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Some people are virtually obsessed with the miraculous, and then there are people who are just as extremely non-involved in the miraculous–neither believing nor being interested in the subject. At least the people who are interested in the miraculous are investigating for the truth. Blind rejection is just as superstitious and ignorant as blind acceptance. Yet, sad to say, it is currently considered sophisticated to not believe in the miraculous.

The reaction–or non-reaction–to the miraculous depends on our consciousness. There is not just one world in which we live, but there are as many worlds as there are people living in this world. That is, each of us sees the world and experiences it uniquely, according to the condition of our mind, which is mostly determined by our state of evolution. For this reason two people can live in the same house and yet live in two different worlds.

Different states of consciousness

We say “worlds,” but what we really mean are differing states of consciousness. The world of the human being is really an interior world, since all we ever perceive are the interpretations of the mind in response to external stimuli. It is truly all in our head! In other words, it is not the condition of the body or the place where the body is, but rather the condition or placement of the individual’s consciousness. This is of course a matter of evolution, of the development of the quality and orientation or attunement of the mind.

Since this varies from person to person, there are people who live in the miraculous from day to day next door to people who experience nothing of the miraculous in their entire life (or at least do not recognize it when it occurs). My maternal grandmother stayed in her house and almost never went anywhere except to church. In my entire life I never knew her to go the few blocks to downtown. She went out of the house to work in her flower gardens, but other than that she remained in the house where she worked miracles and lived in the supernatural. Grandmother was clairvoyant, clairaudient, and possessed astounding healing powers. This she kept secret, confiding only in her two daughters about her special abilities. After their death she made me her confidant, and no one else ever knew of the wondrous world in which she continually lived.

Right across the street from her, to the south, were some typical F. Scott Fitzgerald type of wealthy people: rich, drunken, and worthless. They certainly did not live in the miraculous (unless it came out of a bottle). To the east of her lived some very intellectual and refined people, but the miraculous and the spiritual did not touch them at all. To the west of her lived one of our town crazies, who did indeed understand certain psychic principles, and whose behavior, accordingly, was looked upon as utterly loony. It indeed was loony, because her way of responding to situations was loony. But what she saw was true. Then to the north were people who moved through life like zombies

And there at the heart of it was my grandmother, in the middle of the four, talking to God, healing the sick from a distance, and even raising the dead. (Grandmother had a difficult time getting a woman she had brought back to life to promise secrecy about it.) It was all a matter of consciousness. The divine spirit was within those other people just as much as within her, but her mind was awakened to it while theirs yet slept.

Awakening to the miraculous

One of the signs of awakening consciousness is the entrance of the miraculous into the life. Yet we have to be careful, because we can become distracted by the miraculous itself and forget from whence it comes. Jesus says: “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe” (John 4:48). He does not mean this in a mechanical sense–that a person will not believe and then suddenly upon seeing a miracle come to believe. Usually people encountering the miraculous do not even know what it is. Some, threatened by the intrusion of higher reality in their life, explain away the miracle or they deny it utterly. Not infrequently they destroy the manifestation of the miracle. This was the policy of Communism. Communism did not disbelieve in God and the miraculous. If they had not believed they would not have been so intent on destroying belief in God and miracles. You only aim your gun at a target you believe is real, and the Communists did the same. Many of them when pressured admitted that they believed in God, but hated Him. Their denial was itself wishful thinking–the thing they accused religion of being!

I knew a highly advanced disciple of Yogananda who had the psychic ability to find oil deposits just by flying over an area in a plane. He even found offshore oil for his home state of Michigan. Once he located twenty-seven oil wells in one day for a man. The drilling was done and all twenty-seven paid off. Do you know what that man then said to him? “Aw, there’s just got to be some trick to it.” Another man drilled in more than a dozen places, and except for one spot found oil each time. My friend had warned him that in that one spot he would have to drill at an angle rather than straight down. The man did not follow his instructions, and when that one did not succeed, he denounced my friend as a fake.

So what does Jesus mean, then, since people experience the miraculous but mostly do not believe? Obviously Jesus is not speaking to that level of person. He is speaking to someone whose consciousness is astir.

In a sense this passage of the Gospel where Jesus’ statement occurs is a parable of someone searching for inner healing. When such search is genuine and evokes a divine response, the miraculous begins to occur. Sometimes it is amazing the way the seeker’s life becomes transfigured receiving supernatural indications–some more and some less spectacular–daily. It is as though he walks upon a glorified earth. But in time the honeymoon is over and he has to get down to business–the work of his conscious evolution. For the purpose of the miracle was to lead him to discover the principles behind the miracle.

A message from the Higher Self

A miracle is not just a wondrous thing, a simple display of power. Rather, it is a message from God and the higher self. Messages from the higher worlds often take the form of the miraculous. The recipient of the miracle must then intuit the meaning of the event. For example, the multiplication of food by Jesus (Matthew 14:15-21) did not in itself matter. What mattered was the principle of the potential infinity of matter, which in turn reveals the truth that what we think is matter is really infinite consciousness–that everything is infinite spirit. And therefore everything is God. This is the message of the multiplication of food by Jesus.

Such a miracle leads to the intuiting of a principle. So when we study a genuine miracle (for there is also mere coincidence and trickery mistaken for the miraculous), we find that it is a revelation of a truth of the higher worlds, of higher life–a revelation about ourselves. A real miracle demonstrates a principle that we can thereafter work with for practical insight and objective results. We learn something practical and demonstrable from it.

This being so, the miraculous must not be seen as just a supernatural fireworks display, but rather as the writing out of eternal truths, principles of eternal life. Jesus rose from the dead to demonstrate immortality, not for people to be impressed with his uniqueness or power. He was not displaying his power and mastery in a flashy way, but showing that death is a dream, and that life is the reality.

When Jesus healed, He showed that the disease or infirmity was a dream, and that health was the truth. Jesus walked on water and changed it to wine to demonstrate that we do not understand the nature of matter, and that there are powers beyond gravity which can cancel out the “natural” laws of gravity.

Certainly all of Jesus’ miracles were done out of compassion. He alleviated suffering because of His merciful heart. But all His healings taught something. For example, Jesus said to the palsied man: “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee” (Mark 2:5). Then He healed him, showing that illness comes from negative karmas–sins. He was also teaching that a momentary cure is not sufficient. If we do not eliminate the past effects of negative action which produced the disease–as well as the propensity to future negativity–we will get the disease back; if not in this life, then in a future life.

Realities behind appearances

Being the teaching instruments of God, miracles should be studied to learn their meaning. God produces miracles in the world to demonstrate the truth behind the appearance. Also miracles teach us that there is a reality behind every appearance, that phenomena are just that–appearances. If we would be wise we must not let our lives be ruled by appearances, but by the reality behind them. To the ignorant appearances veil the reality. But to the wise appearances reveal the reality. Miracles, too, both veil and reveal. As the Odes of Solomon say: “Behold! the Lord is our mirror. Open [your] eyes and see them in Him.”

Read more commentaries on the teachings of Jesus in these articles:
• What Did Jesus Really Say in the Sermon on the Mount?
• The Kingdom of Heaven According to Jesus
• What Jesus Really Means by Meekness
• When Craving is a Good Thing
• Mercy and the Law of Karma
• Clean to the Core of Our Being
• The Spiritual Process of Making Peace

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