| There are three ways of living a
life. The first is to believe nothing is a miracle. People who lead such
lives are usually unbelievers, rationalists and atheists (not necessarily
agnostics or scientists, though). They believe that to every effect there is
a predetermined cause going back into infinite regress but not back to any
First Cause. They think nature, reality and existence can best be understood
by empirical observation, forming hypothesis from such observations, testing
these hypotheses and, finally, deducing rules or laws which can then be used
for predictive purposes in future. Anything that doesn’t have the support of
such methodology, like walking on water or producing vibhuti from
thin air, is anathema.
The second way of living a life is to deem
that some things at least in it can be, and often are, miraculous. People
who lead such lives are generally believers and theists. But, again, they
are not necessarily irrational people. They consider almost everything
rationalists believe in to be true but with the important caveat that for
them it can never be the whole story. For example, most of them will totally
go along with the explanation evolution offers for the variety of life or
the mechanisms of the universe by they will not consider evolution to be
responsible for the creation of life or the coming of the universe. In other
words, they believe prayer or divine intervention can frequently heal.
The third way of living a life is to believe that everything is a
miracle. Such people unfortunately are almost always babies and children up
to a certain age and, on rare occasions, some mystics and enlightened men
and women. They hold no brief for or against the beliefs of believers or
unbelievers alike for the simple reason that they genuinely think parting
the Red sea or paring an apple are equally miraculous events. So is the
existence of God or Man or the non-existence of either. It’s not that they
don’t go about their normal business of days; they merely continue to remain
in wonder and awe at simply being there as part of it all.
Our dilemma is: if there is a choice, what do we choose? Actually,
it hardly matters. All of us and our lives have become so enmeshed and
defined by the other that without one, the other (s) can’t be. As for what
the ultimate reality is, it also doesn’t matter because we’re all of us that
too. |
