Enlightenment, Miracles, and the Puranic Version
Imagine darkness. Our scene opens on a group in a cave. The cave is deep and dark. The group of cave-dwellers are bound and motionless. Our cave-dwellers, in darkness since birth, have never seen the light of day. They are imprisoned in such a way that they can only see the wall in front of them.
Behind the prisoners a fire burns, casting shadows on the cave wall. Behind the viewers, on a raised ledge a group of actors holding puppets of trees and flowers make a kind of shadow play on the cave-wall.
Think of it as a primitive version of television.
The prisoners spend their lives watching the stories that these shadows play out.
And since these shadows are all they see, our cave-dwelling friends believe the shadows to be the ultimate reality.
When they talk to one another about reality they refer to these shadows. They talk of horses, of trees, and clouds, and flowers but their only point of reference is the shadows.
One day, one of the prisoners, “Joshua” frees himself from his bonds. He turns and sees the actors and the fire that casts the shadows.
Suddenly Joshua is confronted with reality. The shadows are not real; they are created by actors with a puppet show. They are deeper forces at work than he had ever felt possible. Joshua is forced to question his belief system.
He is now more conscious than his friends, for he has learned an important lesson about the relationship between fire and shadows. He sees how the shadows of horses, trees, and clouds are being produced. He understands that reality is greater than he had previously imagined by staring at shadows.
Joshua has been partially “enlightened.”
Astonished at the truth he now knows, he returns to his friends to reveal the truth and cut their bonds. If only they follow him, they too will become “enlightened.” They will see the fire which is the origin of light and shadow. His friends think he’s being “unreasonable.” What he says makes no sense. It cannot possibly bes true. It doesn’t conform to their ideas about reason. Fearful that their friend has lost his mind, they reject his knowledge and refuse to cut their bonds. Their bonds give them security against the wild ideas of a fool like Joshua.
Finally, the cave-dwellers drag Joshua from the cave and exile him. Thrown out of the cave, at first he suffers: the light dazzles and blinds him.
He is so dazzled by the light outside the cave that he can only look at shadows, then at reflections, then at last he sees: not the shadows of puppets, but real objects—trees, flowers, even clouds moving through the heavens.
He is so dazzled by the light outside the cave that he can only look at shadows, then at reflections, then at last he sees: not the shadows of puppets, but real objects—trees, flowers, even clouds moving through the heavens.
Joshua sees that the forms in the darkness of his cave were only shadows of real trees and flowers. He has reached a higher stage of enlightenment.
And finally, when Joshua’s eyes have fully adjusted to the brightness of day, his blindness lifts, he casts his gaze towards the heavens and sees the sun.
Astonished, can see that the sun is the origin of light and even the flowers and the trees. Joshua has achieved the highest state of enlightenment.
Torn with compassion for his prisoner friends, Joshua returns to the cave. Impassioned with knowledge, he tells them what’s outside: Real flowers, real trees, the sun itself, the source of illumination, far greater light than the fire which casts shadows on the cave.
“I have seen the light!” he cries. “Come with me! I will show you the light!”
His old prisoner friends become enraged and attack him with knives. They drive him from the cave.
He is obviously insane. They return to watching the shadow plays on the walls.
He is obviously insane. They return to watching the shadow plays on the walls.
The scene is from Plato´s Republic; here Socrates presents the most beautiful and famous metaphor in Western philosophy: the allegory of the cave.
This metaphor is meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul. Education and realization of the inner self moves the philosopher through different stages and ultimately brings him to a higher state of consciousness.
And yet, seers of the truth are often considered as madmen, as unreasonable visionaries. Steve Jobs was considered an unreasonable man by the friends who helped him start a business in a garage in Cupertino, California. His ideas about personal computers were considered “impossible.” And yet Jobs revolutionized the music industry, the internet, the way we use computers and telephones, even the very ways we communicate and converse.
George Bernard Shaw once pointed out that the “reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Seers of the Truth often appear as unreasonable men. The most famous of these was Jesus Christ, who so unreasonably turned the money-changers out of the Temple in Jerusalem. The Pharisees thought him an unreasonable zealot or a fool. And beyond the unreasonable words of the preacher Jesus are the even more unreasonable miracles that attended him.
