool shade of a peepal tree,soakingin the beautiful sight of colourful flowers,youclose your eyes and take a deep breath,sayingasilent prayer to the Almighty for a spell ofrain.Voila! It actually starts raining.If thisisn’t a miracle,what is?For Tarun Cherian,a well-known spiritualhealer,based in Bangalore,everything is amiracle.The blink of an eye,the blooming ofaflower,the flight of a butterfly,the existenceof the universe itself is no less miraculousthan statues of gods and goddesses drinkingmilk or opening an eye.

Yet,we take the former for granted becauseour brains have understood the mystery behind these natural phenomena.Innumerableinstances of mysterious things have beenrecorded,so nobody can discount the fact thatmiracles happen,he says.“For example,aurasaround humans have been photographed,sonobody can deny their existence.”“What we know about the universe is onlythe tip of an iceberg.We can just see that weebit above the water,and a little bit below it.What lies underneath,unknown,is biggerthan what most of us can even imagine,”saysOn the other hand,for miracle busterSanal Edamarakku,president of the IndianRationalist’s Association based in Delhiwhich has been fighting for inculcating scientific temper among people and exposing superstition,blind belief,obscurantism andparanormal claims among other things,allmiraculous events can be explained.

“There are three kinds of miracles,”hesays.One is purely the outcome of people’s ignorance.Sanal quotes the example of aSaiBaba ke rotimiracle doing the rounds in someparts of the country where you place a piecein a container,add tea leaves,a littlesugar and water and leave it covered for sevendays in front of a Sai Baba idol.On the seventh day,a wholerotiforms.

Sanal says this is because of the formationof something called the Manchurian algae.“Even if you were to place the same ingredients in front of your own photograph,therotiwould form,”he says.At the height of theGanesha milk-drinking episode,he haddemonstrated how it happened,feeding a little coffee to a statue of Jawaharlal Nehru,and“this may sound blasphemous,but also a littlebeer to a statue of Gandhi,”he laughs.According to him,every instance of a miraclecan be explained in scientific terms.

The second kind of miracles are specialphenomena such as people suddenly speakingin the voice of a dead person.These are mental illnesses which any psychiatrist can explain,he says.The third kind are pure deceitwhere charlatans use sleight of hand to takeadvantage of people’s gullibility,like conjur

vibhutiout of the air,making things disappear or appear,etc.“Whenever a miracletakes place,there is an economic or socialbeneficiary,”says Sanal.

“Obviously some miracles are manufactured,”counters Tarun.“But where are thereno scams? Science has clear biases,ignoresinconvenient facts,and has its share of utterAll of us may pooh-pooh the mass hysteriawhipped up either by a statue of Sai Babaopening his eye or Ganesha idols drinkingmilk,but,deep down don’t we want to be apart of the crowd that firmly believes in suchmiracles? “All of us love miracles,irrespective of our community and religion.In fact,we long for them.Being born and brought upto believe that miracles do happen,we acceptanything that’s even mildly suggestive of amiracle.Our lives revolve around expectations that miracles can happen.

“For instance,take the recent case of the statue of Shirdi Sai Baba opening his eye inBangalore.People thronged the place to witness it.That’s human weakness.At the same time,not all of them who went there believed in it.Most of them were driven to do it only out of curiosity.But,the very fact that theywanted to be a part of the whole episode illustrates how a human mind works.They went there out of expectations —they wanted tobelieve that the miracle had indeed happened,”says Prof C R Chandrashekar,Department of Psychiatry,Nimhans.

It’s true.Caught in the rigours of this world,all of us yearn for miracles in someform or the other.And again,who can doubtthis longing for miracles whenit’s being felt in various pocketsall over the world?There have been instances of miracles quoted in every religious text andin the history books of every civilization.

Circles of Light,Crosses of Light,HealingWaters,Signs of Allah,The Holy Mother,Buddhist Miracles,Christ Encounters...thelist can be endless.

An oft-quoted instance is that of thesighting of angelic warriors by Israelisoldiers in all of Israel’s wars.Andin every war,there were reportsfrom both sides of angelic intervention on Israel’s behalf.Though some rationalists attempted to term it as battle fatigue,believers didn’t buythe argument,consideringthat the angels were seenby both sides in thewar.

Surprisingly,while many today believe in miracles,no modern historian fills his or her books with accountsof miraculous events.For,they are considered incredulous and nothing more than a case of collective hallucination. Experts in human psychology think otherwise.

