--- In [email protected], t3rinity <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > I just met a man who met Maharsishi in 1954-58, before he > came to the west, and he attributed what he called a miracle > to Maharishi (In this case its up to interpretation to call > it a miracle, Maharshi caught a plane in Madras even though > he was 2 hours late - and so was the plane. One might call > this also a coincidence or simply sychronocity).
Lots of stories like this about MMY, and many that have nothing to do with coincidence or synchronicity (bilocation, among other things); Charlie Lutes was apparently fond of telling these. A friend of mine swore he had instantly cured her of a bad cold. And a friend of hers reported that she'd snuck out of a lecture MMY was giving and gone for a walk, musing about whether MMY was really enlightened, when she saw him coming down the path toward her dressed in loud plaid Bermuda shorts, grinning at her. <snip> > This is not to say that I can attest any > of this, or that there couldn't be any rationalist explanation, > but it tells you that miracle-stories and religious life are > closely interwoven in India, and certainly you are looking at > this topic with a western cultural lense of an already > rationalised religion. I don't know what percentage of people it involves, but in the West there's a good-sized appetite for "miracles" such as images of the Virgin Mary or Jesus appearing on the sides of buildings and so on (in one recent case, on a grilled cheese sandwich--its owner, after keeping it for 10 years, ultimately put it up for sale on eBay, where a casino bought it for $28,000). There's also a substantial interest in the "paranormal"-- to use the most general term--occurrences that can't be explained by science but that aren't given any particular religious significance, like Uri Geller's spoon-bending, therapies like homeopathy, and of course UFOs (although some hardcore UFO enthusiasts have made a religion out of them). Is there anything like this in India--popular interest in inexplicable occurrences that don't involve religious belief?
