Why miracles?

Shri Ramakrishna countered this by saying that if God willed it, even that could happen. And, lo and behold, the very next day there sprouted on the same plant, a red and a white flower on two of its branches. Seeing this, the Sage, like a child, promptly broke those branches and took the flowers to Mathur Babu to convince him that “unto God everything is possible”. Obviously, such divine intercessions — which are few and far between — take place, to borrow the words of the Bhagavad-Gita, to reinforce the faith of the sincere aspirant… Hence, we may say, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the materialist’s or rationalist’s philosophy.

But the occurrence of divine miracles is one thing and miracle-mongering is another. One of the eminent contributors in Vedanta for the Western World, edited by Christopher Isherwood, laments the tendency of some religionists to build their case of the superiority of their belief system on grounds of miracles — miraculous cures and so on. Presumably they do this to “spread their faith” (not faith as such!), to increase their following. Shri Ramakrishna, on the other hand, notes the writer, would have none of this. He enjoined upon his followers to seek spirituality in its quintessential form because the goal or purpose of life is God-realisation, not miraculous cures.

The greatest miracle, it would appear, is when a wicked man reforms and gives up his evil ways — turning away from them, he turns to God, like Valmiki. Hence the well-known prayer, asato ma sadgamaya, tamso ma jyotirgamaya mrityor ma amritamgamaya, from the unreal, lead me to the Real; from darkness to Light; from death to Immortality.