Chapter Five (pages 20, 21, 22)
COMPREHENDING THE MIRACLE
Nothing in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
___Marie Curie
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Why
are skeptics so fast to pooh-pooh the paranormal? They readily
accept the fact that we're walking around on a huge bluish ball
precariously dangling in space, twirling around so fast that by
all logical reasoning everything and anything should fly off. And
yet they stubbornly and flatly refuse to believe that the soul is
eternal. Or that we even have one It's intangible. Therefore, it
doesn't exist, they reason. What about germs that are everywhere? Or
wind? Neither can be seen, yet we don't doubt their existence for a
second. Not everything is as it appears. Like mirages. Or optical
illusions. There are so many unanswerable questions in this life.
Perhaps we're just not ready to know all the answers. Perhaps we
never will. Which is probably why it's hard to believe in miracles.
It' easier to be a skeptic. Blank and white is a lot simplistic.
According to the dictionary,
a miracle is an event that appears inexplicable by the laws of
nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God.
It has been said that miracles are spontaneous. they cannot be
summoned, but come of themselves. At one time, miracles were
commonplace. The Bible is crammed with all kinds of miracles Fishes
and loaves. The resurrection, The blind seeing.
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In Plato's
Republic, there's an account of a soldier who said he died and
came back from the dead claiming he saw the gates of heaven and
hell. This was written in the fourth century BC. Two thousand four
hundred years ago. But today everything has to be explained. Behind
every phenomenon, there has to be a logical reason. And yet
according to polls, 95 percent of Americans say they believe in God,
which can neither be proven or disproven.
Go figure.
It's funny: the skeptics accept so many miraculous
things like the birth of a baby. (Can anything be more incredible?)
A tiny reproduced human life. Or the universe. My God!
It's
so awesome it's difficult to comprehend its magnitude. And what
about love? That profound, wonderful emotion we often take for
granted? It comes out of nowhere. Or does it? If we believe in God,
we know that God is love. So maybe, just maybe, we're simply a
little scoop of God. After all, we are molded in his image. Thant's
pretty miraculous too, don't you think?
Admittedly, until recently, I was just as skeptical and
slightly agnostic. I never truly believed that someone who passed
away could affect the physical world. Spiritually in this stick-and
-peel society is hard to come by. If you can't see it or touch it,
it simply doesn't exist. They can't comprehend that within us,
there's a divine spark that outlives the physical existence, and
it's only a thin veneer away. They simple just don't get it.
For years, there have been attempts to prove the
existence of the soul. Gerard Nahum, a physician and director's
theory is "When a conscious entity dies, all of what's embodied in
it cannot simply disappear. It needs to be transformed into
something else within our space-time of needs to transcend its
existence here and move on to someplace else where it could
potentially remain intact."
Scientists at the University of Virginia are studying
an array of anomalous phenomena that encompasses near-death and
out-of-body experiences, where the patient's heart temporarily stops
and he or she is deemed "legally dead." Upon awakening, the patient
describes having seen a bright light and being pulled through a
tunnel where they observe deceased relatives and spiritual guides
who offer comfort, along the way. Others find themselves hovering
over the operating table observing themselves, but feeling no
attachment to their bodies. These paranormal experiences suggest
that the consciousness that once existed separates from the body at
the moment of death. So where does it go? Does it
22
enter another dimension? Does it get picked
up by someone else? Could that account for so many of us having
memories from past lives who lived centuries ago?
St. Bernard described death as "the gate of life." A
timeless, wonderful extension of our being. And Einstein said,
"There's only two way to look at your life. Either everything is a
miracle, or nothing is a miracle." I'll choose the first.
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