Is it possible in our “reasonable age” to believe in such unreasonable miracles? The miracle of the resurrection is at the core of the Christian faith. Is it possible to believe in resurrection?
In the end, it is a question of faith. Only in the event of faith can we know the Godhead, since the Godhead is not an object that we can verify “objectively.” We cannot make the resurrection of Christ or an understanding of the Godhead the object of some knowledge codified through our cognitive mental processes. Only faith, our inner experience of the Godhead, our can reveal to us a living encounter with the Godhead.
In the end, faith may seem unreasonable, but sometimes it is only through the unreasonable or irrational that we can come to the truth. Joshua’s exit from the cave was “unreasonable” according to his fellow prisoners, but sometimes it is only through a breakthrough that we can access reality. The unreasonable resurrection of Christ challenges our ideas about reality. And yet millions of Christians accept the mystery of Christ’s resurrection as the very cornerstone of their faith.
The resurrection of Christ is certainly a great miracle. And yet our daily life is filled with small miracles. How we live, breathe, see and speak is a miracle. How a seed contains a tree is a miracle. The essential leap of faith that one must make in order to fully understand the self and the Godhead involves the acceptance of miracles, for there are many things that surpass our understanding.
And so, returning to the ancient Vedic scriptures, we find many fantastic and unusual descriptions of miraculous events in the Puranas. These descriptions are difficult to evaluate. We may consider that some of these accounts are hyberbole or exaggeration. Still, we are asked to believe in miracles. We are asked to accept that the impossible happens. The ordinary man looks at ordinary events and questions, “Why?” A true visionary can look at supernatural events and think, “Why not?”
The miracles of the Puranas seem impossible. Take for example the lifting of Govardhan Hill. How can we believe that a boy named Krishna lifted a mountain called Govardhana and put it on His finger? It sounds miraculous and supernatural, but if that can be adjusted then everything can be adjusted. Ordinary minds give matter more importance than consciousness, but consciousness can create anything.
This is the core miracle we need to confront, to understand and digest. Matter does not create consciousness. Otherwise we would be attributing supernatural powers to stones and fossils. It is not that matter creates spirit, everything is coming from consciousness. So to understand the nature of consciousness, we must accept this initial miracle: everything is coming from spirit. If this is possible, then anything is possible.
If we can accept this original miracle, “everything comes from consciousness; matter does not produce spirit,” then we can explain all other miracles. Nothing is impossible.
It may be argued that matter is real and belongs to the world of physics, where things like “mind,” or “spirit,” have no substance. But what happens if we view “matter” through the prism of time? Time is an essential compononent of the “space-time” continuum, that is to say it is a dimension of physics, just as extension through height, length, and breadth are dimensions. Without the dimension of time, modern physics has no meaning. It’s impossible to speak of the velocity of a baseball without reference to time. So stone appears real when seen through the prism of “here and now.” But what happens to stone when seen through the relativity of time?
If our time frame is calculated in minutes, stone is real, hard matter. And yet if our time frame shifts, the relativity of stone-hard existence also shifts. What if our time frame for making the observation of stone is 100 million years? What becomes of the stone? It crumbles into dust and is blown to the winds.
This is unfair, you say. It’s artificial to calculate events in terms of geological time. And yet this is precisely the language of the evolutionary biologist who puts such stock in fossils. But can fossils create spirit?
Consciousness is the background of reality. If we can accept this as a premise, as did the seers of the Upanishads, then the miraculous events mentioned in the Puranas explain themselves. All miracles become clear in the light of consciousness.
If Krishna controls time, he can reveal the universe to Arjuna and show its development over millions of years in a second. The Supreme Absolute can bend time faster than the speed of light and show the Universal Form to Arjuna. If we can accept that consciousness creates matter, if miracles exist, if we can accept the resurrection of Christ, what difficulty is there in thinking that the Godhead can bend the laws of physics and reveal things beyond space and time?