“It is basic human tendency to desire themarvellous and the wondrous,to be deluded aboutthem,to fabricate them,embellish them and to exaggerate them.It isamanifestation of our dislike for the mundane and the ordinary.Hence we lap up anything that is different from the ordinary,”explains Prof Chandrashekar.

However,there are many philosophers and anti-supernatural thinkers like David Hume (1711-1776) and Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677) who argue against this belief in miracles. While Hume terms it an act of faith and not of reason,Spinoza says that the belief inmiracles and a commitment to modern scientific methodology are incompatible.Another much widely neglected argument against miraclesis put forth by Immanuel Kant (17241804) in his book Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone .According to Kant,miracles never occur! In other words,miracles are theoretically possible but practically impossible.

Miracles are ruled out on scientificgrounds too.According to the scientific understanding of the universe,no event can betermed rational unless its occurrence is regular and repeatable.Miracles are by nature notregular and repeatable and hence there is noscientific basis for the belief in miracles.

“It’s true that there is no scientificbasis to miracles.But,everythingcannot be explained by scienceright?”argues Rachna Chabria,aconsultant with a software firm.To support her argument,shenarrates a true life experience.

“My father was a hale andhearty person.One finemorning,we found himdead in his sleep andthe doctors attributed it to a massive heart attack.My mother was devastated.Everyday she reported of having his visions,prompting her to take her BP tablets.According to her,she distinctlysaw him walking in the house with his familiar and recognisable steady gait.One such day,she told us she had decided to join him. We didn’t take her seriously as we thought itwas just another of her emotional outpourings.But,the very same night,to our horror, she too passed away peacefully in her sleep. How do you explain this?”she questions.

“Anything we do with intensity can create miracles.When we understand it,it forms the basis of life,when it surprises us,we call it a miracle,”says Tarun.

Miracles are anything that’s beyond our realm of understanding.Nevertheless,they help us get on with our lives with hope.“Theyare all around us.We just have to ask the universe for it.I have prayed for miracles and they have happened.The universe is very kind.It just gives all that you ask for.You may be gripped by a serious problem and not know how to get out of it.You hope against hope for it to be resolved by itself and it does! That’s amiracle,”says renowned tarot card reader Krishna Nath Malhotra.

A miracle definitely helps ordinary mortals like us to live on,with the fond hope that a miracle will very soon put an end to the suffering in the world.

Says model-actor Nasser Abdullah,a firm believer in miracles,“About three decades ago,I went with some friends to Satya Sai Baba,hoping to be able to ridmyself off a consistently present nervous strain,and fear of living in this world.I was not disappointed,as he did rid me of that,plus a few other disturbing

samskaras lurking within my being which I wasn’t even aware of.That was a true miracle for me! I mean,to be able to prevail upon the mind and transform it so completely without appearing to be doing so is a feat worthy of resting foremost in the annals of miracle workings.

“I had also on the same trip witnessed a healing by him on aboy who was afflicted with a disease,which had left him deformed from neck to toe.When Sai Baba whispered somethinginto his ear he dashed off,unaided towards his room,a distanceof 15 metres,in a split second,and turned contorted again.Afew hours later,I sawthis boywalkingabout awkwardly butproudlyaround,with themost radiant smileupon his face,unaided,watched by his ecstatic mother! He was noteven able to stand up on his own,prior to SaiBaba’s interaction with him,until a few hoursearlier! That was the other miracle I witnessed.This is for those who might want torubbish my earlier claim of my miracle as apsychological abberation or fluke!”Despite many miracles being explainedaway by rationalists and scientists,the media continues to report on strange events and happenings around the world and otherwise rational human beings continue to believe in them.“Now miracles happen most when we are desperate or troubled.And indeed we are in trouble today with an imminent collapse ofthe environment,and a global economy powered by skinny energy resources.Since man’s very survival is threatened,the stakes are raised.Our desperation unleashes immense psychic force,and so miracles and psychic gifts are far easier to receive today than in any point in our history,”says Tarun.

Both miracle-seekers and miracle busters will agree on one thing,however.Miracles are but extensions of one’s belief.You believe and you will be blessed by an experience.You don’t believe and you can explain the experienceaway.Every now and then,you read newspaper reports of potatoes or eggplants sporting the image of gods.Now,if you’re religious and abeliever in miracles you’ll see in these divine vegetables a sign and probably worship them, but if you are a rationalist you’ll just chop that freak vegetable into your curry!