The Mystical Mountain

Miracles can be a touchy subject in modern Western society. It is not something that is talked about in “polite” company – and very often not even talked about in “rude” company! In a secular society, a person who believes in miracles is considered to be either a neolithic knuckle-dragger or off their rocker (depending on how the person pronouncing judgement on the miracle-believer thinks about religion). For better or worse, I have always been tone-deaf when it comes to modern societal norms and beliefs – but I can sing either in harmony or in unison with the traditional beliefs around the world. And most societies that I have encountered, and even read about, firmly believe in miracles.

I found it interesting being raised a nominal High Anglican in my early childhood but then being immersed in the Roman Catholic world by singing in an RC church choir during my teens. In my experience, the Anglicans accepted miracles (even the miracles of Jesus!) but with a bit of embarrassment. In contrast, the Catholics accepted miracles wholeheartedly – and that miracles weren’t just a really rare thing that Moses and Jesus performed, but was something that happens all throughout history, and even today. Well, the Catholic perspective (at least that which I was exposed to) seemed to be a lot more interesting and even logical, to me. I mean, if miracles are real, why would God just one day say, “I’m done with this thing” and put it aside like a child would to a toy that it had grown out of? (Yes, I understand that it is terribly presumptive to assume that one can understand the mind and motivations of the Divine, but sometimes logic does have its place even in religious matters.)

So, yeah, I am frank and open in stating that I firmly and unashamedly believe in miracles.

But what, exactly, is a miracle? How can one define it? Being more a blue-collar thinker than an intellectual, I am interested in miracles on the “ground level” so to speak. And to those “scientists” who try to investigate or “debunk” miracles: puh-lease… really, bro? To my mind, the vast number of miracles are personal out-of-the-ordinary experiences or perceptions – like Blake’s Auguries of Innocence: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand / And a Heaven in a Wild Flower / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand / And Eternity in an hour.” The line between the experience of awe (in the true meaning of the word) and the miraculous can be rather fine, in my view. Good luck with sending that to the lab for investigation, Mr. Scientist!

Is that all that there is, then: just a matter of perception? Decidedly not! Not only in the Bible, but in scriptures around the world, as well as myths, legends and traditional stories and beliefs, actual physical manifestations of the miraculous are described. Now, of course, one is free to interpret much – or even most – of it poetically. I suppose that agnostics, atheists and the like believe that 100% of it needs to be interpreted as flights or poetic fancy. And I suppose that they have the right to believe whatever they want to. I just happen to disagree with them.

My deep plunge into Catholicism while a teen turned into a fascination with Marian apparitions and associated miracles when I was a young adult. I am particularly fond of, and have been drawn to, the miracles of Lourdes in 1850s France and the miracles of Fatima in early 20^th century Portugal. Much has been written and discussed about these places and the miracles supposedly associated with them that I won’t go on to describe them here. However, what I will mention is my surprise in finding detailed discussions about them in UFO literature! What???

In the early 2000s I decided to return to the topic of UFOs after having abandoned the field rather abruptly in 1977 with the release of the film Close Encounters of the Third Time (it was becoming too ‘culty’ to my taste). I read a few books authored by Jacques Vallee, as I found his theory that UFOs and Fairies are one and the same. But then one of his books – I forgot which one – got into discussions of seemingly instant, miraculous, healings of some people who had very close encounters with UFOs… and then he went on a big tangent on the healing miracles at Lourdes! The part which I recall most vividly was a detailed account made (I believe in the late 19^th century) by the physician of a Belgian man who had had a terrible accident which had broken his thigh bone so badly that it was not possible to set it. A jagged piece of bone would protrude from the skin in his thigh. The Belgian man went to Lourdes on crutches and before completing his walk he had discarded his crutches and was able to walk pain-free! Many years later, when this Belgian man died, the physician (who had obtained the man’s permission before dying) performed an autopsy on the leg to see what had happened – and what he saw was scientifically inexplicable. Not only had the thigh bone fused together nearly perfectly, but the parts of the bone that had shattered (it was not a clean break) had also been conjoined or had been somehow replaced. If memory serves me correctly, this physician signed a sworn testimony on his findings. So, we have a UFO researcher who openly believes in miracles. Apparently, Vallee is a Rosicrucian, which means that he does believe in the Divine – so, ultimately, one should not be too astounded to find him sitting on the “believer” side of the miracle question. Still, it was not something that I expected.