While we may not attempt to explain this from a materialistic, scientific standpoint that doesn’t mean that this is all poetry. The ancient seers of the Pūranas, like Joshua in Plato’s cave allegory, like Jesus Christ with his resurrection, are revealing deeper truths about reality. Their teachings may not be approached through materialistic philosophy. Their teachings are not merely poetry. When dealing with such a higher reality it is not possible to use a materialistic paradigm as a platform for observation.
This sort of fossilistic scientific materialism must be rejected wholesale when approaching higher consciousness, divinity and the Godhead.
If we accept that the miracle of consciousness is responsible for this entire material universe, we must follow the path of faith. We can see a higher existential reality through the eye of faith, through devotion and dedication to the Godhead.
I am a conscious being. I am using my life force to direct my hands as I type these lines. This is “mind over matter.” My entire waking life is an example of “mind over matter,” as is yours. If the entire universe awakens as a consequence of the interplay between consciousness and matter, how difficult is it to part the Red Sea? The miracle of the resurrection of Christ is child’s play for the Godhead. The creation of the universe and its manipulation through the big bang to the evolution of species is child’s play.
We are like rag-dolls in the hands of the infinite. To create matter, even all material form is a play doll in the hand of the Godhead, who is by himself and for himself in the language of Hegel. He is a spiritual autocrat.
He can create and withdraw this universe, create its laws and even change and bend the laws of material nature, time and space. Everything is shown according to his own sweet will, no equal position of the material world.
The entire creation is floating on a sea of consciousness. This sea is described in the Puranas as the Garbhodaka Ocean, or the Ocean of Milk. The so-called “Causal Ocean,” mentioned in the Puranas is the ocean of consciousness, of conscious energy.
How to work out in modern language what is the meaning of the ancient seers of the truth is a difficult task, but it may be accessed through divine inspiration and with the help of enlightened souls and the company of saintly persons who have seen the truth.
How it was possible that Christ appeared again before his disciples after he was crucified? He was crucified and stabbed through the heart by a Roman spear and his dead body was taken to a mountain cave and after three days when Mary Magdalene and and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them went to see Him. They they found the stone rolled away from the mouth of the cave, but the place was empty. They found nothing but some remnant of His dress. The body of Christ could not be traced; the Lord had gone away. And yet he was seen again by his followers, by Peter and others, with whom he broke bread.
Is the story of Christ mere fiction or poetry?
All religious conceptions have supernatural experience, or miraculous as the background of their faith. This is because miracles are true, miracles are the basis of our existence.
And yet, addicted to this life-denying sensual experience of the so-called “material world,” what we conceive of as “real” this is all false in the final analysis. Given the relativity of time, the sun, the moon, the stars, will all turn into cosmic dust. And yet the eternal soul will continue her sojourn in this world of sense illusion.
But what we experience through our senses is false, it is an illusion, a temporary shadow play like the puppet show cast on the wall’s of Plato’s cave.
These are universally held truths. To live in this temporary sensory world is pursue a false sense of our true self-interest which is in the eternal world.
We rely on our senses to negate the existence of miracles. But how far can we rely on our senses? We consider our senses and the world of experience that we can reach through our senses as the very root and nature of our existence. And yet the sensory world and its reality has been challenged by all great spiritual seers of every religious school, Christian, Islam, or Buddhist.
In Hegelian terms, if the Godhead exists the Godhead must be “By Himself” and “For Himself.” This means that His sweet will can never be opposed by any potency in the universe.
Whatever He wills at once comes to Him. He said, "Let there be light," and there was light. He said, "Let there be water," there was water. The root cause is His will alone.
So if miracles are there, then what is the difficulty with accepting the version of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam when it mentions the lifting of Godvardhan hill?
All miracles need only the will of Godhead in the background. Only His will is needed and any miracle will immediately come to effect, even defying the physical laws of nature.
All miracles need only the will of Godhead in the background. Only His will is needed and any miracle will immediately come to effect, even defying the physical laws of nature.
That is the science of the supernatural: Believe in Miracles. Have faith.
