There is a class of paranormal phenomena generally classified as miracles. It’s often assumed that miracles imply divine causation—but maybe not. Miracles, in their way, are as shocking as quantum mechanics and as consciousness itself. They’re not intellectual puzzles that, once solved, will tidy things up so we can carry on as usual. What they’re really about is wrecking our habitual worldview.
We should check these strange phenomena out and try to pry open their concrete implications. For example, levitation, bilocation, apports; decades of living without food or drink (inedia); instantaneous, spectacular healings; Marian visions, precognition, capped by UAPish antics in the sky before 70,000 witnesses; mass dematerialization of milk and materialization of blood and tears; rainmaking and rainstopping; and so on and so forth.
When we combine into one composite picture these supernormal capacities, it all points to a being as different from us as we differ from Greek deities or from angels. With all these amazing potentials, it’s not hard to see how the cults, movements, and religions of the world arose in response to all the weird stuff occurring around weird people.
What
look like super-natural powers exist all right, but perhaps in our subconscious selves. Since time immemorial humanity
has been in dialogue with these mysterious powers. In the interests of peace, all the different ways of
interpreting contact with them need to be understood as complementary. It’s the same with art and science: all
the forms, styles, and knowledge discovered are valid in their way, and they
all, in my view, point toward the next quantum leap of human evolution. At the risk of sounding dead serious: we
need to get fired up about taking that leap—the survival of our species, and of
all life, depends upon it. These few remarks are meant to start a conversation and refer to my book, Smile of the Universe--which is about our shockingly strange human potential.
Michael, know that 'Smile of the Universe' was a big hit in my 'Altered States' class this past Spring semester. Students absolutely loved it and I'll sure be using it again this coming Fall and Spring.
ReplyDeleteWithout a doubt, I'm afraid, it's going to take a miracle -- a collective miracle -- to save us from what we have done to our planet and continue doing. The UN panel on climate change has said we need to change our whole way of life. More on this coming.
ReplyDeleteJust read the NY Times article this morning that covered the IPCC report, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/climate/climate-change-report-ipcc-un.html. We have been slowly killing our own planet and most of us continue to be oblivious to this fact. It's truly frightening what is happening.
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