Even stranger to me was chancing upon a description of the some of the miracles of Fatima by John A. Keel in his very odd book Operation Trojan Horse. A cynical, hard-headed, atheist, old-school investigative journalist, Keel attempted as much as possible to interpret the strange phenomena that he experienced (the most famous being Mothman) scientifically. Which is generally a good approach when dealing with unexplained phenomena: try to use rational explanations first – and then, only when that fails, see what other, less “acceptable” explanations work. You know; separate the wheat from the chaff. So far, so good. But then when the atheist Keel attempted to “rationalize” the apparitions and prophecies of Our Lady of Fatima, including the miracle of the falling Sun, as being a variation on a theme of UFOs, he lost me. Nevertheless, I did find it interesting that he found certain aspects of the Fatima “phenomenon” to closely resembled “close encounter” UFO reports. And for a person with his belief system, it would make perfect sense. But in my mind, what I think is that there are spiritual forces which are original or “genuine” which are entirely different from other spiritual forces which are imitative (the former being more angelic; the latter more demonic). Keel believed, based on his research and direct experience, that humanity is being manipulated by non-physical non-human intelligences that are up to no good. And he believed that all such intelligences are inimical to humanity. That’s where he and I part ways: I say, yes there are such intelligences or spirits or non-physical beings (however one wants to describe them) who seem to get their jollies out of making fools of us and outright harming us – and I have encountered them. But I also believe, and have encountered, beings that are totally indifferent to us (whom I tend to call “nature spirits”) and beings who care deeply about us (whom I tend to call “angels” and/or “gods”). Keel was nearly driven stark raving mad by what he encountered in his obsessive pursuit of this “intelligence”, so I don’t fault him for his bias. But my experience says otherwise and I believe that Our Lady of Fatima is no cosmic Trojan horse.   

I’ve had my own fair share of unusual things happen in my life, but there are several extraordinary incidents that I experienced that I term “miraculous”. Two of them happened to involve driving a car.

One incident occurred while I was a university student. I was working part-time as a security guard for a trucking company out in the country, about 10 km (6 miles) north of Toronto. At the end of my shift I would drive back to my rented accommodation in the wee hours of the morning. This routine happened without incident for a long time. Then one night while driving home, I noticed that the light on my dashboard seemed to be dim – so I adjusted the light level to maximum. That was fine for awhile, but then it continued to dim. This was not good news: my car was a cheap “junker” and just about anything could go wrong at any time, inevitably taking another chunk out of my not-so-extravagant wages. I sighed but continued on my way home (what else was there to do?). The headlights also dimmed. And then about 3 km (2 miles) north of my home, the engine died.

Fortunately, I was still out in the country and was able to pull over to the dirt shoulder. I turned the key a couple of times, with prayers on my lips, but the battery didn’t have much power. Rather than killing the battery, I got out of the car, locked it, and started to walk home. But after a minute or two of walking I had this strange intuition that I should go back to the car and try one more time – even though this seemed illogical. The battery was low, my alternator was probably shot, and soon I would be driving in the city where there is no dirt shoulder available to park the car. But I am used to listening to my intuition – so, back I went to the car and turned the key one last time (again with a prayer on my lips). Surprise! It started right up! Away we go!

But a minute or so after driving, the problems came back: the dimming dash, the dimming headlights. I was in trouble! Now, between the spot where I had temporarily parked my car and my home, there were seven traffic lights. And I knew that if I had to stop at even one light, the engine would die and I would be clean out of luck. Fortunately, the first light was green. And the second. And the third! And it kept on going! I ended up driving through seven consecutive green traffic lights. And as I turned left on the seventh light, the engine died. My house was situated virtually at the intersection and I had just enough momentum to go down the side street and up the driveway – and it rested in the spot where I parked my car without me even having to touch the brakes. The next morning, I tried the car; the battery was totally dead. Of course, I got the car repaired – but after that, whenever I drove home, I tried to see if I could do seven green lights in a row. Nope; it never happened again! I always had to stop at least twice or, on rare occasion, once.

The second incident happened when I was in my final year of high school. It was a late winter night, and I was driving home on the 400-series highway (what the Americans call “freeway”) near the city of Kingston. The weather had turned cold after a snowstorm the previous two days. The traffic was fairly light and the road conditions were pretty clear. I was chugging along at about 10 km over the speed limit. I was singing religious songs to myself to keep myself alert (I was prone to falling asleep at the wheel when I was a young driver). Suddenly, I saw the red tail lights of the car ahead of me, meaning that it was breaking. OK, no problem, I figured; there’s plenty of space between me and the car above me. So, I gently applied the brakes. No traction. Black ice! Now, this is a highway with two lanes in each direction and a in most places a grassy piece of land between the two directions.

As I quickly approached the slow car ahead of me, I wondered if I should turn from my lane (the left lane) to the right lane. No luck! There was a car ahead there, too, and it also had its brakes on. I hit the brakes again – pumping this time. Still black ice. And I am gaining fast on the car ahead of me. What to do? I must either keep going and have an inevitable crash at quite a high speed; or turn left into who-knows-what in the hope that there is enough of a shoulder to allow me to pass – but more likely than not I will be in the snow-covered ditch. I was indecisive. And then it felt like my hands were being forced to make a hard left turn – and before I knew it, I am whizzing past a half-dozen cars that were nearly bumper-to-bumper – and then turned back onto the paved surface that is clear of traffic! My heart was racing but was happy to have made it through the gauntlet of traffic unscathed. I said a prayer of thanks.

The funny thing is that once spring came, I drove the same stretch of highway on multiple occasions, remembering precisely where I had encountered the black ice and the string of cars. The problem was that at this spot, the highway turns to the right and there was no possible way that I could have driven on the left shoulder because there was hardly any shoulder – there was a guardrail and a steep embankment beyond that. Well, I sure didn’t encounter those on that perilous winter night!

Some would say that I was being helped by my guardian angel on both occasions. I certainly think so; or that some other being, far more powerful than I and definitely kindly inclined towards me, intervened.

And I do not consider myself to be in any way unique or exceptional. I know hundreds of people who have experienced things of a similar nature… or been saved by even more dire situations. I will share but one. I am close friends with a Sri Lankan Tamil family who were living in Colombo in the 1980s during the period of very bad communal violence between the (Hindu) Tamil minority and the (Buddhist) Singhala majority. My friend’s father told me that the night that the Singhala rioters came down the street where they lived in Colombo, there was no possibility of escape. House by house, they went, doing as they pleased, be it violence, theft, arson, or all of the above. The family closed their doors and windows, prayed, and waited for whatever was to come. They happened to have on the outside wall on the front of the house, right beside the front door, a portrait of an Indian holy man by name of Sathya Sai Baba who is known for innumerable miraculous phenomena. Anyway, the family heard the rioters open the front gate to the property and walk up the front steps. Then the leader of the rioters said to his comrades (in Singhalese): “Not this house. This family is one of ours.” And they peacefully departed the property. No mob ever came to their house again.

So, as I reflect during this Holy Week, do I think that the miracles attributed to Jesus (feeding of the multitude, changing water into wine, healing the maimed, raising the dead) to be true? Absolutely! Not only that, I believe that miraculous powers of many kinds are manifested by numerous people who have attained exalted spiritual states, as is described in the traditional lore about Christian saints and saintly personages around the world. How does it work? Well, as a mystic I am not all that concerned about the mechanics of such things; I far prefer to dwell on the glory of it all. Just the same a couple of images do come to mind. One is from electricity: current can only flow when both polarities are present: the positive and the negative. The Divine “positive” always has the “potential power” of the miraculous present; it is only when the human “negative” (in terms of humility and surrender – but also quite likely some Divine grace may also be necessary) is strong enough, will the Divine “current” flow and the miraculous occur. Another image is software related: if the whole universe is a “program” and the Divine is the “programmer”, it is possible for the Divine to rewrite some “code” briefly, which manifests in the plane of matter in the form of miracles. I can’t say if either of these images are even close to reality. To me the fact that the human body, consisting of three trillion cells organized into numerous organs and parts, is able to replicate and can heal itself more often than not, and even functions as a vehicle for consciousness and a temporary receptacle of the eternal soul, is to me, miracle enough. Or that the plants that I see outside my window while I type these words are able to wake up from a months-long sleep of a bitter winter, along with the birds, rabbits and other critters that grace my backyard with their presence. Something does not have to be uncommon to be miraculous. And I don’t seek out stories of extraordinary miraculous phenomena – but when I do hear or read of such stories, especially when they seem to be reliable, I thank the Divine for encountering yet another instance of the infinite love and compassion that the Divine manifests.

The German thinker Oswald Spangler accurately (I believe) predicted that Western society would enter a period of Second Religiosity once its age of rationality had run itself into the ground. I, and quite a few others, have noticed the tender green shoots of this Second Religiosity manifest in recent years – perhaps triggered by the abuse of power and false claims of the abuses being backed by “Science” at the start of the ‘20s. Although the hallmark of the Second Religiosity is more social than heart-felt, I do hope that some deeper aspects of religious culture, such as an acceptance of miracles, will manifest. It sure would be a pleasant change from the last many decades when we “believers in miracles” are compelled to be very cautious about voicing our beliefs in public due to the great likelihood of being stigmatized (funny word, that – given that stigmata is one seeming miraculous phenomenon). Some “golden mean” between total rejection of miracles and obsession with miracles would do some good for society, methinks.